Podcast Episode 42: Early warning signs of lower limb problems

Hi, I'm Sharon Gardner and I'm Clinical Specialist for H&R Healthcare. We are an industry partner of the Lindsay Leg Club. What I want to talk to you about today is recognising the early signs of chronic venous insufficiency. So the early signs that the circulation in your legs perhaps isn't working as well as it used to. And you know, we know that chronic venous insufficiency occurs when the valves in your leg veins fail to work properly. your leg veins have a difficult task of carrying blood up your legs and obviously to do the job effectively they need help from the muscle movement so your calf muscle that pushes the blood along opens up those one-way valves and then closes again so that the blood can't flow back in the wrong direction and obviously if there's some malformation of those valves then we're going to sort of start entering into problems. So it's really important really to think about the early signs of venous insufficiency you know that those valves maybe aren't working or there's some problem with the circulation because sometimes we don't always recognize these signs as a big problem and we don't always recognize that actually these are the early warning signs and if we acted on them early enough we may be able to make a difference to the outcome of our leg health in the future. So some of the early signs that we can look out for, and obviously this is not an exhaustive list, this is just some of the early signs that maybe you'd consider thinking about your leg health and your circulatory health in your legs. So one of the things obviously is varicose veins. Varicose veins don't generally cause any problems, they can be painful, they can cause dull or heaviness in the legs, they can be worse at certain parts of the day depending on what activities you've done, but they do tend to be seen as more of a cosmetic problem rather than a medical problem, but actually these can be one of the really early signs that there's something going on with the circulation in your legs, that there's some venous hypertension so there's some some backflow back through a faulty vein um or you know there's some form of venous insufficiency in your legs and obviously if you are noticing um that you are developing varicose veins you know your risk of developing a clot in your leg so your risk of developing a DVT a deep vein thrombosis um you know your risk is really highly increased if you do have varicose veins. So some of the other symptoms and again you know these symptoms could be associated with other medical or lifestyle problems but they are one of the early signs of venous problems. So leg pain, so leg pain that gets worse or change in leg sensation when you stand still for an extended time but it feels better when you put your legs up. This is obviously a characteristic of chronic venous insufficiency and if you notice this type of pain it's a sign you should come in and you know get someone to have a look at your legs or assess your blood supply in your legs. Another one which again we can associate with other problems and I certainly know myself particularly if I've been on a plane which unfortunately I haven't been for a while but you know if I've flown and I've come home I've been sat in that compressed air pressure in one position with my legs down for a long period of time I do get increased leg swelling so I find that my feet and my ankles are more swollen than they would be normally and that's due to the pressure increasing and you know and that can cause you to develop swelling in your lower leg ankle and or foot and that type of swelling often increases throughout the day and it's because of that gravity aspect of being on your feet all day or sitting with your feet down and it can cause that fluid to build up in the tissue with the feet and the legs that when you press the area on your skin you get a little bit of an indentation and that's just increased fluid in the tissues. You may notice changes in your skin so you may notice some hair loss so maybe you're losing hair at the bottom where your sock area might be where normally you haven't or you might notice some changes in the colour of the skin or the texture of the skin. Changes in the skin aren't one of the earliest things that we would notice when we're seeing changes in our leg health but they are definitely important signs that if something is changing with the texture, the feel or the appearance of your skin in your legs then that could be an early warning sign that there's a problem with your your leg health. As I said at the beginning you know that's not an exhaustive list and there will be other changes to your legs in terms of their appearance, their sensation, your ability to walk and move that may be all the early warning signs but it was just to point out a few of the most common changes that patients may see before they then obviously go on to develop more significant problems in terms of leg health and circulatory problems. Thank you very much for listening to my podcast, take care everybody.