Tight-fitting clothes like skinny jeans and shaper garments can also cause leg problems if they cord your legs. You may have read news stories about women suffering from leg swelling and nerve compression due to ill-fitting jeans that hugged their calves too tightly.
When you wear a shaper, the garment may compress your thigh’s peripheral nerve. This leads to pain, numbness and tingling in your legs. You may experience these symptoms occasionally or constantly. Shapers can also decrease your circulation, which may cause blood clots, swollen ankles or varicose veins. While we would recommend embracing your shape without a constrictive garment, if you must wear a shaper, be sure to offset the impact of it each day. It helps to elevate your legs at the end of the day and to remove the shaper garment when you get home in the evening. Better yet you should consider the purchase of a medical grade, and professionally fitted compression garment.
If you wear high heels, then you are abusing your legs and veins for the sake of fashion. High heels shift your weight to the balls of your feet and cause the calf muscles to stay contracted. Both effects inhibit your venous circulation by altering the foot and calf pump which normally propel most of the venous blood out of the legs. As a result, if you wear them a lot, you increase your risks of developing spider veins and varicose veins. After a long day in heels, get those heels off and elevate your legs. Remember reducing the number of days and hours in heels in favor fashionable flats may be a healthier choice for you.
Being Overweight Or Obese Increases The Risk Of Venous Disease
Carrying too much weight is bad for you in so many ways. It can negatively affect your venous circulation creating excess pressure for the venous flow to overcome increasing your risk for developing venous disease. Excess weight is hard on your joints, too. Every pound of weight you gain adds 4 pounds of pressure to your knees. For some people, this results in arthritis in addition to stiffness, pain and joint swelling. Too much weight also increases the pressure that the body’s connecting tissue experiences. For example, tendons may start to have problems. They can become inflamed, which results in tendonitis. In these cases, leg elevation is essential, but even more important is to lose weight.
Leg Elevation Tips
For the leg elevation treatment to be effective, you’ll need to raise your legs above your heart. Lift them three or four times a day, and try to keep them elevated for about 10 to 15 minutes.
