If you’re suffering from varicose veins (venous reflux disease)–and 50 percent of Americans and two out of every three women over 60 have this condition–you may have had them for a long time.  For those who inherited a tendency to this unsightly and sometimes medically dangerous condition, it’s not uncommon to develop them as young as in your teens.

If you’ve also borne several pregnancies, worked at a job where you spent long hours standing, and/or you are or have been seriously overweight for a considerable time, chances are even greater that you have varicose veins. Nurses, postal workers, teachers, flight attendants, grocery store personnel, and other types of workers are especially vulnerable to this condition.

And remember, once you develop it, venous reflux disease usually does not go away. It often continues to get worse over time without treatment. Happily, today you can get vein treatment using medical technology that is minimally-invasive and results in far less discomfort and shorter recovery times than anything that was available years ago. The same brilliant discoveries that are revolutionizing the treatment of heart, lung and brain diseases and disorders have been extended to include dramatic advances in varicose vein treatment.

So, if you’ve never received any vein treatment, or if you had one of the early surgical procedures called vein ligation and stripping, and your varicose veins have returned with a vengeance, you may want to ask yourself a few things to help you think clearly about the question: does it makes sense to have varicose vein treatment when you’re over 60?

First, how much pain are you in? How much discomfort do you suffer on account of the varicose veins? How much standing do you still have to do on a regular basis? How many other health conditions are you dealing with? How comprehensive is your health insurance coverage?

If you are suffering some pain or discomfort, you can try a couple of things.

• Compression stockings may help with the discomfort, but they do nothing to treat the condition itself.

• Beginning or increasing your exercise program may help somewhat. But check with your doctor about specific recommendations for you.

If you’ve already tried these things and are still having significant pain or discomfort, there is no reason not to have varicose vein treatment when you’re over 60. This is a progressive medical condition, and if you are healthy in most other areas of your life, such discomfort will only continue to increase the negative impact it’s having on your quality of life.

Why should you live with that, when a fairly simple procedure called endovenous ablation can be performed in an outpatient setting? Using radiofrequency or laser energy your vein doctor will close down the troubling veins by heating them, which then allows your blood system to redistribute the work of those veins to other blood vessels in the area. Most insurance programs are happy to cover venous closure since it is a minimally invasive procedure that costs far less than it might if your condition worsened and led to more serious consequences such as leg ulcers and blood clots–both potentially life threatening.

Don’t wait.