CVI Management: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Lower Extremity Circulation
Want better circulation and less leg pain? You have the power to achieve both. Check out five simple strategies our experts recommend for improving lower extremity circulation.
Leg Pain After Exercise: What Does It Mean?
It’s hard to exercise and not feel even a little bit of discomfort. However, when post-exercise pain can indicate an underlying health problem, you must be able to distinguish between benign aches and serious symptoms.
At Advanced Vascular Solutions, we take leg pain very seriously, so we’re dedicating this blog to the main causes of exercise-induced leg pain and helping you know when your symptoms need medical attention.
It means you had a tough workout
Strenuous workouts or a sudden burst of activity after long periods of inactivity often result in temporary muscle soreness. For a day or two afterwards, you notice mildly tired, achy, stiff, and possibly weak muscles.
This happens when the fibers in your muscles break down and “reorganize” themselves as you build strength through exercise. Most people can relieve soreness with over-the-counter pain medication, hot and cold therapy, and stretching.
It means you’re dehydrated
When you sweat, you lose a lot of fluids, which depletes your body of electrolytes, special chemicals your muscles need to function properly.
Failure to replace those fluids regularly before, during, and after your workouts can trigger leg cramps. Before reaching for your gallon jug of plain water, consider swapping it for a sports drink with electrolytes.
It means you injured your muscles
Muscle sprains (overstretching ligaments) and strains (overstretching muscles or tendons) are the most common causes of leg pain after exercise. These kinds of injuries are usually accompanied by swelling, limited mobility, and sometimes bruising.
It means you have a circulation problem
If your legs hurt after working out and your symptoms don’t check any of the boxes above, it’s time to consider an underlying circulation problem.
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT), peripheral arterial disease (PAD), varicose veins, and chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) are conditions that interfere with the circulation in your limbs due to weak blood vessels, blocked arteries, etc.
If you have one of these conditions, working out and increasing your blood pressure during exercise can lead to aches and pains in your legs. Your legs may also swell and feel extremely fatigued. You’ll also notice that the symptoms subside quickly once you’ve stopped exercising.
Unfortunately, you can’t take the wait-and-see approach with vascular problems — prompt medical treatment is the only way to resolve these issues.
That’s where our experts come in.
Diagnosing and treating your circulation problem
We begin with a leg pain evaluation, during which we discuss your symptoms and health history and conduct a comprehensive evaluation of your vascular system, often using an arterial or venous ultrasound.
Depending on the results of your leg pain evaluation, we may recommend one or more of the following:
- Compression stockings
- Weight loss
- Disease-specific medication
- Sclerotherapy or small spider veins
- Radiofrequency ablation
- VenaSeal™ Closure System
- Angioplasty or bypass surgery for PAD
Despite what you might think, we rarely recommend stopping exercise. In fact, exercise is one of the best tools for supporting vascular health. We may have you adjust your program while we treat the underlying problem, but otherwise, we typically encourage regular activity.
Don’t let leg pain remain a question mark. Come see us for answers and an action plan to help you move forward safely and with fewer symptoms. You can request an appointment online or over the phone today. We serve patients in the Melbourne and Sebastian, Florida, area.
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