How do you get rid of spider veins on your legs?

Have you started noticing red veins appearing on your legs? Perhaps they’ve come little by little over time or just appeared out of nowhere. The question I get asked a lot is ‘how do you get rid of spider veins on your legs?’  As well as that, it’s good to know why they appear in the first place. So here’s what you need to know:

WHY DO VEINS APPEAR?

Spider veins on your legs can appear from pressure – so standing for long periods of time, being overweight, an injury or trauma, or heredity. They can also appear more in pregnancy and with age, although in many cases the exact cause isn’t known.

What we do know is that as the blood flows back from your legs towards your heart the valves in your vein (which stop blood flowing backwards) can weaken and then blood will pool in these areas.  You will then see the blood appear as spider veins as the pool of blood branches out.  They are thin and can appear blue, red or purple.  If your vein is bulging and twisting, then this is likely to be a varicose vein.

LASER TREATMENTS

One of the best ways to remove spider veins on your legs is by laser treatments.  This treatment however is not the same as the type of laser you’d find for removing thread veins on your face.  The laser light is very different as thread veins in your legs sit more deeply than the red veins in your face. Typically a laser which emits a long wavelength (ND Yag 1064) is the best type for this treatment.

However if you have a varicose (bulging vein) as well as spider veins in the same vicinity, you are better to address the varicose vein first.  This is because the varicose vein could be feeding the thread veins, so  you need to address the main problem first.

HOW DOES LASER WORK?

The laser beam is flashed into the thread vein, and this causes the blood in the vessel to heat up.  The heating causes the blood to break apart into smaller particles and the vessel collapses.

Your body then acts on what has been broken apart.  We all have clever cells which act like ‘Pac Men’  and munch through debris getting rid of it.  This process can take many weeks, which is why you’ll only see the spider veins in your legs fade gradually.

You will need multiple sessions to make a good improvement, although each session will make a difference.  Typically expect between 3 and 6 sessions on an area of thread veins, with treatments spaced 6 weeks apart.

IS THE RESULT PERMANENT?

You can never say the result is permanent, as there’s every chance the cause of your thread veins hasn’t disappeared.  If you know the reason they first appeared, and you can eradicate that, you’ll get a very long term result.  However if you don’t know what caused your leg veins to come in the first place, then expect to get more popping up here or there in future.

The good news is that if you’re suitable to have laser treatments then you can always have more sessions. I find that most clients will have a course of treatments and will see a very good reduction. They tend to return several years later after more veins have emerged and get them treated too.

For more information on Laser for Leg veins – including a short video of how the treatment works please click here.

I hope this has helped your understand how laser treatments can be used to get rid of spider veins on your legs. If you have any more questions then feel free to email me at: rach@radiantliving.co.uk