Here's How Pregnancy Affects Your Vein Health
In just nine short months, you grow a child inside you, which means your body undergoes some dramatic changes during this time to accommodate the new life. One of those changes occurs in your vascular system, which is pumping for two (or perhaps more!) during your pregnancy.
Unfortunately, this leaves women more at risk for varicose veins. An older study from 10 years ago reports that about 40% of pregnant women develop varicose veins, and we don’t feel those numbers have changed much in the last decade.
The good news is that we’re better equipped than ever before to address these pregnancy-related vascular changes. Here at the Vein Institute at Upper East Side Cardiology, Dr. Satjit Bhusri and our team provide a wide range of leg vein treatments that can make quick work of varicose veins, getting you back to your pre-pregnancy self in no time.
How pregnancy can lead to varicose veins
While varicose veins can develop in both men and women, they’re twice as likely to develop in women, and pregnancy is one of the reasons.
The reason pregnancy leads to varicose veins in so many women is threefold: blood volume, hormones, and pressure.
1. Additional blood volume
First, when you’re pregnant, your volume of blood can increase by up to 50% to support your growing fetus. This extra blood needs to use your existing vascular system, which puts a strain on your blood vessels.
2. Hormones and your blood vessels
In addition to the extra blood volume, the increase in progesterone relaxes the vein walls and the valves that keep your blood flowing up and out of your legs. As a result, blood can pool and create varicose veins.
3. More pressure on your veins
Finally, as your baby grows, it places more pressure on the blood vessels that travel back and forth to your legs, which can leave your lower limbs more vulnerable to varicose veins.
So, while not all women develop varicose veins during their pregnancies, plenty do, and for these reasons.
Getting rid of pregnancy-related varicose veins
In some cases, bulging veins on the surface of your legs do fade away after pregnancy. If you’re not so lucky and it looks like the vein has taken up permanent residence on your leg, the good news is that we can hit the reset button fairly easily.
We offer several types of vein removal treatments that we perform right here in our office. From injectable foams and sealants that shut down the vein to radiofrequency ablation technology that destroys the superficial blood vessel, we’ve got you covered.
To figure out which vein treatment offers the best road forward to getting back to your pre-pregnancy legs, we invite you to contact our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan by clicking here, or you can call us at (212) 752-3464.