Peripheral Arterial Disease

PAD stands for peripheral arterial disease. Doctors spend a lot of time teaching about and working to prevent CAD (coronary artery disease) and strokes but very little time on PAD. While CAD will kill you, PAD will just make you wish you were dead. PAD is associated with painful muscle cramping in your hips, thighs and calves, provoked by exercise. As the disease worsens, walking short distances becomes difficult. The pain resolves with rest but quickly returns when activity resumes. By causing pain with physical exertion, PAD seriously limits your lifestyle.

According to a report recently reviewed in MedPage Today, “a sedentary lifestyle predicted 46 percent higher risk of peripheral arterial disease compared with a lifetime of recreational activity of any intensity (P=0.044), John P. Cooke, MD, PhD, of Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, Calif., and colleagues found.”

Further, “the biggest incremental gain in PAD protection was going from essentially no activity to minimal activity, though more activity was more protective, the group reported online in the Journal of Vascular Surgery.”

Not only can walking decrease your risk of PAD, walking is also the treatment for PAD. If you suspect that you have PAD, see your doc. There is a simple, non-invasive, non-painful test your doc can run in his/her office to help make the diagnosis (ABI).

If you have PAD, walk! Walk until you get pain, then rest, then walk again. Push yourself to walk further every week. Your body is capable of repairing itself. If you are not making progress, see your doctor. There are medications that can help.

If you have PAD, your doc will want to screen you for signs of other vascular disease, hypertension and high cholesterol. Lifestyle modifications may help as well. It should go without saying but I’ll emphasize it anyway: DON’T SMOKE!  Smoking is particularly dangerous in individuals with vascular disease.

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