This is incredibly important because, as you'll soon learn, if blood starts flowing backwards, it can lead to many serious issues.
The drawing above shows a healthy vein on the left side compared to a compromised varicose vein on the right side.
Under normal conditions, the vein valves in your calves work in unison to push old, stagnant blood from your feet and calves up against gravity back to the heart.
The image on the left shows how the blood moves in a single direction.
That's what healthy veins with normal vein valves should look like.
But unfortunately, many of us have compromised Vein Valves.
Now, let's take a look at the image on the right side.
What stands out immediately is that the varicose vein is bulging and swollen compared to the healthy vein, right?
This happens because, as the vein valves wear out, they can no longer push old blood from our legs back to the heart.
This causes the blood to get trapped in the vein in different areas - particularly behind the vein valves.
Resulting in old, stagnant blood pooling in your legs.
As the blood pools, the pressure within the affected veins begin to increase.
This pressure causes the veins to expand, making them BULGE.
Similar to a kinked hose that restricts water from flowing, this leads to backups, swelling and bulging veins.
