Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
close window
Housecall Archives
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
close window
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Lifestyle and home remedies
By Mayo Clinic staffThe primary goal of your self-care plan should be preventing deep vein thrombosis from occurring.
To prevent deep vein thrombosis from worsening or happening again:
- Check in with your doctor regularly to see if your medication or treatments need to be modified.
- Watch how much vitamin K you're eating if you take blood thinners. Vitamin K can affect how drugs such as warfarin work. Foods high in vitamin K include green leafy vegetables and canola and soybean oils.
- Exercise your lower calf muscles if you'll be sitting a long time. Whenever possible, get up and walk around. If you can't get up to walk around, try raising and lowering your heels while keeping your toes on the floor, then raising your toes while your heels are on the floor.
- Move. If you've been on bed rest, because of surgery or other factors, the sooner you get moving, the less likely blood clots will develop.
- Make lifestyle changes. Lose weight, quit smoking and control your blood pressure. Obesity, smoking and high blood pressure all increase your risk of deep vein thrombosis.
- Wear compression stockings to help prevent blood clots in the legs if your doctor recommends them.
- Be on the lookout for excessive bleeding, which can be a side effect of taking medications such as blood thinners. Talk to your doctor about activities that could cause you to bruise or get cut, as even a minor injury could become serious if you're taking blood thinners.
References
- Deep vein thrombosis. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Dvt/DVT_All.html. Accessed June 17, 2009.
- Are you at risk for deep vein thrombosis? Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/Features/Thrombosis. Accessed June 17, 2009.
- Kyrle P, et al. Deep vein thrombosis. The Lancet. 2005;365:1163.
- Heit JA. The epidemiology of venous thromboembolism in the community. Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. 2008;28:370.
- Landaw SA, et al. Approach to the diagnosis and therapy of deep vein thrombosis. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed May 12, 2009.
- Grant BJB. Diagnosis of suspected deep vein thrombosis of the lower extremity. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed May 12, 2009.
- Prevention of deep vein thrombosis. Rockville, Md.: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. http://www.guideline.gov/summary/summary.aspx?ss=15&doc_id=9266&nbr=4960. Accessed June 17, 2009.
