What are the causes of heavy and tired legs?
Are your legs heavy and tired? Do you experience fatigue in your legs and feet? Do you suffer from heavy legs and leg swelling? These symptoms can negatively affect your quality of life, so you should certainly explore your treatment options. However, since heavy and tired legs can indicate numerous underlying problems, including simple exhaustion, finding the appropriate treatment is fairly difficult.
Below, we provide an overview of the possible causes of heavy and tired legs:
- Overuse of legs, leading to exhaustion and fatigue in legs.
- Underuse of legs weakens the leg muscles and causes fatigue in the legs.
- Frequent muscle cramps in the legs can cause exhaustion and leg pain.
- Hypokalaemia, i.e., insufficient potassium, can cause heavy and tired legs.
- Pregnancy leads to fluid accumulation and increased vascular pressure, causing heavy legs.
- Lipedema disease increases fat accumulation underneath the skin, causing fat legs.
- Chronic venous insufficiency leads to blood accumulation in leg veins, causing leg heaviness.
As you can tell, heavy and tired legs are common symptoms of numerous problems — most of these conditions are temporary and benign. If you have persistent leg heaviness accompanied by frequent leg cramps, restless leg syndrome, leg swelling, and leg heaviness, there’s a strong chance you have underlying chronic venous insufficiency, a dangerous medical condition for which you must seek prompt treatment.
Our spider vein and varicose vein treatment clinics are led by highly-skilled, board-certified vein doctors specializing in the latest, cutting-edge vein treatments. Our vein doctors examine your leg veins, discuss your symptoms, and review your medical history. They also administer ultrasound tests to visualize the blood flow in your leg veins and diagnose vein disease. If you have underlying vein disease, they use minimally invasive techniques to address the root cause of heavy and tired legs.
You can find our state-of-the-art vein treatment clinics in New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, California, and Washington, DC. If you have the signs and symptoms of vein disease, such as leg heaviness, please schedule an appointment online.
Signs and symptoms indicating leg swelling and heavy legs are caused by vein problems
As mentioned previously, leg swelling and heavy legs are common symptoms of vein disease. To determine if you should really consult a vein doctor, you must understand chronic venous insufficiency and its early warning signs and symptoms.
Chronic venous insufficiency is a circulatory disorder caused by the collapse or malfunctioning of vein valves. Healthy veins contain valves that ensure smooth, one-way blood circulation to the heart, even against the force of gravity. They allow blood to flow towards the heart but not backward due to gravity. When your vein valves collapse, blood flows backward because of gravity, eventually accumulating in the leg veins. The continued accumulation of blood in leg veins leads to vascular dilation, spider veins, and varicose veins.
Chronic venous insufficiency is one of the most underdiagnosed conditions because its early signs and symptoms are so mild and benign, such as heavy and tired legs. Most people misattribute the early symptoms of vein disease to general fatigue, exhaustion, or aging, so the disease goes untreated.
The following are some of the earliest signs and symptoms of chronic venous insufficiency:
- Leg heaviness
- Heavy and tired legs
- Fat legs
- Leg swelling
- Swollen ankles and feet
- Fatigue in legs and feet
- Restless leg syndrome
- Frequent leg cramps
- Throbbing leg veins
- Arañas vasculares
- Estas venas várices
If you notice the aforementioned signs and symptoms, you must contact a vein doctor near your location, especially if they worsen at the end of the day or after long periods of sitting or standing still. The symptoms of vein disease usually worsen at the end of the day because blood continues accumulating in the leg veins.
As such, if you have heavy and tired legs and the aforementioned symptoms, you need treatment for heaviness in your legs from a reliable vein treatment clinic.
What are the treatments for heaviness in legs?
Once you’ve identified the signs and symptoms of vein disease, such as leg heaviness and fatigue in the legs and feet, you must consult a reliable vein treatment clinic near your location. Our vein doctors specialize in minimally invasive treatments for heaviness in the legs. Instead of merely addressing the superficial symptoms, i.e., heavy and tired legs, we address the root cause — chronic venous insufficiency.
Below, we provide a brief overview of the various treatments for heaviness in the legs and underlying chronic venous insufficiency.
Endovenous Ablation
Endovenous ablation is one of the most effective treatments for chronic venous insufficiency, the root cause of heavy and tired legs. The vein doctor inserts a specialized catheter into the diseased vein under ultrasound guidance and delivers thermal energy or laser energy, making the affected vein collapse. The accumulated blood reroutes into healthier leg veins.
VenaSeal
VenaSeal is one of the safest treatments for vein disease. The vein doctor injects a medical-grade adhesive into the varicose veins and diseased veins to seal their walls shut. The diseased vein hardens into scar tissues eventually absorbed by the body, rerouting the accumulated blood into healthier leg veins.
ClariVein
ClariVein is a minimally invasive treatment for varicose veins and vein disease. The vein doctor injects a specialized catheter with a rotating wire tip into the diseased vein. The catheter damages and destroys the diseased vein while secreting a sclerosant medicine to make it shrink and fade away.
Flebectomía ambulatoria
Ambulatory phlebectomy is ideal for individuals with heavy and tired legs caused by large, bulging varicose veins. The vein doctor physically extracts the unwanted varicose veins through small incisions on the skin’s surface, making your legs look smooth and gorgeous. Varicose veins often contribute to leg heaviness, so ambulatory phlebectomy is a suitable treatment for heaviness in the legs.
