Most of the time, it’s very easy to take your legs for granted, especially if you think they’re healthy and doing fine. Your leg joints, muscles, and nerves work hard each day to carry your weight and support you in any movement and activity you do. When any part of your legs gets injured or affected by a disease, it can take a toll on your overall physical performance. Pains on your leg and other symptoms of leg diseases can cause your immobility and make your life difficult.
Everyone wants to have strong, fit, and healthy legs. They may be easily overlooked at, but they’re as important as the rest of your body parts. Without them functioning efficiently, it could result in restricted physical movements, permanent disability, or, worse, amputation. However, it’s not too late to start caring for your legs today.
Below are the five ways you can protect your legs from diseases. Keep reading and start protecting your legs inside and out.
- Maintain A Healthy Diet
Your health always starts from within. As the popular saying goes, you are what you eat. As long as you keep on eating healthy food, you’re guaranteed to maintain a healthy weight and have sufficient energy to do any physical activities.
Moreover, it’s important to keep your body hydrated, too. Water is also vital to keep your health in great shape, and it also helps in burning off calories. Keep in mind that a healthy weight leads to healthy legs.
- Always Be Proactive
Next to a healthy diet is your body’s regular exercise. As you may already know, exercising regularly is important as well if you’re trying to maintain a healthy weight and burn plenty of calories. It also promotes the blood circulation in your body and lowers your risk of developing leg conditions, like osteoarthritis. Furthermore, even merely doing leg stretching regularly can help prevent cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
A simple activity as taking a 30-minute walk can already impact your legs positively. The point is to always keep your arm and leg muscles moving to keep them in shape, regulate blood circulation, and prevent any progression of leg diseases.
- Avoid Sitting Or Standing For Too Long
The veins in your body and especially in your legs help circulate blood to your heart. The calf muscles will continually pump blood out and up your legs as you actively move them.
However, if you frequently sit or stand for long periods, your veins will have a hard time pumping blood normally due to the pressure from the skin and muscles that were squeezed from sitting or standing. This will weaken the valves in your veins; eventually, blood will be stored up in your veins and becomes varicose veins. See more here about vein disease symptoms and how to treat them.
To prevent this occurrence, make sure to keep yourself moving despite having to sit or stand for long periods due to the nature of your job. If your job involves sitting for 8 hours, remember to get up every hour and do body stretching or a short walk during your lunch break to keep your blood circulating normally.
If possible, you can complete some of your tasks while standing up and take advantage of this time to move. You can also wear compressor socks in your workplace to help improve blood circulation in your legs despite spending the whole day working on your feet.
- Don’t Take A Hot Bath Right After Your Workout
Some of you may have this habit of taking a hot shower right after a vigorous workout. While it may sound great and relaxing, your body, and most especially your feet, is actually prone to swelling. That is because the heat from the shower will prevent your muscles to recover from the intense workout.
To protect your legs from developing any diseases in the future, this is the right time to change that habit into something healthier. Instead of using hot water for your shower, switch it to lukewarm or cool water instead. The lower the temperature, the safer your body is from swelling. Plus, low temperature can also prevent your skin from drying out.
Don’t spend too much time in the shower right after you work out. Taking long showers will only remove the natural oil that was produced from your skin from the workout. Additionally, wash your legs with cool water even after you’ve showered. This may seem unusual as you do this at first, but washing your legs separately actually helps reduce its chances of swelling. Aside from that, it also enhances your leg’s venous function.
- Quit Smoking
It’s a well-known fact that smoking only brings harmful impacts to your body, including your legs. Smoking decreases the amount of blood circulating in your body, especially to the lower part of your body and legs. This will then result in either varicose veins or even more severe health issues, like leg ulcers.
Finishing Up
The best thing about these tips is that they’re achievable, and you won’t need to spend much to protect your legs from diseases. Just like the rest of your body, your legs need extra attention, too, when it comes to their health and wellness. Keep in mind that having healthy legs means your ability to do physical activities will be limitless.