What Is Causing My Leg Cramps During the Night?
Leg cramps can leave you restless throughout the night, making it difficult to get any restorative sleep. Here are some potential causes of leg cramps and one way to alleviate them.
What to Do About Painful, Bulging Veins
The pressure that veins in your legs withstand is immense. Over time, the veins can become compromised, causing them to bulge, swell, and feel hot and/or painful. Left untreated, these varicose veins can cause serious health issues.
At Progressive Spine & Sports Medicine in Ramsey, New Jersey, our board-certified vein specialist can evaluate your vein condition and recommend the best treatment for varicose veins.
The difference between spider veins and varicose veins
Capillaries are the smallest visible veins in your body. When the tiny valves in these veins fail, one-way blood flow is interrupted, as blood seeps back through the valve and pools in the vein. This causes the spider web look tracing around your thighs, knees, calves and ankles, and sometimes in your hands and face or other parts of your body as well. Spider veins don’t hurt.
Varicose veins are larger veins that have begun to fail in the face of age and increased pressure in your legs. Unlike spider veins, which are not raised up and simply look like blue or purple lines under the skin, varicose veins stand up in ropy bulges and can feel swollen and hot to the touch.
Varicose veins can make your legs ache, feel heavy, itch uncontrollably, and cause pain. The danger of varicose veins is the backwashed blood that can form a clot, then break loose from the vein wall and travel to your lungs, causing a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. If you have varicose veins, you should see a vein specialist as soon as possible.
Vein treatments
We treat spider veins and varicose veins with radiofrequency ablation and sclerotherapy.
Radiofrequency ablation
RFA works to close off and seal a damaged vein, forcing blood flow into another healthier route. The remnants of the old vein will be slowly flushed out of your body as natural waste.
Sclerotherapy
For this treatment, your doctor uses a tiny needle to inject a "sclerosing" substance into the vein. This causes the walls of smaller veins to collapse and the blood flow to be diverted to nearby healthy veins, much like RFA.
You might have both spider veins and varicose veins. Your specialist might recommend either or both vein treatments to reroute the blood flow in your legs, relieve painful symptoms, and create a better cosmetic appearance that’s free from bulges or a spidery appearance.
Are you ready to get treatment for your spider veins or varicose veins? Contact our office at 201-962-9199, or request a consultation online today.
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