10 Peripheral Vascular Disease Symptoms You Might Be Missing

The human body contains a whopping 60,000 miles of blood vessels, and when they’re all working well, your body benefits in big and small ways. On the flip side, when there are flow issues inside these blood vessels, problems can arise, and these problems range from minor symptoms like hair loss to much more serious consequences like heart attack and stroke.

The first step toward improving your vascular health is to know when something is amiss with your circulation. To that end, we turn to vascular specialist Dr. Satjit Bhusri and the team at The Upper East Side Vein Institute who pulled together some important information about peripheral vascular disease.

Peripheral vascular disease basics

Let’s first review what we mean by peripheral vascular disease (PVD). When we use the term peripheral, we’re referring to the extensive network of blood vessels that reach most every square inch of your body. And the term vascular describes any blood vessel, including your arteries that deliver oxygenated blood from your heart, as well as veins that return the blood to your heart and lungs for more oxygen.

Many issues can lead to peripheral vascular disease, and atherosclerosis is one of the most common. Atherosclerosis is the medical term for blockages in your arteries that prevent blood (and oxygen) from flowing through as freely as it should. 

To give you an idea, between 19 and 21 million Americans have peripheral artery disease (PAD), which are blockages in the main arteries that service the vessels that deliver blood down into your lower extremities.

Signs of peripheral vascular disease

Left unchecked, peripheral vascular disease can be both progressive and dangerous, so it’s a good idea to identify the issue as early on as possible so you can take steps to improve your circulation.

Unfortunately, about half of people with PVD don’t have any symptoms. For the other half, symptoms often crop up in the legs and can include:

1. Leg pain with activity, which affects six out of 10 people with PAD
2. Muscle atrophy 
3. Loss of leg hair
4. Changes in your skin, such as shiny patches of skin
5. Temperature changes in your skin, such as toes that are cold to the touch
6. Numbness in your lower limbs
7. A feeling of heaviness in your legs
8. Thickened toenails and/or slow toenail growth
9. Erectile dysfunction
10. Wounds that are slow to heal

We want to provide more detail on the leg pain — whether it’s straight pain or a feeling of heaviness and cramping in your legs, this discomfort can progress. At first, you might only experience the symptom when you’re on your feet and moving. Over time and without addressing your vascular disease, the pain can become more constant and severe.

So, if you can check any of the boxes we listed above, it might indicate peripheral vascular disease, and you should come in for a vein evaluation to be sure.

If we do find that you, in fact, have PVD, there’s much that we can do to slow and even halt the progression of the disease, which can save you from much more serious cardiovascular issues down the road.

For a comprehensive assessment of your vascular health, we invite you to call our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 212-752-3464. You can also schedule an appointment online by clicking here.