Spider Veins: Can I treat them on my own?

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Spider veins: the downfall of many a plan to wear a short skirt and strappy sandals or skip the makeup for a bare-faced day of fun. How can you rid yourself of these cobwebby looking lines lurking just under the surface of your skin? While there are “home remedies” available, your best bet is a vein professional with the right tools for the job.

At Associated Dermatologists, with locations in West Bloomfield, Commerce, Novi, and Berkeley, Michigan, our team of expert skin care providers can provide vascular laser treatment for spider veins during an easy, in-office procedure.

How veins get compromised

Spider veins (telangiectasia) and their more alarming cousin, varicose veins, develop when the one-way valve inside the vein becomes weak. Blood starts to slip back through the valve and pool inside the vein, accumulating enough that it becomes visible through the skin.

While spider veins cause little squiggles under your skin, simply creating a cosmetic problem, varicose veins are more serious. They stand out in larger, ropy strands, may be hot or painful to the touch, and increase your risk for a blood clot.

Can spider veins be treated at home?

There are many “natural remedies” for spider veins, and some can slightly reduce their visibility. For example, using apple cider vinegar (an astringent) in place of your normal skin toner can help tighten loose skin and remove redness, making spider veins less noticeable. Some people also choose to use preparations made of horse chestnut bark.

While these typically can’t cause any harm, and may make your skin temporarily appear clearer, they can’t actually fix spider veins. What can help is laser therapy, using special beams of light that penetrate the skin.

Laser treatment uses gentle heat to warm the tiny veins just enough to create microscopic damage. This causes the spider veins to collapse, and the resulting waste is flushed away over the next few weeks by the body’s lymphatic system.

Our spider vein treatment lasers

We have two lasers in our office that can be used to treat vein abnormalities

The Vbeam® Perfecta: a pulsed-dye laser (PDL) that targets hemoglobin with micropulses of energy The Palomar Lux 1540®: a fractional laser skin resurfacing tool that targets a tiny field of skin with high-precision microbeams of light

These options, unlike home remedies, can get rid of spider veins for good. If you’re ready to get rid of your spider veins, schedule a consultation by calling the office nearest you, or book online today.