Most information out there these days is always focused on varicose veins on the legs. But should I be worried when it’s also my arms and hands that look like a state road map?

Typically, prominent veins on your arms and hands are not a major health issue. Their function is simply to carry blood back from the hands to the heart. Large bulging veins on the backs of your hands occur because your skin relaxes and thins. There are a few reasons why the hand skin loses elasticity, but age is the most common one. This condition does not usually cause pain, but the veins do become more noticeable, and due to their bluish color they can change the overall coloration of hands.

There are a few risk factors that help develop bulging hand and arm veins, either by themselves or combined:

• Age
• Physical exercise
• Hot weather
• Vascular disease

Most of these risk factors are so common that none of us will escape them. Unless you invent a time machine or an elixir of youth, your skin will gradually lose elasticity as you grow older. The combination of increasing age and exercising in the gym will make a perfect environment for the bulging veins on your arms and hands to appear. How unfair is that – you try to stay fit at any age and this is your reward!

The problem with physical exercise is that it increases the blood pressure in arteries which forces the plasma from the blood to pool around the muscles, causing the muscles to swell and harden. Subsequently, the veins are pushed toward the skin surface and they become more prominent. If heavy physical exercise is your regular thing, sooner or later those veins will just keep bulging, and they will never go away on their own.

Good news is, as I said above, that arm and hand veins are not a serious health concern. Some surveys even revealed that women find “flashy” arm veins on a man very masculine and sexy. About a year ago, the Wolverine Hugh Jackman was seen leaving a gym in New York City with his arm veins gigantically striking and most female reactions were not exactly negative…

If, however, arm and hand veins are not your cup of tea, and especially on a woman this might be the usual case, you can have these easily treated at one of the modern vein clinics. So no worries, ladies, it can all be fixed!