Surprisingly, in our country, people are adopting a life style where sooner or later people are bound to suffer from feet and leg problems.
In olden days, People who used to sit every day for long hours were generally shopkeepers. Government employees were also supposed to sit in office chairs. Most of them would suffer from one or the other leg problems. Now the time has changed. As new professions and jobs are emerging in private and corporate world, our young generation is gradually becoming victim of various types of foot and leg problems, due to long hours of sitting every day in the office.
Surprisingly, in our country, people are adopting a life style where sooner or later people are bound to suffer from problems of leg or feet. People sit for long hours in front of television sets. House wives are spending at least4 to 5 hours every day watching various types of TV serials. More than house wives, even working women after office hours watch at home for at least 3 to 4 hours every day. In our country, video games and other attractive contents available on computers and mobiles hold back children and youths from going to playfields for physical games and exercise. In nutshell, watching television and excessive use of computers in our country are detrimental to the health of feet and leg. In our country, jobs in call centres and BPO are also playing havoc with the health of feet.
How does your life style affect your feet?
If you have accustomed to a sedentary and exercise free life style, due to your economic prosperity or you happen to be in a job where you are required to sit for long hours, believe me sooner or later you will suffer from problems of leg and feet. Prolonged sitting for hours disturbs the drainage system of leg and feet, because muscular pump of leg and foot stops functioning properly. This change in functioning damages the feet in two ways. Firstly deoxygenated used-up blood pools up in a large quantity in leg veins for a longer time than an optimum duration. This leads to mild pain, fatigue, itching and gradually increasing pain. Secondly, blood naturally gets clotted in leg veins due to prolonged stay in feet. That’s why prolonged sitting produces several problems in leg, for example:
Pain and Swelling in Leg can appear suddenly
Sitting for long hours in front of computer without any exercise can threaten your feet and life as well. Blood clots will deposit in veins of your legs. This is called in medical language as D.V.T. (Deep Vein Thrombosis). If a prompt treatment is not initiated in time, your life may be endangered. Lack of early and prompt treatment will lead to a life- threatening complication called “Pulmonary Embolism”. In this dangerous condition, blood clots staying in leg veins slip upwards from legs and reach to lungs via heart chambers and thereafter these blood clots choke the main blood pipes of lung. If timely treatment is not done, death is inevitable sooner or later. Therefore consult a vascular surgeon immediately, if your leg develops suddenly swelling along with pain.
Leg swelling may become a permanent feature
If you have been sitting every day for a long time, drainage system of leg gets disrupted and deoxygenated blood starts getting pooled-up in lower part of the leg and foot, as it fails to reach upwards toward the heart. It harms in two ways, firstly leg swelling gradually develops due to pooling and stays back, secondly the incomplete return of venous blood to heart leads to more forceful pumping of heart thus increasing the possibility of raised blood pressure of the individual.
Black spots start appearing in feet
Daily sitting for long hours results in leg pain and appearance of black spots or round black-coloured skin patches near and above the ankle. Such people frequently complain almost no swelling in the morning, but as day progresses, the swelling starts appearing in the feet. This problem is predominantly present in those people who are either overweight or sit for hours in shops or spends a large time in office sitting in front of computers. This condition is called in medical terms C.V.I. or Chronic Venous Insufficiency. Therefore, whenever black spots start appearing on feet, consult a vascular surgeon promptly not a skin specialist
Appearance of Blue-colored veins
Whenever any person does not walk everyday or not in the habit of daily morning walk and besides sits for long hours every day, the drainage system gets disturbed and the valves situated at a regular intervals inside the vein stop functionally and thus lifting of the blood upwards fails and thus pooling of blood in leg veins start and when accumulated deoxygenated blood crosses the normal limit and , veins situated underneath the skin swell with blood and small blue- colored veins start appearing on the skin of leg. If an affected person does not change his daily routine and promptly does not consult a vascular surgeon, these spider like varicose veins enlarge in size and become a cause of bleeding.
If you do not change your daily routine
You can face two problems, firstly blue- colored veins start enlarging in size and eventually burst open and leads to excessive and sometimes torrential uncontrollable bleeding even leading to hospitalization. Secondly, a sufferer of varicose veins suffers from severe incessant itching and pain in the lower leg and feet. If itching continues, oozing out of yellow- colored fluid from that area of itching begins. This yellow-colored fluid spreads over a surrounding nearby area and this leads to an eczema like situation and finally it results into an infected and non-healing ulcer. People out of ignorance go to a skin specialist. Therefore people should take leg swelling seriously and consult an experienced vascular surgeon.
Remedial Measures
1. If your daily routine either at home or office requires sitting for long hours, take a break after one hour of sitting and walk for 5 to 10 minutes inside the house or office and then after again sit and start your work. This process of taking a break from sitting should be repeated every hour. House makers who sit long hours in front of TV or females who sit for long hours working on computers in office or in other organizations should strictly follow this practice of taking a break every hour.
2. Those people who sit for long hours in shopes or due to job compulsions must walk every day especially in the morning after getting up and evening after dinner. If they do not develop the habit of regular walking, they will eventually suffer from leg problems one or the other. Therefore, walk daily for 5 to 6 kilometers.
3. People who have sitting jobs in the office or work place, must control their weight. Avoid fatty and oily food items.
4. Do ankle exercise (up & down) for 5 minutes every hour while sitting in office.
5. While sitting, keep your feet a little elevated. Put a small stool underneath your feet in place of work.
Dr. K.K. Pandey
Senior Vascular & Cardio Thoracic Surgeon at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals
Sarita Vihar, New Delhi