Swollen Feet And Water Retention
What you are experiencing is a completely natural occurrence that happens with most drivers when they are on the road for more than an hour. Swollen feet are a simple condition otherwise known as water retention. This problem regularly occurs in another group of people quite regularly: diabetics and high blood pressure patients. Having stated this, there is no harm in having a check up for diabetes and high blood pressure. If you are a person who has a medical check done on yourself every two months then, these aspects would have been checked by your doctor. However, if checkups are a rarity, then you should get a urine glucose test and a blood pressure check done. This is imperative if you are slightly overweight.
Water retention is a problem that can be understood with the help of simple physics and biology. In the body, the blood carries nutrients to each and every individual cell. However, the blood does not directly come into contact with these cells. Instead, it diffuses its contents because of pressure into a fluid called interstitial fluid. From here, individual cells can absorb the nutrients. Cellular wastes are then transmitted back to the blood via a process called osmosis. This sounds like a perfect balance until you change the pressure situation. When you are in a sitting position, as when you are driving, you change the pressure equation by increasing the blood pressure from slightly bent and largely immobile legs. This means that there is more pressure diffusion from the blood to the tissues with less material being sent back to the blood. This will result in a pooling of fluid that swells the surrounding tissue; otherwise known as fluid retention. This is not dangerous in anyway and as you might have noticed, the problem goes away once you start walking again. This is because the pressures are now stabilized.
Usually, when patients suffer from excessive water retention, the medical advice given is to use a pressure bandage that squeezes the tissue and forces fluid back into the blood. Yours is far from that severe a case; therefore, all you need to do is to loosen up those laces a bit and just allow your feet to swell. Every now and then, take a break from keeping both feet on the pedals, switch to cruise control, and tap your feet to move the blood around. Try to not tank up on fluids when you are on long drives, as this will only worsen the problem, and cut down your salt intake in general as well.
