What are Varicose Veins?
Varicose veins are broken veins. Veins are designed to flow toward the heart through a series of one way valves. Due to influences that cause veins to dilate, valves begin to fail and backwards flow occurs within the vein. This allows blood to leak back with gravity and pool in the vein. This causes the veins to bulge and stretch and result in many unpleasant side effects such as aching and throbbing pain, heavy and tired legs and poor circulation.
Varicose veins may show up as spider veins (telangiectasias) or large bulbous veins (truncal varices).
Each is caused by the same process of vein dilation affecting different sizes of veins in a given limb.
What causes Varicose Veins?
One clear factor is heredity in over 80% of varicose vein cases. The second most common cause involves the hormonal influences that specifically affect women, e.g. pregnancy and circulating hormones. Obesity is becoming recognized as a scientifically proven independent risk factor for developing varicose veins and chronic venous insufficiency. Other contributing factors include occupations that involve prolonged standing, sitting and/or trauma to the leg.
What can I do to prevent varicose veins?
Walking or cycling, are wonderful ways to use your calf muscles and pump blood to your heart, lessening the venous pressure, and promoting normal venous health. Vocations that impair mobility, sitting and standing jobs, can adversely affect venous health. Compression stockings are not known to prevent varicose veins, yet they can help prevent blood pooling and increased venous pressure that lead to symptoms also helps improve circulation by preventing blood from pooling in the leg veins.
Do Varicose Veins affect women and men equally?
Women account for approximately 75% of varicose vein cases, mainly because of the unique additional risk factors for females, including circulating hormone levels and pregnancy. Men typically present with advanced stages of disease and often after complications of vein disease. One certainty is that women are far more commonly afflicted with symptomatic isolated surface disease due to hormonal influences and pregnancy.
Of 405 women with varicose veins:
- 13% had one pregnancy
- 30% had two pregnancies
- 57% had three pregnancies
Mullane DJ Am J OB Gyn 1952; 63:620