Swelling Legs: Why It Happens and How To Treat It At Home

As a massage therapist and in my career, I have seen my clients with different symptoms. Last week, one lady came to me requesting to massage her legs. When I was ready to begin the service, I stared at her calves finding out one of her legs swelling. In this post, I will tell you ways how you can treat leg swelling just at home. All these methods you can utilize the right way and start seeing the results the next day.

The Cause of A Swollen Leg

Swollen legs are a common phenomenon in life, yet many are the cause of morbidity. Especially if the leg swelling occurs suddenly, or is chronically aggravated, people should be vigilant at this time. Once an abnormality occurs, treat it in time. Here are several reasons for leg swelling, hoping to help everyone.

Under normal circumstances, when menstruation comes, it will cause the hormones in the body to rise, which will slow down the metabolism of water in the body. It is more obvious during menstruation and may decrease or disappear after menstruation.

If the liver of the human body is abnormal, then it affects the ability to synthesize protein. Since the blood protein is less, the concentration decreases. which will easily lead to the penetration of water into the tissue fluid. Generally speaking, the most obvious is ascites, that is, the water in the blood runs into the abdominal cavity. Edema may also occur in the ankles, but generally not in the upper extremities.

3 Ways To Treat Swelling In Legs

• Eating more potassium-rich foods can treat leg swelling
• Pressure Point Healing (Acupressure)
• Using A Foot Pillow

Eating foods with more potassium

Probably you may not know, the food you eat every day can cause your legs to swell up. How? This is related to how much salt you put in your body. Too much salt too bad. Based on the study, the recommended amount of sodium consumption every day for men and women needs are 10 and 8 grams respectfully. A good way to dispel sodium from your body is by eating foods rich in potassium.

Banana, spinach, and avocado are common fruits and vegetables potassium-rich. These require less time to prepare and could be eaten as a snack. So, when you find out your legs start swelling up, you can try eating a banana.

Applying pressure point healing

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, pressure points have been used for healing in China since ancient times and are applied until today. Nowadays, people prefer to call it Acupressure massage, or just call it Acupressure.

Being a part of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupressure uses mainly the thumb and fingers to stimulate pressure points. This pressure points areas the same as Acupuncture does. The pressure points are named and ordered according to the specific veins in their locations. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners believe that stimulating these pressure points can change the flow of Chi in the meridians in the body. As a result, it helps to relieve the stress, pain and relieve other unhealthy symptoms, such as swelling in the legs.

Using A Foot Pillow

The preferred pillow height is between 4 and 6 inches off the floor. For those people with larger bone structures, just adjust this height to fit your body fit for the best results.

Raising your legs above the level of your heart is known to help return blood in your lower body back to your core. There are many benefits to doing this:

• A person who has cardio-cerebral vascular and sleeps at night, it can raise slightly higher than the horizontal position of the heart, which improves microcirculation;
• When the feet are raised at night, you can prevent leg cramps;
• High feet, whether sitting or resting, sleeping, high feet, all help blood reflux, can relieve symptoms of swelling and edema;
• When the feet are slightly raised when sleeping, can increase the efficiency of uric acid metabolism;
• When the sleep, raise the lower limbs slightly, let the legs fully relax, to achieve the purpose of blood reflux, to improve blood circulation.

For those people who need standing a long time at work, for instance, cashiers, teachers, chefs, or patients with varicose veins of the lower extremities, using a foot pillow at night is a good choice. Since they are prone to venous vasodilation of the lower extremities, blood tends to accumulate in the lower extremities. By raising the lower limbs, the blood can flow back completely to the heart, which is beneficial to the recovery of lower limb fatigue.

A Brief Summary About Swelling in Legs

Nowadays, this is a very common health condition people may experience and it is a real pain to deal with leg swelling when you go back home from work. It’s important that you treat swelling in your legs before the condition worsens and turns into cellulite.

Now, Changing your diet, routine maintenance (massage therapy, Acupressure, and foot pillow placement) are the key to attacking leg swelling before undesired cellulite shows itself in your precious skin.