New Jersey Vascular Doctor: How to Prevent Vein Disease

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In today's article, we'd like to tell you that medical science has finally developed a foolproof way to prevent varicose veins, spider veins, and all other forms of vein disease. We'd LIKE to tell you this, but we can't because it isn't true.

Unfortunately, three of the most important risk factors that lead to vein disease – your age, your gender, and whether you have a family history of vein disease – are things that neither you nor doctors can do anything about. If you are over 40, you are more at risk because aging affects your veins. If you're female, you are more at risk because women have more hormones in their bloodstreams that can weaken vein walls and valves. And if your parents and/or grandparents had vein disease, you are likely to have it, too, whatever your age and gender. These risk factors are things we're born with, and not much is ever going to change them.

That's the bad news – but there IS good news

Fortunately, some of the other risk factors for vein disease you can do something about, and New Jersey vein experts can work with you to reduce your risk and thus help you prevent vein disease. The most important factor you can control is your weight. If you are overweight or obese, your overall vein disease risk is much higher than it needs to be, so our vein treatment center in New Jersey can work with you to help you to lose weight and keep it off, thus significantly lowering your overall vein disease risk.

Another of the biggest vein disease risk factors is smoking, which alone almost doubles your chances of developing vein disease, no matter how many other risk factors you might have. By stopping smoking, you can drastically lower your risk of getting varicose veins or other vein diseases. And as a "health bonus," smoking cessation also lowers your risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

One other vein disease risk factor kills more people every year than smoking

Ironically enough, one of the biggest risk factors for vein disease is something that you are probably doing right now, as you read this article – sitting. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have cited inactivity – and in particular sitting too much – as a "global health care pandemic," one that kills more people worldwide every year than smoking. Veins have no internal muscles, and rely on the movement of nearby muscles to pump. If you are inactive and not moving very much, your veins are not pumping blood at the rate they should, and you become unhealthy. So one of the ways you can prevent vein disease is by getting more exercise. Your vein doctor can help you develop a more active lifestyle that lowers your risk of vein disease and heart disease.

Regular checkups can also help to keep your vein disease risk low

One of the most important things you can do to reduce your personal risk of developing vein disease is get a checkup. Venous health screenings are painless and non-invasive and take only about an hour, but the advanced, non-invasive diagnostic tools we use allow us to look beneath the surface of the skin to see the structure of the veins themselves, and how efficiently blood is flowing through them. So we can easily pinpoint the early stages of vein diseases before they become serious. If we detect signs of these problems, early treatment can keep them from becoming serious. And even if we don't, the screening can help us to identify other risk factors and work with you to reduce them, thus preventing future vein disease. So the best advice we can give you on preventing vein disease is to pick up your phone and call our New Jersey vascular doctor today at 201-693-4847 to schedule a screening.

Author Bio: Dr. John Chuback, noted NJ Vascular Doctor, discusses vein disease prevention, and what you can do to lower your risk for venous disorders.