Causes of varicose veins

Causes of varicose veins

To understand the causes of  varicose veins it is important to review the basic function of veins and their basic physiology. 

Remember the heart is pumping blood through out the body to supply oxygen and other nutrients to the entire body, so the heart is pumping blood from the heart to the body parts.  The veins carry the used blood or unoxgenated blood back the heart.  The blood that is pumped back to the heart flows in these veins that act like one-way valves that keep the blood flowing toward the heart.  In the legs the calf muscle or musculovenous pump ejects 60 % of the blood in the legs every time the calf muscle contracts. The calf muscle is the primary mechanism that returns blood from the legs back to the heart. The veins returning blood from the legs have the toughest job of all the veins in the body because of the high pressure created by standing and because of the distance the blood has to be returned, and because of the force of gravity.  This makes theleg veins  the primary location of varicose veins and spider veins.

Heredity has a strong association with your chances of developing venous disease.  If both parents have venous disease you have about a ninety percent chance that you will have the same.  If you are female and you have one parent with venous disease, you have about a sixty percent chance of developing varicose veins .  If you are male with one parent affected, your chances are about twenty five percent. So women have more venous disease then men but men that are affected normally have more serious complications such as ulcers.  Other strong associations are increasing age, number of pregnancies, and living in an industrialized nation.

Obesity, diet, constipation, smoking diabetes hypertension has not been confirmed to have any relationship to the development of venous disease.

Learn more go to American College of Phlebology.

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