If you’re like most of us, you love and respect your mother for all of the wonderful things she’s given you. Unfortunately, however, if your mother had varicose veins, she also gave you – genetically – a higher likelihood of getting them yourself. There is “no harm, no foul” in this – it’s just genetics. And it’s not just your mother that you might have inherited this increased risk of vein disease from. You could just as easily have inherited a high risk of developing varicose veins from your father, or from other close relatives in your family tree.

But if your mother had varicose veins, and now you have varicose veins as well, there is one area in which something she gave you might be harmful. That’s if she gave you advice on what to do about them, based on what was known about varicose veins when she was younger.

Chances are any advice your mother gave you about varicose veins is wrong

For example, when you noticed the first varicose veins on your legs and told your mother about them, did she suggest that they were “inevitable,” and that it was “just your time” to get them? Did she tell you that there was really nothing you could do about them, and that you just had to “live with them?” When you asked her about having the swollen and discolored veins removed, did she grimace and tell you how terrible the surgery would be to remove them, and how long and painful the recovery period would be? Did she tell you that the surgery would itself leave scars that are just as unattractive as the varicose veins were?

None of these things are true

Before you get angry, we are NOT suggesting that your mother was lying to you. Most of the things in the above paragraph were true, as recently as a decade or two ago. At that time we didn’t know as much about the causes of varicose veins as we do now, so the idea that it was inevitable that you would get them if she had them was truer. These days, Oahu varicose veins doctors know more about how to reduce risk factors so that you can avoid developing varicose veins, even if Mom had them.

Similarly, a generation ago there were really very few things medical science could do to treat varicose veins, so “living with them” was all you could look forward to. The only reliable way to remove varicose veins was a surgical procedure called “vein stripping” that was as onerous as its name implies. You had to go into a hospital and undergo general anesthesia while a surgeon made incisions along the length of the varicose veins and then scraped them away with a scalpel. Then you had to spend weeks in pain recovering from the surgery, only to find that the procedure left terrible scars. If she underwent this procedure herself or heard horror stories from her friends, no wonder your mother believed that having varicose veins removed was a bad idea.

Modern varicose vein treatment isn’t like this at all

Because of the many advances made in the field of minimally-invasive endovenous medicine in the last few years, varicose vein removal is now a fast, safe procedure that is so painless that it doesn’t require hospitalization and rarely even requires anesthesia. Your vein treatment center in Hawaii is your doctor’s office, and you just relax while your Hawaii vein specialist inserts a tiny needle into the swollen veins, and then injects a sealing agent to close them. Within a few days the varicose veins disappear, having been absorbed into surrounding tissue, and proper blood circulation is restored as healthier veins take over.

A good Maui vein treatment specialist will also ask about your diet, your exercise habits, and lifestyle issues such as whether you smoke or whether your job requires you to sit for long periods of time. The vein doctor you choose should be someone you feel comfortable talking to and have confidence in.

Visit our website or give us a call

Because we at Vein Clinics of Hawaii are proud of our reputation and the esteem in which we are held by our patients and other physicians, we welcome you to find out more about us. Visit our website. We’ll do our best to answer any questions you might have, and we look forward to meeting you.