“I wake myself up at night scratching my legs.”
A variety of symptoms are seen with vein disease many of which are worse at night.
Symptoms of Vein Disease include:
- itching,
- patchy numbness,
- burning pain and
- the sensation of water dripping or
- something crawling on your legs when there is nothing there.
Although vague these symptoms are common in patients if you have varicose and spider veins.
If the symptoms occur at night they affect your sleep. Some patients keep a hair brush on their night stand just to sooth their itch. If you get, too, vigorous with the brush you can rupture a spider vein and cause it to bleed. Though not life threatening a bleeding spider vein can make a real mess and frighten you and your family.
These symptoms are not only annoying if you can’t sleep they can lead to a cascade of other problems. They can affect your ability to perform you activities of daily living because of sleep deprivation and fatigue.
If you have visible varicose and spider veins and complain of these uncomfortable feelings you may more easily make the association. However, since you can have underlying vein disease with no visible varicose or spider veins the association with vein disease may be overlooked by you and your physician.
Research on the cause of these symptoms is limited. We do know that venous disease affects the nutrition of the skin and other structures of the legs which may account in part for these symptoms. Leading phlebology organizations the American College of Phlebology and the American Venous Forum promote research in this area to determine their cause and treatment.
So not only is vein disease embarrassing, it is associated with many symptoms many of which are not associated with varicose and spider veins. That is one of the reasons vein disease is under diagnosed and under treated The good news is that there are new minimally invasive procedures for correction of varicose and spider veins. Contact us online or call (800) 764-3280 to begin you journey to ‘healthy legs for life’.
