The Sneaky Way Peripheral Artery Disease Can Catch You Off Guard

Discover How to Lower Your Risk of Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD)

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) develops over time. And in the early stages, you may not realize it’s happening. But there are things you can do to lower your odds of ever getting PAD. The first step is to understand how it takes hold, if you’re at risk, and how it happens.

PAD happens when certain arteries — usually in your legs — narrow because of plaque buildup. This keeps blood from flowing to your limbs like it’s supposed to.

Some people don’t feel symptoms, while others may ignore them if they’re subtle at first. If you don’t pinpoint it and get treatment, PAD can lead to gangrene — areas of dead tissue — and require amputation. And this same process of plaque buildup might be taking place in the blood vessels that supply the heart or the brain, leading to heart attack or stroke. Treating PAD can help prevent this from happening. That’s why early detection is key.

“The biggest problem that we see is people coming in late in a delayed fashion,” says Michael S. Conte, MD, professor and chief of the Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Division at the University of California, San Francisco.

“[They’re] waiting too long, thinking it’s nothing, thinking it’s old age, thinking that this spot on their foot will go away and waiting for things for so long that then we have to do really complicated surgeries and interventions to save a leg,” Comte says.

The three main risk factors for PAD are age, diabetes, and smoking.

Age. It’s pretty uncommon to see this disease in people under age 50 unless they have a history of diabetes or smoking.

Diabetes. High blood sugar can prime artery walls for plaque buildup. Diabetes can also add more problems to the equation when coupled with PAD. About 15% of people with diabetes get foot ulcers, and if you have PAD too, the risk of limb amputation is five to 10 times higher.

Smoking. Smoking, which worsens the constriction and damage of your arteries, raises the odds of PAD by 400% and brings on PAD symptoms almost 10 years earlier.

PAD can also happen if you get radiation in the neck or legs. Radiation to treat tumors can cause artery blockages down the line — anywhere from 3 to 10 or more years later.

Other things that can make your chances of getting PAD go up include:

• Obesity (a body mass index over 30)
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Peripheral artery disease, heart disease, or stroke in your family history
• High levels of homocysteine

Men are more likely to get PAD than women, and sooner — about a decade earlier than women. PAD also disproportionately affects Black and Native American people, and that gap widens with age.

PAD usually takes hold over time,

» …
Read More