Intermittent Claudication
Intermittent Claudication
Relief for "Angina of the Legs"
Dressed in sweats and sneaks, you step outside and breathe in the fresh fall air. You head toward the neighborhood park for your daily walk. As you reach the first cross-street, you pick up speed, swinging your arms and striding confidently.
Ten minutes later, a cramp in your calf stops you cold. You massage your leg, wait a couple of minutes, then resume walking--but more slowly this time.
That scenario is familiar to women with intermittent claudication. The leg arteries carrying blood from the heart and lungs become so narrowed by cholesterol deposits that blood (with its energizing cargo of oxygen) has difficulty getting through. So you feel pain.
"It's like angina of the legs," says Pamela Ouyang, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, both in Baltimore. The oxygen supply to calf muscles is temporarily insufficient, causing a cramped feeling. Older men and women with heart disease are most susceptible.
Here's what you can do.
Rest. "Intermittent claudication is brought on by walking, and it's relieved by rest," says Deborah L. Keefe, M.D., professor of medicine at Cornell Medical Center and a cardiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, both in New York City. Essentially, your legs have worked so hard to walk that they've run out of air. So all you have to do is stop walking for a minute or two, blood flow will be restored, oxygen will saturate your muscles, and the pain will disappear.
Then, keep walking. Contradictory though it may seem, exercise can actually build a small network of collateral blood vessels that bypass the clogged arteries in your leg and give muscles an alternate supply of oxygen, says Dr. Ouyang. So even though walking can trigger occasional bouts of intermittent claudication, you still need to walk to build a natural bypass.
When To See A Doctor
Calf pain triggered by walking should be evaluated by a doctor but does not indicate an emergency. If you have calf pain with very little walking or if the pain occurs while you are at rest, you should see a doctor at once, says Pamela Ouyang, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, both in Baltimore. You should consult your doctor if you know you have intermittent claudication and: * Leg pain wakes you up at night. * You suddenly develop cold, numb or painful feet or legs.
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The trick is to walk right up to the moment that you feel pain, stop until the pain stops, then resume movement, says Dr. Ouyang. Building new blood vessels takes time, she adds, but walking every day, as often as you can, should eventually pay off. You'll find that in time you can walk further and do more before pain sets in.
Seek a smoke-free environment. Cigarette smoke reduces the amount of oxygen available to your muscles, triggering the onset of intermittent claudication, says Dr. Keefe.
