Medical Questions » Arteries and Veins Questions » Question No. 76
| Question: | I have varicose veins that I think cause me to black out when I stand around for a long time waiting to be served in supermarkets or banks. What can be done about them? |
| Answer: | When you stand still for any length of time, blood pools in your legs, as the only way that blood can move from the legs back up to the heart is by the action of the leg muscles pressing on the veins, and acting as a pump. The heart is unable to pump the blood up and out of the legs.
When soldiers stand at attention for a long period of time, they are taught to contract and relax their calf, foot and thigh muscles, so that they do not collect excess blood in the legs.
If excess blood does collect in the legs, insufficient blood is available for the heart to pump to the brain, and a faint results. The person falls to the ground, the gravitational effect on the blood in the legs is removed, and the blood can flow to the brain, and revive the patient.
Those who have varicose veins, effectively have large blood reservoirs in their legs. If you stand still for a short time, these veins swell up, and by the mechanism described above, starve the brain of blood, and cause a faint far more rapidly than in a person without varicose veins.
The simple solutions are to wear supportive stockings, and keep moving up and down on your toes instead of standing still. More definitive treatment will involve an operation to remove or destroy the varicose veins.
|
|
|
