What to do if your calves are prone to edema

Many people are very prone to edema in their calves. There are many reasons for calf edema, including heart failure, high blood pressure, heart disease, and some kidney diseases. Faced with this situation, people need to pay attention and take some measures. Here we will introduce what to do if your calves are prone to edema.

For calf edema, you can usually take symptomatic treatment medications orally, such as the diuretic drug hydrochlorothiazide, 12.5 mg each time, once or twice a day; 25 mg each time, once a day; you can also take oral medications such as furosemide and spironolactone. In addition to the above drug treatments, in daily life, you can raise your calves and avoid standing for long periods of time. Standing for long periods of time causes fluid in the body to accumulate in the calves, which can easily cause swelling. Raising your calves can help venous return and reduce fluid retention in the calves. You can also eliminate calf swelling by massaging your thighs with your toes, or using a massager to squeeze the blood in the calves toward the proximal end. You can also wear elastic stockings. These socks are not ordinary stockings, but high-tension medical elastic stockings. After putting them on, they look like stockings, but they have great elasticity and can help blood flow back from the distal end to the proximal end.

reason

1. Heart failure and leg phlebitis are the two main causes of chronic (long-term) leg swelling. According to clinical practice, phlebitis will only cause swelling of one leg of the patient, while heart failure causing congestion will cause swelling of both legs; phlebitis will cause pain, while swelling caused by heart failure will not be painful; various diseases that cause leg swelling have their own different pathogenesis and characteristics.

2. Diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, viral infection or heart valve disease make the myocardium weak and powerless. At this time, the heart cannot smoothly deliver blood to the lungs. The blood begins to flow back into the veins and then converges into the organ located under the heart - the liver, causing the liver to become congested and swollen. If the condition does not improve, blood may eventually back up into the leg veins and cause leg swelling.

3. People with severe kidney disease will experience swelling all over the body, including the legs, face, and fingers. The reason for the systemic swelling is that too much protein is lost in the urine.

4. In the later stages of more severe liver disease, leg swelling can occur due to two mechanisms. One is that liver cells are damaged and cannot produce enough protein, resulting in the same result as the loss of protein caused by kidney disease; in order to balance the protein content in the blood vessels and the tissues around the blood vessels, fluid in the blood will flow into the tissues and cause tissue swelling. Another possibility is scarring of the liver, which prevents blood flowing from the legs to the heart from passing through the liver, causing blood reflux. Additionally, enlarged glands or tumors in the abdominal cavity may compress veins and cause leg swelling.