Circulation Problems, Arterial or Venous?

www.modernheartandvascular.com
- Good morning, everyone,
and welcome to "Great Day Houston Medical Monday."
We're starting with the heart.
Earlier this month former Houston Texan and picture of health, J.J. Watt,
got a lot of people's attention with this tweet he wrote,
"I went into AFib on Wednesday, had my heart shocked back into rhythm on Thursday,
and I'm playing today."
AFib affects millions of Americans and many don't even know they have it.
Joining us to explain what that is and other conditions involving the heart and circulatory system
is cardiologist Dr. Rajiv Agarwal
with Modern Heart and Vascular Institute, good morning.
- Good morning, Deborah how are you?
- Good, a lot of us have heard that term AFib might not realize what it is,
and the thing, of course, that got our attention
is when somebody like J.J. Watt has it.
But the fact the matter is, like I said, a lot of people do and don't even know.
- Right, AFib stands for atrial fibrillation.
And basically, what that means is the top chamber of the heart, which are called the atria,
is just fibrillating instead of squeezing nicely.
So you have the synchrony, or the top and the bottom chambers of the heart
are just out of sync and a lot of people, like you said, don't know it.
But symptoms like just fatigue, and tiredness, and
getting out of breath that we tend to say, "Well, I don't think I just slept right,"
or, "I have stress," or, this or that, can be your only symptoms of AFib.
- Yeah, and need to take it seriously because if it's untreated
it could lead to heart failure and stroke, and can also cause poor blood flow. Another thing that can cause poor blood flow is vein disease,
and like, we rely on them, obviously, of what 60,000 miles
of basically veins that we have carrying oxygen to and from?
- Right, so arteries take the blood from the heart and take it to our tissues,
and organs and veins bring it back.
And there are thousands and thousands of miles of highways of veins and arteries,
and a lot of people have symptoms, Deborah, and they just don't know it at all.
- And because some of those symptoms, for example, when we talk about the arteries
and have poor circulation, tiredness in our legs, we think it's a muscular issue, right?
Fatigue in the legs, burning in the legs, mainly in the calf muscles,
and usually experience with walking or exertion.
- Right, that's the key distinction, is if your symptoms are with exertion.
So if your legs bother you, they feel tired, burning, fatigue with exertion,
it's more likely to be arterial disease.
Whereas, if you have symptoms more at night or when you're sitting,
like cramps or charley horses, or restless legs, swelling, so more stationary symptoms,
those are more likely to be due to bad veins.
- With arterial disease what are some of the risk factors?
- So, the traditional risk factors, Deborah,
like smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stress,
and might we throw in these days, COVID, which accelerates the blockages process.
So that's for the arteries.
For the veins, it's more stationary life, so gravity.
People that are sitting or standing for prolonged periods of times, obesity,
women on birth control medications,
they're more likely to get blood clots and vein disease.
Read the rest of the transcript in the comments.
Modern Heart and Vascular Institute in Humble, TX, Katy, TX & Cleveland, TX is a state-of-the-art cardiovascular practice equipped with cutting-edge diagnostic tools used to assess heart health and diagnose cardiac conditions in the earliest of stages.
We specialize in all aspects of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. We diagnose and treats arrhythmias, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, vein disease, and high blood pressure. The practice also expertly manages cardiac conditions in people with diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, obesity, family history of premature heart disease, etc.
Modern Cardiovascular Care for Modern Patients using Modern Technology

[@modernheartandvascular]

- Good morning, everyone,
and welcome to "Great Day Houston Medical Monday."
We're starting with the heart.
Earlier this month former Houston Texan and picture of health, J.J. Watt,
got a lot of people's attention with this tweet he wrote,
"I went into AFib on Wednesday, had my heart shocked back into rhythm on Thursday,
and I'm playing today."
AFib affects millions of Americans and many don't even know they have it.
Joining us to explain what that is and other conditions involving the heart and circulatory system
is cardiologist Dr. Rajiv Agarwal
with Modern Heart and Vascular Institute, good morning.
- Good morning, Deborah how are you?
- Good, a lot of us have heard that term AFib might not realize what it is,
and the thing, of course, that got our attention
is when somebody like J.J. Watt has it.
But the fact the matter is, like I said, a lot of people do and don't even know.
- Right, AFib stands for atrial fibrillation.
And basically, what that means is the top chamber of the heart, which are called the atria,
is just fibrillating instead of squeezing nicely.
So you have the synchrony, or the top and the bottom chambers of the heart
are just out of sync and a lot of people, like you said, don't know it.
But symptoms like just fatigue, and tiredness, and
getting out of breath that we tend to say, "Well, I don't think I just slept right,"
or, "I have stress," or, this or that, can be your only symptoms of AFib.
- Yeah, and need to take it seriously because if it's untreated
it could lead to heart failure and stroke, and can also cause poor blood flow.
Another thing that can cause poor blood flow is vein disease,
and like, we rely on them, obviously, of what 60,000 miles
of basically veins that we have carrying oxygen to and from?
- Right, so arteries take the blood from the heart and take it to our tissues,
and organs and veins bring it back.
And there are thousands and thousands of miles of highways of veins and arteries,
and a lot of people have symptoms, Deborah, and they just don't know it at all.
- And because some of those symptoms, for example, when we talk about the arteries
and have poor circulation, tiredness in our legs, we think it's a muscular issue, right?
Fatigue in the legs, burning in the legs, mainly in the calf muscles,
and usually experience with walking or exertion.
- Right, that's the key distinction, is if your symptoms are with exertion.
So if your legs bother you, they feel tired, burning, fatigue with exertion,
it's more likely to be arterial disease.
Whereas, if you have symptoms more at night or when you're sitting,
like cramps or charley horses, or restless legs, swelling, so more stationary symptoms,
those are more likely to be due to bad veins.
- With arterial disease what are some of the risk factors?
- So, the traditional risk factors, Deborah,
like smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stress,
and might we throw in these days, COVID, which accelerates the blockages process.
So that's for the arteries.
For the veins, it's more stationary life, so gravity.
People that are sitting or standing for prolonged periods of times, obesity,
women on birth control medications,
they're more likely to get blood clots and vein disease.
- You mentioned COVID, so is that one of the symptoms of what we call long COVID?
- Yeah, it can be.
I mean, you can get symptoms related to your heart,
we're learning that it can affect the blood vessels as well
months and years down the road, absolutely.
- How do you diagnose it?
'Cause I know a lot of people will not come in if they think that the diagnosis process
is something that they think is crazy.
It really is very quick for you and non-invasive.
- It's very simple.
So if you have symptoms, first thing we do is we talk to you,
we try to figure out is it more arterial or is it more venous?
And then we examine your legs, again, trying to see clues for arterial versus venous.
And most of the times you end up getting an ultrasound of your leg veins and leg arteries
which clinch the diagnosis.
And if it's there, the treatments are so, so simple.
- Yeah, and some of those treatments might include the blockage treatment,
we call it kind of the Roto-Rooter process.
- For the arteries it's very simple, it's all outpatient,
you come in, you have a blockage, we can fix it.
We have a whole team that does that and the blockages open up,
you go home within an hour or two and you're good to go,
you're walking, you feel great.
And for vein disease it's different.
- 'Cause there's some conservative things that we can do, compression socks,
leg elevation, losing weight can make an impact,
but then you can go further if you need to.
- Yes, yes, so if the conservative treatments don't work
then we can do a simple in-office vein treatment,
which could be an ablation, it takes 10-15 minutes, painless.
Let me say that again, painless.
You come in, we do it, you can drive yourself home, go back to work,
and within a few days they're like,
"Wow, I didn't know my legs could feel this good."
- We're looking at these before and after right here, 'cause a lot of times people will see,
again, those veins that are the bulging veins.
Sometimes a lot of the, just the coloration, or sometimes even like the leg ulcers, and again,
they think that's a skin issue or a muscular issue,
but need to realize that it's something different.
In fact I had a friend who,
she went to a doctor who was not a cardiologist who said,
" I think I can take care of that in my office."
And they kept treating this wound, but not treating the underlying condition.
So it's not really gonna get any better if you don't get to the root cause.
- You hit the nail on the head, you've gotta get to the root cause of the problem and treat it.
And most of these patients that have restless legs, or wounds and ulcers,
it's actually due to circulation problems and we've fixed it on thousands of patients
and their wounds and ulcers have completely healed up.
- Address that restless leg syndrome
'cause we know there are medications out there for that
and sometimes medications can address the symptoms
but don't get to the root cause.
Again, that's what you like to do, it's like,
why are we having these problems?
Let's fix that.
- So, restless legs, number one, is when you feel like your legs are needing to move
to get comfortable, mostly at night,
but it can happen during the daytime too.
And like you said, many people are misdiagnosed with other issues
or just restless leg syndrome when it's really due to circulation problems.
My mom had it, we fixed her veins and she's been five to six years now
with zero restless legs and no medications for it.
So, treat the root cause of the problem and not just put a Band-Aid on it with pills.
- And Dr. Agarwal, for people who've come in and gotten their issues taken care of,
overall health is better too, when you consider
that oxygen can circulate freely throughout the body
you take care of so many other issues and pain, and the whole bit.
- Yes, just like we tell our patients,
just like a good car needs to have good drivers on it,
your body needs to have good legs on it.
And if you're having leg issues we can help.
- Dr. Agarwal, thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- All right, to book an appointment with a board-certified cardiologist
at Modern Heart and Vascular Institute visit them online
at modernheartandvascular.com.
You can also give them a call at this number,
it's 832-644-8930, again, that's 832-644-8930.
They accept most major insurances including Medicare.
Appointments fill up fast so contact them today.
By the way, they have doctors who are fluent in Spanish as well,
they can address all issues of the heart.
It only takes a minute to schedule a vein screening
and it could save your legs and make getting around
a lot more comfortable, make you a lot healthier.