Health Tips - Varicose Veins

Varicose veins really are common as we get older, unfortunately. Although, they can occur at any age including the teenage years, genetics places a large component. If you have a family history of varicose veins that can really affect your chance of having varicose veins and how young you get them. Woman who have more than one pregnancy or even just one pregnancy are at a higher risk of having varicose veins because of the changes that happen to our bodies with pregnancy. Some other factors that you can control would be maintaining a normal weight, but those other factors, age, pregnancies, and genetics really play a bigger portion as to what affects you getting a varicose vein or varicose vein symptoms.

There is what we call a spectrum of varicose veins. There is the small tiny little veins that everybody classically calls spider veins that usually just affect the way your leg looks, and then there's the ropey, large varicose veins. And then something in between, we call a reticular vein. It's a spectrum of how big the vain is and what kind of problems you can have because of it.

It's not dangerous, but it can certainly be uncomfortable, and it can affect your quality of life whether that's just how you like the way the leg looks or causing pain itself. 

There are multiple different ways that we can treat varicose veins. If you just want symptom control we have ways of just using compression hose therapy. Something that you can get over the counter or even medically prescribed, and then we can do in office based procedures where we can do injections that can help take care of some of the more minor cosmetic issues, leading all the way up to outpatient surgery where we can actually take out the vein either with a minimally invasive technique or traditional open surgery.

You can decrease some of your risk. You can't get rid of all of it unfortunately. Being active, living a healthy lifestyle, and trying to keep your weight in a normal range are kind of the critical factors that you have in preventing varicose veins that you can control, but realistically a lot of it just comes down to getting older, having pregnancies, and genetics. 

I really recommend if you're having discomfort, swelling in your leg, you definitely should ask your primary medical doctor about being referred to a vein specialist. If you also just don't like how things look or feel like things could be a little bit better, that's certainly a reason to ask to seek help and treatment. Ignoring it isn't going to make it go away.