We love her, but we don't love the spi­der veins and the vari­cose veins we in­her­it­ed from our moms.

Spi­der veins, and vari­cose veins, are veins that have be­come swollen and twist­ed from weak­ened or blocked cir­cu­la­tion. They can hap­pen any­where in the body, but usu­al­ly oc­cur in the low­er legs and feet, be­cause of the added pres­sure from sit­ting and stand­ing up­right all day.

Vari­cose and spi­der veins typ­i­cal­ly ap­pear dark red, blue, or pur­ple in colour. Vari­cose veins can ap­pear to be bulging be­neath the skin, while spi­der veins will look more like web­bing across the sur­face of the skin. Symp­toms can vary from mild ir­ri­ta­tion to se­vere pain. Spi­der and vari­cose veins are most com­mon in women, es­pe­cial­ly old­er women, but every­one can be af­fect­ed by vein ab­nor­mal­i­ties.

Treat­ment of spi­der veins

• Work on im­prov­ing cir­cu­la­tion to get rid of spi­der veins. Reg­u­lar ex­er­cise (even just a short walk), loose cloth­ing and low-heeled shoes, chang­ing po­si­tions fre­quent­ly and sit­ting with your legs un­crossed, and el­e­vat­ing your legs above your heart when rest­ing can all go a long way to im­prov­ing your cir­cu­la­tion and re­duc­ing the ap­pear­ance and pres­ence of spi­der and vari­cose veins in your legs.

• Main­tain­ing a healthy weight im­proves spi­der veins. Ex­tra weight puts ex­tra pres­sure on your legs, which makes healthy cir­cu­la­tion hard­er for your body, and can re­sult in spi­der or vari­cose veins. Shed­ding those ex­cess pounds with a healthy di­et and ex­er­cise can help.

• Scle­rother­a­py is a very com­mon treat­ment for spi­der and vari­cose veins. It in­volves your doc­tor in­ject­ing small and medi­um af­fect­ed veins with a so­lu­tion that scars and clos­es the veins, forc­ing the body to redi­rect the cir­cu­lat­ing blood to healthy veins. Af­ter a few weeks the ap­pear­ance of those af­fect­ed veins should fade, and your dis­com­fort re­lieved. Veins may need to be rein­ject­ed, but the out­pa­tient pro­ce­dure is fair­ly sim­ple and rel­a­tive­ly pain­less (no anaes­the­sia is re­quired.)

• Laser surgery is an­oth­er com­mon treat­ment for spi­der and vari­cose veins that us­es in­tense bursts of light to fade the af­fect­ed vein. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, laser surgery was used most­ly for small­er veins in the face and up­per body, but new­ly de­vel­oped tech­nol­o­gy has made the pro­ce­dure vi­able for veins in the legs.

Be­cause laser surgery is non-in­va­sive, fast, and does not re­quire an in­ci­sion or nee­dle, it is a pop­u­lar choice for get­ting rid of spi­der and vari­cose veins. Mul­ti­ple treat­ments may be nec­es­sary to ful­ly "van­ish" the veins.

• Oth­er, more tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of surgery are al­so avail­able to get rid of spi­der and vari­cose veins. These surg­eries, in­clud­ing am­bu­la­to­ry phle­bec­to­my, catheter-as­sist­ed pro­ce­dures, en­do­scop­ic vein surgery, and vein strip­ping, are more in­va­sive (they can re­quire anaes­the­sia), than scle­rother­a­py or laser surgery, but work ef­fec­tive­ly to re­move or close the veins com­plete­ly.

Com­pli­ca­tions in­volv­ing spi­der and vari­cose veins

If left un­treat­ed, spi­der and vari­cose veins can de­vel­op in­to more se­ri­ous vein ab­nor­mal­i­ties and cir­cu­la­tion prob­lems, among them, ve­nous lakes, pool­ing blood in the veins of the face and neck; retic­u­lar veins, flat blue veins be­hind the knees; and telang­iec­tases, red­dish clus­ters of blood ves­sels on the face and up­per body.

Brown pig­men­ta­tion can be a warn­ing sign of skin ul­cers, which can be the re­sult of the in­creased pres­sure in the ef­fect­ed veins and needs im­me­di­ate med­ical at­ten­tion. En­larged and swollen veins can cause your legs to swell al­so, and sud­den leg swelling (with or with­out red­ness and ir­ri­ta­tion) can be in­dica­tive of a blood clot, a se­ri­ous med­ical con­di­tion known as throm­bophlebitis, which re­quires im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.