You used to love to go for a long walk or a run, but now these efforts are met with pain in one or both of your legs — yet there's no obvious sign of a problem. This deep leg pain or ache may be related to a cardiovascular issue called peripheral artery disease (PAD), which affects between 8 and 12 million adults in the United States.
As specialists in cardiovascular health, Dr. Madaiah Revana and our team at Humble Cardiology are well-versed in circulatory issues like PAD. We also appreciate that the leg pain that has brought you to this blog post might be a harbinger of more serious complications to come, unless you take action now.
This is why it’s important that you familiarize yourself with PAD and why this condition counts leg pain as one of the most common symptoms.
At the heart of PAD is a condition called atherosclerosis, which describes plaque buildup inside your arteries — the blood vessels that deliver oxygenated blood from your heart to the rest of your body.
Under normal circumstances, the linings of your arteries are smooth to encourage good blood flow. When you have atherosclerosis, plaque deposits clump together along the walls, slowly narrowing the space through which your blood can flow.
With PAD, these blockages mostly form in the arteries that go down into your legs, compromising the blood flow to your lower extremities.
Far and away, the most common side effect of PAD, and what most people notice first, is leg pain, especially with activity. This symptom is called claudication, and it often goes away when you rest. While you’re using your legs, however, you can feel throbbing, aching, or even a heaviness in your lower extremities.
Outside of leg pain, people with PAD can also experience:
Each of these symptoms is a result of poor blood flow to your legs, but sometimes people don’t have any symptoms at all. In fact, about 4 out of 10 people with PAD don’t have any leg pain.
We can’t underscore enough how important it is to address PAD just as soon as you’re aware of the condition. Having PAD places you at far greater risk for serious complications, such as heart attack, stroke, and limb-threatening infections.
So, if you recognize any of the symptoms we outline above, it’s important that you come see us straight away so that we can check for PAD.
If we do find some atherosclerosis in the arteries in your legs, we come up with a plan to remedy your leg pain and get your blood flowing more freely. This plan may include hearth-healthy lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise. We might also prescribe medications that improve circulation in your legs and prevent blood clots from forming.
Before we dive too far into the treatments for PAD, let’s first determine whether this condition is behind your leg pain. To get started, we invite you to contact one of our two offices in Humble or Houston, Texas, to schedule an appointment.
