Looking into compression socks benefits before you make your first purchase can help you decide whether it’s right for you or not. Some of these benefits include improved blood circulation, reduced swelling, and reduced pain.
In this article, we’ll discuss everything you should know about compression socks, seven compression socks benefits, and how wearing this type of stockings can improve your health.
Without further delay, let’s get started!
What Are Compression Socks?
Compression socks are special stockings you can wear on your lower legs to improve blood circulation. They do this by distributing varying degrees of pressure across your ankles, feet and calves. This level of pressure can help you improve lymphatic disorders, promote blood flow, and reduce swelling in your ankles.
There are three types of compression socks on the market with different levels of pressure from light to strong. These types of compression socks are:
- Non-medical support hosiery compression socks: This is great for providing relief to aching legs. The compression this type of stockings offer is also uniform and you don’t need any strict prescription to wear it.
- Anti-embolism compression socks: This is the best socks for you if you are bedridden or want to reduce the chances of you developing deep vein thrombosis. The pressure from the anti-embolism compression socks is not uniform and is not suitable for people who plan to move around while wearing the socks.
- Medical compression or graduated socks: This type of socks provides the greatest degree of pressure but this pressure isn’t uniform. Doctors use it to treat conditions like edema and chronic venous disease.
You can easily pick up compression socks in stores online over-the-counter (OTC) but you may need a doctor’s prescription to get graduated or medical compression stockings.
Benefits of Compression Socks
Compression socks have a lot of benefits when you wear them correctly. We’ll discuss some of these benefits below.
Improve Varicose Veins
Normal veins have tiny valves that open and close periodically to prevent blood from flowing backwards and pooling in them. However, as you age, these valves can become weaker and stop working. When they do, you are likely to experience a phenomenon called venous reflux which can lead to a lot of common symptoms like spider veins, cramping, swelling and varicose veins.
According to a 2023 study, compression therapy is an indispensable treatment option in the management of varicose veins. This is because compression socks can help you support your leg muscles and reduce the chances of getting venous hypertension.
While compression socks may help you lessen the symptoms of varicose veins, clinical studies have shown that they don’t completely treat the condition. Therefore, you may need further proactive vein treatment to completely overcome the symptoms.
Increase Blood Circulation
One of the main advantages of wearing any type of compression socks is improved circulation. As we’ve already mentioned, compression socks continuously put pressure on your legs and feet which encourages flow through your veins. This can help you lower the likelihood of developing blood clots and heal faster.
Blood circulation is also important for people that stand or sit all day. Have you ever returned home from work to discover that your ankles and legs have swollen up and become sore? That is the result of not getting proper blood flow to your legs and ankles because of gravity.
Compression socks can help you push the blood upwards whether you’re standing or sitting and prevent blood from settling around your ankles and swelling up.
Support Muscle Recovery after Exercise
Muscle recovery becomes faster when you receive nutrients and oxygen through blood flow. Therefore, compression socks, which improve healthy blood flow, are very important when it comes to promoting muscle recovery. They’re also an important element of the RICE recovery method most athletes use for recovery after an injury or exercising.
Also, using compression socks during exercise can help you reduce long-term muscle damage from micro vibrations while running. Lastly, research shows that using compression socks can help you reduce the build-up of lactic acid in tired muscles. This means you can quickly reduce pain after exercise and improve your muscle recovery by wearing these stockings.
Reduce fluid retention and swelling
Lymphatic drainage refers to the process where your body circulates tissue fluid to keep working efficiently. Usually, poor lymphatic drainage can make fluid build-up in your lower legs and cause swollen ankles.The swelling can cause a lot of discomfort and eventually become very serious conditions like lymphedema and blood clots.
Doctors often recommend compression socks to treat fluid retention. Out of the three types of compression stockings, graduated compression socks stand out at pushing blood towards your heart.
Prevent Dizziness
If you often get dizzy after standing up, compression socks can help you push the blood from your legs back to your heart.
The stockings can also help you prevent low blood pressure in people with health conditions like orthostatic hypotension, dysautonomia, vasovagal syncope and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).
These are all very serious conditions that have to do with blood pressure and the nervous system.
Improve Postoperative Recovery
Recovering from any type of surgery can take a long time. During this period, you may have to be inactive which may prevent the blood in your body from circulating properly. Doctors often prescribe compression wears during this period to aid blood flow.
Furthermore, removing a lymph node during a lymphedema surgery can affect how blood drains from your limbs. Wearing compression socks can help you improve how lymphatic fluid flows within your body and prevent complications.
Reduce Ache and Heaviness
Compression wear can make your legs feel lighter, and energized. This is especially true if you’re suffering from delayed muscle soreness after exercising.
The stockings can prevent swelling by preventing fluid from pooling around your ankles and increase recovery by moving oxygen around your body through blood flow.
Conclusion
By now you should be able to decide from the compression socks benefits we’ve mentioned if the stockings are a good fit for you. The truth is, you don’t have to have a medical condition before you wear compression socks. However, you need to wear them modestly to let your leg breath without constraint.
If you would like to buy some compression socks, you can check out our website or contact us here.
