Peripheral Arterial Disease: What You Need To Know

Just as hard water builds up in your home water pipes, reducing their flow, so your arteries can become narrowed or obstructed through build-up of fatty deposits, and later, blood clots. In Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD), the arteries in the legs are affected, depriving your limbs of blood and its life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients.

Most commonly, PAD has no symptoms and so is underdiagnosed, perhaps because we may not walk far or fast enough to induce symptoms – or because smaller arteries may have enlarged to help carry blood around the blockage.

An aching or burning cramp-like pain in the legs, induced by exercise and relieved by rest, is the most common symptom and is known as intermittent claudication. Consult your doctor if you have these signs of poor circulation.

At least half of all cases of PAD are caused by smoking, with heavy smokers having six times the chance of developing the disease. People with diabetes have a four-fold increase in PAD incidence; and developing diabetic complications such diabetic foot ulcers.

Just as your eyes are ‘the windows to your soul’, your legs can shine a light on your heart health. Damage to vessels in your legs could be a sign that arteries elsewhere in the body are also blocked. Heart attacks and strokes are both diseases of the blood vessels and they are up to six times more likely in people with PAD.