Varicose veins, often ropey, bulging veins in your legs, may be a big inconvenience and source of embarrassment for many who suffer with them, but the medical issues run deeper and there is much more to them than meets the eye.
Varicose veins are incredibly common, affecting close to one in four adult Americans. Yet, many never seek treatment and choose to live life with the associated pain and complications.
Your leg veins, literally, face an uphill battle as they carry blood from your feet to your heart. Leg muscles squeeze the veins to push the blood up toward the heart. Small valves within the vessels prevent blood from getting pulled backward toward the feet, or “refluxing”, on this journey. But if these valves fail, blood can pool in your leg veins, increasing the pressure and causing the affected veins to bulge and thicken and causing symptoms of heaviness and aching.
Following are the most frequent pieces of incorrect information we hear from our patients upon evaluating their varicose veins.