What are the health benefits of leg elevation?
Sitting or lying down with your legs raised can have many more potential health benefits. Let’s inspect them.
Elevating Your Legs Above the Heart Improves blood flow
Raising your legs can support improve blood flow in your lower extremities. How? The easy answer is gravity.
Oxygen consumed blood returns to your heart through your veins. Unlike your arteries, the constraint in your vein is relatively squat. To support move blood along, your veins operate tiny valves and the shrinking of surrounding muscles to aid in operating blood back toward your heart.
When you are sitting or standing, oxygen consumed blood in your legs must also effort against gravity to return to your heart. Raising your legs locates them above the level of your heart. However, this means that gravity is now efforting in your favor. This may support improve blood flow in the veins in your legs.
Reduces swelling
However, swelling can occur due to the accumulation of severe fluid (edema) or inflammation. Injuries or certain health situations may cause swelling to happen in your legs.
In the same way that it supports improve blood flow, raising your legs above the level of your heart may support severe fluid to drain away more effectively.
Lowers pressure
Extend periods of standing or sitting can cause blood to pool in the veins of your legs. This can guide to a rise in pressure in these veins which, in turn, may give to the development of situations such as varicose veins.
Raising your legs can support lower the pressure in your legs by permitting blood that has pooled to drain away. However, if you have been standing for a while, sitting down with your legs increased can also support ease pressure and tenderness of fatigued feet.
What conditions can it support?
Now that we have inspected the potential health benefits of raising your legs, let’s take a closer at some of the health situations that can be supportive.
Vein conditions
Extend periods of sitting, standing, or inactivity are all factors that raise your risk of building a vein condition. Raising your legs may support prevent or ease vein conditions, including:-
- Superficial thrombophlebitis: However, this thrombophlebitis is a blood clot in a vein just under your skin that can create swelling and tenderness. While some are tiny-risk, others may be related to deep vein thrombosis.
- Deep vein thrombosis: DVT is when a blood clot builds in one of the deep veins of your legs. However, these clots can block blood flow, guiding to leg swelling or pain.
- Varicose veins: Varicose veins occur when blood pools in your veins. However, these veins are placed just under the surface of your skin and seem swollen, blue, and twisted. Varicose veins can cause signs that are often poor after long time periods of sitting or standing.
- Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI): CVI may occur when blood can not successfully return to your heart, which creates it to pool in your legs. It can cause a variety of signs in your legs.
Injuries
Leg raise after surgery may also support ease pain and swelling. Additionally, blood clots are a treat after surgeries, extremely with hip or leg surgery.
However, it is more important to do gentle movement and not stay in one situation for too long. The periodic raising of your legs may support lower the risk of blood clots.
Is it good to elivate legs during pregnancy
Swelling in the lower extremities is familiar during pregnancy. However, this may be due to raised fluid retention, hormonal changes, and force from the extending uterus. Leg elevation may support ease this swelling.
Cellulitis
However, this is a skin infection that’s often affected by bacteria. The bacteria enter your body through cracks in your skin and can create signs like tenderness, skin redness, and swelling.
However, the infection itself is cured with the help of antibiotics. However, if cellulitis builds on your arm or legs, your consultant may recommend raising the affected limb above your heart to reduce swelling.
How to elevate your legs?
Precisely how long and how often you should raise your legs can depend on the situation you are trying to address. Here’s an instance of how to raise your legs to alleviate signs from varicose veins.
- Move into a pleasant reclining or lying-down situation.
- Position your legs so they are above the level of your heart. Use a pillow to reach this. However, if you can not raise your legs to heart level, attempt to rest your legs on a coffee table, ottoman, or sofa as this will still support slow the press of gravity.
- Retain your legs raised for about 15 minutes.
- Execute this 3 to 4 times each day.
