Medical Questions » Arteries and Veins Questions » Question No. 75
| Question: | What causes varicose veins? My legs look terrible, and I wear slacks all the time as I feel I look terrible in a skirt. |
| Answer: | Blood is pumped from your heart out to the hands and feet and every other part of your body. The blood returns to the heart through the veins, but this process does not occur due to the action of the heart. Many people believe that blood is ' sucked' back from the feet to the heart, but this is not so.
In your legs there are veins superficially just under the skin, and veins deep within the muscles near the bones. When you walk or stand, the deep veins are compressed by the muscular action. This squeezes the blood out of them. These veins are also fitted with one-way valves, so that once the blood is pumped up the vein in your leg, it cannot run back down again. It is the muscular action of the leg muscles on the leg veins that moves blood back to the heart.
The valves also only allow the blood from the superficial veins to go to the deep veins (where the muscular action is more effective) and not the other way around.
If the pressure of blood in the veins builds up excessively due to a restriction of the flow of the venous blood back to the heart, the valves may be damaged and allow blood to pool in the leg veins. Conditions that can restrict venous blood return include pregnancy, obesity and prolonged standing. There is also a significant hereditary tendency.
The dilated veins that result from damaged valves are varicose veins. |
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