Deep Vein Thrombosis

September 21, 1:41 PMTampa Holistic Wellness ExaminerKC O'Dunn

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Clots can KILL

Your body is very smart.  To keep you alive when your skin is violated by a sharp object or beak, your blood stream uses a reflexive response to coagulate your blood or thicken it until there is a barrier between your inner body and all the vicious things on the outside of your body that want to kill you.  There is a very complicated chemical hierarchy in this action called the Clotting Cascade.  There are a dozen or so factors in the cascade and in each factor there are many other contributing features.  The end result is that your blood clots and creates a barrier that will no longer allow blood to escape.

 This is an amazing feature of your body’s intelligence.  When your body is running healthfully you can depend on this clotting cascade to protect you from nicks and scrapes and shaving accidents and pin pricks or any of dozens of violations to the protective fortification of your skin. 

The clotting factor in your body can also work against you and cause your body to produce thromboses, the intravascular coagulation of the blood in the heart, arteries, veins, or capillaries.  These clots carry the risk of death because they can become detached from where ever they collected and float about in your circulatory system clogging the arteries of your heart, provoking a stroke or lodging in your lungs to suffocate you slowly and secretly.

Here in the USA 200,000 to 400,000 citizens develop deep vein thrombosis annually. Nearly one third of these citizens will advance to post-thrombotic syndrome, which causes pain and swelling, discoloration, and scaling on the limb where the clot developed.  Pulmonary Emboli occur when the clots travel to the lungs and slowly suffocate you, 30 to 60 thousand citizens die of this related condition.  Your heart will stop when a traveling clot lodges in a coronary artery and you will suffer a stroke when a clot lodges in your brain.

Obeasity is a clotting risk factor

The presence of clots in your lungs can be masked.  It is not unusual for a person to show an irregular anterior line on an EKG and have it be caused by the way the heart is responding to restrictions in the Pulmonary Artery.

Causes of unwanted clotting in the body:

When your body has to endure long periods of inactivity as when you are traveling by air or riding in an automobile, if you are bed ridden with even a cold or the flu, pooling of blood can occur and clots may form.  If you are in the hospital for any length of time, ensure that your care team manages your clotting factors.

Injury can cause the body to go about coagulating your vessels properly but bruises that occur more deeply in your tissue can create clots that can restrict blood flow and break free to travel to the heart, lungs and brain.

Varicose Veins happen when a small valve-like device in the vein ruptures, this causes the spider web designs on a person’s legs, and these ruptures can also create pooling of blood and clotting.   

Hypercoagulation is a term for a condition when the Clotting Cascade is out of balance and the body produces clots easily.  A homocysteine imbalance is known to trigger this condition along with cancer and cancer treatments, smoking, obesity, birth control hormones and menopausal hormone replacement therapy.     

You are at higher risk for Deep Vein Thrombosis or clotting in general if you smoke or take tobacco orally.  Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor in the body and this restriction on the vessels can cause the blood to clot. 

Overweight is a risk factor; a person does not have to look that fat to be obese.  If you consider the Body Mass Index, a person who is 5’10” is obese at 204 pounds, this puts you at higher risk.

The most common symptoms of DVT, the swelling in the calf and pain only occur in 30% of victims.  Other symptoms include a noticeable temperature difference between limbs, the warmer limb my have a clot.  In advanced cases, with non-classic symptoms, shortness of breath is a sign of DVT. A sharp pain under your breast bone (Sternum) or near or under the left breast is a sign that there is clotting in the lungs near the pulmonary artery.  A rapid heart rate at rest is a sign that your body is fighting to keep your oxygen levels up and having to pump massive amounts of blood to this end.  Expectorating blood by coughing is also a sign of pulmonary clotting.  In any case coughing up blood is a serious condition and can also point to other extremely dangerous issues so it is best to seek immediate attention.