Our legs are often the most neglected part of our body despite being so important to our daily lives. We eat right for our heart, do bicep curls for our arms, but the legs are often the part of our body that we rarely take the time to treat with care and respect.
Considering just how vital they are, we want to do everything we can’t keep our legs working effectively and efficiently. This requires us to do things like elevating them from time to time to help the blood flow and keep them rejuvenated. Let’s see why proper leg elevation can be so important.
The Importance of Proper Leg Elevation
Without getting too technical, your legs are home to some of the largest muscles and blood vessels in your entire body. If the muscles and vessels are not moving and helping blood move where it needs to be, the entire body suffers because of it.
Leg elevation can be achieved when sitting or laying down in unique ways that all help the body operate better and keeps your legs from getting stressed too much. As you will see, the many benefits of proper leg elevation all add up when you take a small amount of time to learn how to best keep your legs elevated.
Benefits to Proper Leg Elevation
Pressure Relief
Long hours at the office and standing around all day are equally harmful to our legs. The stress and pressure they are forced to endure from even the most basic of activities can leave us feeling sore at the end of the day without even breaking a sweat.
When you take the right steps and utilize tools to help relieve leg pressure, your legs will start to feel better in no time. Those aches and pains that were once a mystery will begin to fade as your feet and legs don’t have to worry about carrying around your bodyweight at every waking moment.
Better Blood Circulation
Your heart already works very hard to help get blood to every inch of your body; the last thing you want is to put it under more stress. Utilizing the right techniques and tools to help your leg elevation will get your legs feeling great as they receive the blood and oxygen they need to thrive.
Many older people suffer from varicose veins as a result of poor circulation in their legs. As we increasingly become more sedentary as a society, the likeliness that our legs will experience less circulation is increasing. Keep your legs moving and keep circulation flowing to help your legs do their job.
Reduced Inflammation
Inflammation is a natural response of the body when something is going wrong internally that needs to be addressed. If you are experiencing inflammation in your ankles or legs in general, this is a sign that your circulation needs work and your legs need elevating.
Making the time to elevate your legs every now and then will help reduce inflammation as your legs get a breath of fresh air and can flush out harmful elements. Taking steps to stay active even with leg issues can help reduce inflammation alongside the proper leg inflammation for a healthier lifestyle.
Improved Health Over Time
When looking at your long term health, taking steps now will yield increasing returns later in life when you need all the help you can get. With good circulation having many benefits, your legs and entire body will be thanking you in the future.
Leg elevation with useful cushions like ours, paired with exercises to get your legs elevated, will work wonders on your leg circulation. With the benefits clear and plentiful, let’s see what you can do to get the best leg elevation possible.
Simple Ways to Get Better Leg Elevation
Utilize a cushion
Just as cushions provide support in all sensitive areas, your feet are no exception to getting help from a great cushion. Placing the right cushion under your feet when sitting or resting can increase their angle to a state where they are receiving a better circulation.
Cushions are a great way to put your feet in a position that helps the entire leg feel naturally balanced. When resting in bed to get better circulation, you can try implementing cushions that keep your feet raised at a level that helps them feel comfortable.
Keep Them Above Your Heart
Thanks to gravity, the blood in your body naturally starts at the top and flows to the bottom. This means that it takes more energy for your heart to get blood from your legs to your heart than it takes for blood to flow down to your feet in the first place.
To give your heart a helping hand, raise your feet above your heart when lying down for periods of time. This effectively drains the excess blood out of your legs and gets it back to the heart. Less work for your heart means it can spend its energy keeping the rest of your body supplied with blood.
Spend Time Lying Down
For those of you who love a good nap or just relaxing in bed, you’ll love to hear this. Going back to the idea of helping the body with gravity, lying down flat helps your body to not put any pressure on the legs or feet that would otherwise cause unwanted pressure.
You can keep your legs on a slight elevation when lying down after a period of work so that the elevation can help speed up the circulation process throughout your body. Sometimes all your body needs to get the blood flowing is some rest and relaxation.
Move Your Feet too
Just because your legs are where most of the blood vessels are does not mean you should be leaving your feet out of the picture as well. There are great exercises for leg and feet circulation out there that can be done with both your feet elevated or even some that you can do in your office chair.
The feet elevation cushions that we mentioned earlier can help you both get your legs elevated and will also be a great platform to get the feet moving. Have fun with it, and find the best ways to get moving that keep you eager to stay active.
Find a Comfortable Height
The central purpose of getting improved circulation in the legs with elevation is to make your life more comfortable and less stressful in the future. This means you need to find the best heights for your legs to rest in chairs and on flat surfaces when trying to get circulation going smoothly.
Experiment with different cushion positions that you want to try to see which one makes your legs feel the best. You should find an elevated leg position that helps your feet light and your legs in a position that doesn’t feel forced. The perfect position is out there, and you just need to experiment to find where it is.
Try To Elevate Them Throughout the Day
It often takes a conscious effort to actually keep your feet elevated at any given point in the day. Not many people get off work and think to put their feet above their hearts to help their blood flow more efficiently. Taking breaks to raise your feet and legs will keep you and your legs feeling fresh and ready for anything.
You can implement some of those desk workouts we mentioned earlier on your break to just get your feet moving around a bit. Taking walks and just moving around, in general, is what your body needs to keep healthy and effective throughout your entire daily routine.
Implement it into Other Routines
The last way you can get a better elevation in your legs outside of the workplace is to implement leg raise time into your daily routines. For example, taking the time before going to bed or at the gym to try to raise your feet above your heart for some time will allow blood flow to improve and the feet to drain older blood cells.
All it really takes to keep your legs elevated throughout the day are conscious decisions to remember why you need to keep them elevated in the first place. Getting your feet elevated is the easy part and remembering when you are supposed to do it is what will take the most time to adjust to.
Conclusion
Who would have thought the legs had such a large role to play in the circulation of blood throughout our entire body? From the way you sit to staying active on your feet on a daily basis, there are so many ways you can elevate your legs and keep the blood pumping strong.
Utilizing those specially designed leg cushions to elevate your legs and getting those legs above your heart is all part of the lifestyle you can create that puts your health first.
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