6 Ways To Reduce Your Need For Varicose Vein Treatment

Varicose vein treatment has gotten much easier in the last two decades. However, it's still something one should strive to avoid when possible. Here are some tips on how to avoid varicose vein treatment.

Stay Out of the Sun

Direct sunlight on your skin can damage your veins make them easier to become twisted and distorted, and thereby varicose. If you like to walk on the beach, wear light pants instead of shorts of a swimsuit. You may also want to look into sun protective clothing with a UPF 50+ rating, especially if you have sensitive skin and varicose veins run in your family. Sometimes it seems like a catch 22 because you're told you can get your vitamin D3 from sunlight but then you're told to wear sunscreen or stay out of the sun completely. A good compromise is cover your legs but also let the sun it your face and arms for five to ten minutes before you cover them up or put on a good sun hat.

Wiggle Your Toes and Feet

Sitting is the worst position for increasing your chance of developing varicose veins and needing varicose vein treatment? It's very easy for your blood to pool and your circulation to slow in this position. If you have a desk job that you are tied to for several hours at a time, make it habit to wiggle your toes and feet frequently! Do toe curls and move your feet in circular motions or up and down at the ankle. When you do get a break, even if it's a short stint to the bathroom, try to do a few toe rises to get your calf pump working. You'll be surprised at how big a difference just a few seconds of exercise can make in warding off varicose vein treatment.

Lose Some Weight

Okay, you don't have to become model thin to make a huge difference to your health! Even if you are quite overweight, you can save a lot of work for your veins if you lose just ten percent of your weight. Plus, once you lose that first ten percent, it's actually much easier to lose more! You'll get lots of compliments and you'll feel so much lighter on your feet, you'll be encouraged to lose more because you'll find doing so not only good for your vein health but also fun.

Cut Down On Salt

The sodium in salt will make your legs swell which puts more pressure on your veins. If you want to avoid varicose vein treatment, or delay it as long as possible, you should start tapering off on your salt intake now. If you eat out a lot, you're probably getting too much salt because restaurant chefs tend to over salt food. Try cooking at home more. You can also switch to Himalayan salt or Real Salt, which is mined out of an ancient sea bed. These natural salts produce less edema than industrially processed salt most Americans consume.

Get an Inversion Table Or Inversion Chair

If you've never seen one, google it and study some photos because inversion tables are wonderful for relieving edema and taking pressure off your veins. Basically, it's a contraption that allows you to SAFELY invert yourself. Full inversion is one hundred eighty degrees, or ninety degrees past horizontal. However, you don't usually ever invert quite this much. When you're first starting, it is recommended that you invert twenty to thirty degrees past horizontal. Just this amount of inversion can actually reduce your edema by a lot. An intermediate inversion is about sixty degrees beyond horizontal. Some people stop here and just invert for longer, especially since they find it so relaxing. However, if you are ambitious, you can work up to a full inversion. You don't have to be super limber to do inversion if you have an inversion table. An inversion chair makes it easier than an inversion table to get inverted and to become upright again.

Wear Knee High Compression Socks

First, you should know that knee high compression socks (which actually stop just below your kneed) will give you about eighty percent of the therapeutic effect as thigh high compression stockings. So, unless you have a very serious edema problem, knee high compression socks should work fine. Compression socks are very tight around the ankle and then get loser as they move toward the knee. This makes the blood more upward instead of pooling around your ankles. Compression also forces the blood at the surface into deeper veins which increases your circulation.