Legs may swell if you spend a lot of time standing all day or on days with a lot of activity. This swelling may get worse the next day after sleeping. This swelling of the legs is called lower extremity edema, and it refers to a condition in which excess water cannot be drained out of the body and accumulates. It is known that the legs farther from the heart are the most prone to edema in the body because blood flow tends to deteriorate easily and water easily collects due to gravity. If the swelling of the legs is temporary due to stagnation of body fluid, improvement of the causative factors can improve the symptoms, but it will continue in the case of edema due to abnormalities such as liver and heart. In addition, prolonged leg edema can lead to obesity in the lower body and can lead to complications such as varicose veins or deep vein thrombosis, so careful management and attention are required. So today, let’s look at the causes of swelling in the legs and how to solve them.
Why are your legs swollen
The first cause of leg swelling is sitting or standing for a long time in a fixed position. If you maintain a stationary position without moving, body fluids made up of fluids such as blood and lymph are affected by gravity and stagnate in your legs, which can worsen edema symptoms. In particular, if you do not move your calves, it becomes difficult for blood to return to the heart, which leads to poor circulation, which causes a lot of leg swelling. In addition, excessive sodium intake, lack of fluid in the body, and prolonged cold can cause problems with normal blood flow, causing swelling in the legs. In women, changes in hormonal balance can also cause swelling. And swelling of the legs can also be caused by deterioration or abnormality in the function of organs in the body. If there is an abnormality in the heart function, blood circulation is not smooth and it can cause edema in the legs. In the case of liver-related diseases, the concentration of albumin that maintains the osmotic pressure between cells and blood is lowered, which can cause leg edema. In addition, leg swelling may occur if you have varicose veins, kidney-related diseases, or lung disease. Therefore, it is important to improve various lifestyle habits that cause leg swelling and to treat the disease that is causing it.
How to treat swelling in your legs
1. Stretching
An effective way to relieve leg swelling is to stretch regularly. In particular, since the calf acts as a pump that pushes the blood that has come down by gravity, it is recommended to continuously stretch the calf. In addition, lower body muscle strengthening exercises to strengthen the power to return blood from the lower body to the heart through various exercises are also helpful in preventing edema. It is said to work.
2. Control your sodium intake
Excessive intake of foods high in sodium can also cause leg swelling. Sodium has a property of making it easier to collect water in the body, so if you eat too much, you won’t be able to get rid of all the unnecessary water, which can lead to swelling. Therefore, if there are many symptoms of leg edema, it is recommended to properly control the sodium intake and avoid excessive intake of stews, salted fish, and processed foods with a high sodium content. Also, it is a good way to eat bananas, apples, beans, potatoes, mushrooms, and seaweed, etc., which have a high potassium content that helps the excretion of sodium. In addition, excessive consumption of spicy and spicy foods, including carbohydrates, can cause blood circulation disorders and cause swelling of the legs, so it is recommended to control the intake.
3. Rehydration
When there is not enough water in the body, an action to collect water occurs to prevent dehydration, which can cause edema. Therefore, it is recommended to consume an adequate amount of water without insufficient water to prevent edema. In addition, it is important to improve because excessive diet and severe mental stress that cause nutritional imbalance can also cause problems with normal metabolism and lower blood flow and cause edema.
