How do you get rid of Varicose Veins?
I’m only 22 and I have Varicose Veins all over my legs and it hurts.
Comments
2 Responses to “How do you get rid of Varicose Veins?”Speak Your Mind
Tell us what you're thinking...and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
you have to go to the doctor for that veins are tricky things they can tell you what exactly you can use or go on line as well ok
Varicose veins happen because of the structure of your veins, and gravity.
Arteries have muscular walls and can contract. Veins lack the muscles and cannot contract on their own, but they do have valves, little flaps that close the vein and prevent blood from falling back into your feet when you stand upright. What moves blood through your veins is a combination of pressure from the arterial side (a little) and contraction of the muscles around your veins when you walk or move your leg muscles.
Varicose veins happen because the valves stop working for some reason and allow blood to pool in your legs. The veins become “incompetent”, and allow flow both up toward your heart and back down toward your feet. Most of the time these are part of the superficial (near the skin) venous system, you actually have deep veins and superficial ones, and your body direct flow into one or the other for a variety of reasons, in part to manage your body temperature. The blood pooling in your legs is caused by gravity, imagine a tube filled with water that extends from your heart to the ground. There’s not much pressure on the bottom of the tube when it’s horizontal, but when you tilt it up (e.g., when you stand up) the bottom of the tube has pressure from all of the water above it. To get rid of the varicose vein, you have to get rid of the column of blood above it.
The worst possible cause for having most of your blood in your superficial veins is that you have blood clots in the deep vein system. An ultrasound can detect this. The other reason would be the incompetent valves in the superficial veins, and an ultrasound can detect this as well. If they squeeze on your thigh and blood moves back toward your foot, you have incompetent veins.
Unfortunately there is no way to fix the valves, once they stop working they’re shot and there’s no repairing them. On the plus side, most varicose veins drain into one large common superficial vein, called the greater saphenous vein. This runs along the inner part of your thigh and joins your deep veins at the level of your hip. The modern way of fixing varicose veins is to use ultrasound to find the varicosities, and then ablate (burn) the inside of the saphenous vein down to the level of the varicosity. This can be done either with a laser or an electrical system (called ‘RF ablation’) that is inserted into the vein and drawn from the varicosity all the way back to where your greater saphenous vein joins your deep veins in your groin/hip region.
The doc who does the procedure will inject local anesthetic along the course of the vein so the laser/RF doesn’t hurt, but a successful venous ablation will scar down the GSV so the pressure of your venous blood doesn’t force open the varicose veins any more. They’ll wrap your leg really tight for a couple of days, and you’ll have to wear unfashionable but very effective compression stockings for a couple of weeks. Without the pressure from the GSV, the varicose veins will collapse and the blood will be shunted into your deep venous system. The fix is usually permanent.
Short of surgery, compression stockings will help some but they are only a temporary fix. This procedure can be done by any physician trained to do it, but most of the people doing this are general surgeons, radiologists and plastic surgeons/dermatologists. Be sure the person you see has done this procedure before, and ask for patient references. It’s not as cheap as compression stockings, but in the long run it’s more effective.