While it’s absolutely true that tanning may decrease the visibility of spider veins for the short-term, it is absolutely not a long-term solution – especially when you consider that you’re doing all sorts of damage to your skin by exposing it to ultraviolet rays.
Thankfully, there are effective treatments for spider veins available to you – you just have to keep a few key things in mind before you pick one.
How the Sun Makes Spider Veins Worse
As stated, prolonged exposure to the sun during tanning actually damages skin cells in a way most people would do well to avoid. In addition to exacerbating certain skin conditions like wrinkles, it can also cause sun spots and even skin cancer if you’re not careful.
To put it another way, if you were trying to hide your spider veins through tanning, this is absolutely not the way you want to do it.
Does Bed Tanning Make Spider Veins Worse
Tanning beds, just like sunlight, have similar outcomes in debilitating health concerns. In some cases, tanning methods that use any sort of ultraviolet rays to pigment the skin may actually causes your spider veins to be more noticeable.
Is Spray Tanning a Good Idea?
It’s also important to note that spray tanning is also not a good way to hide those spider veins, even though it is the safer of the two options as far as ultraviolet exposure is concerned.
There are a wide array of unfortunate spray tanning side effects out there, chief among them being that the droxyacetone (DHA) in spray tanning products actually makes the skin more susceptible to UV damage. It can also cause problematic alterations to the skin that make medical procedures more difficult, resulting in unnecessary biopsies and the potential misdiagnoses of something like melanoma.
Sclerotherapy as a Spider Vein Treatment
In terms of an actual medical treatment, one of the most popular ones readily available today takes the form of sclerotherapy – a procedure used to eliminate spider veins, varicose veins and more.
At its core, sclerotherapy involves the injection of a very particular solution – typically salt-based – directly into the spider veins themselves. Over time, that solution will irritate the lining of the blood vessel to the point where it eventually collapses. After the vein has had the opportunity to scar, all blood is then rerouted through healthier veins – thus getting rid of those problematic spider veins once and for all. Note that the collapsed veins eventually get reabsorbed into the surrounding tissue before eventually disappearing altogether, almost like they were never there at all.
It is particularly effective on small varicose veins and it is a procedure that brings with it a very quick recovery time for most people.
Your Vein and Vascular’s Practice in Vineland, NJ
At the Vein & Vascular Institute, we understand how frustrating those stubborn spider veins can be – especially if you’ve been accidentally making them worse through tanning, spray tanning and related techniques. But it’s important for you to know that this is one road you don’t have to travel alone, as our team of passionate and professional service providers are here to help.
If you’d like to meet our vein physicians in Vineland, New Jersey or if you just have any additional questions about what you can do to rid yourself of spider veins once and for all, please click here to schedule a consult at your convenience.