3 Important Steps You Should Take When You Have Peripheral Vascular Disease

Your cardiovascular health is closely tied to your overall health and wellness, making it an important area to address. This is especially true if you’re one of the 200 million people around the world who have peripheral artery disease (PAD).

Even though Dr. Satjit Bhusri and the team at The Upper East Side Vein Institute are concerned with your cardiovascular health every month, February is American Heart Month. With that in mind, we want to address some preventive best practices that will improve life for those living with peripheral vascular disease.

Given that PAD places you at greater risk for heart disease, as well as chronic lower limb wounds and amputation, any steps you take to improve your vascular health are well worth the effort.

PAD at a glance

Before we jump into strategies to manage and improve PAD, let’s first review what we’re up against. When you have PAD, it means that there are blockages in the arteries that deliver blood to your legs. This condition is called atherosclerosis, and it causes your arteries to stiffen and narrow, which prevents blood from flowing into your legs as it should.

As a result, you can develop leg cramps, especially when moving, which is a common red flag for PAD. As we mentioned, the condition also raises your risks for serious health events, including heart attack, stroke, and amputation.

This last one is due to lower limb wounds that don’t heal properly due to the lack of good blood flow. As a result, your body is unable to fight off the infection, which can lead to tissue death and amputation.

Steps to improve your PAD and reduce your risks

When you’re dealing with PAD, it’s important to note that we can’t undo the atherosclerosis in your arteries. We can, however, slow the progression of the disease and improve your cardiovascular health. These steps include:

1. Exercise

Your first step is a literal one — get moving. Regular physical activity is one of the best ways to combat PAD.

We understand that leg pain, which affects about 60% of people with PAD, can be a big hurdle to exercise, but it’s important to push through. To start, try walking at a good clip for about five minutes, and then you can rest. Once the pain subsides, get up and walk for another five minutes. Eventually, we want you to get to about 45-60 minutes of walking each day.

Remember, go gradually, but also push yourself, as walking is a great way to get blood down to the muscles in your legs.

1. Manage your risk factors

If you have risk factors that contribute to your PAD, we need to address those. Some of these factors include:

• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Smoking
• Obesity

We understand that addressing these issues is easier said than done, but we’re here to help provide you with great direction and resources. For example, we offer GLP-1 medications to help with obesity and blood sugar levels. We can also prescribe medications to manage your blood pressure and lipid (cholesterol) levels.

1. Improve your vascular health through diet

Your diet is likely a big reason why you developed atherosclerosis and PAD, so it’s an excellent place to target to improve your circulation.

When you have a cardiovascular disease like PAD, you must shift your diet away from processed and junk foods that are full of unhealthy fats and sugars and direct it more toward:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Low-fat dairy
• Lean proteins, such as chicken and fish
• Nuts
• Whole grains

A great hack is to keep your grocery shopping to the perimeter aisles, where fresh produce, proteins, and dairy products are located.

If we work together on these three strategies, we are confident we can help you stay one step ahead of your PAD.

To get started, your first step is to sit down with one of our vascular experts to get what you need to move forward. To set that in motion, please 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.