Stasis dermatitis is a common circulatory skin condition that impacts the lives of many individuals around the world. In this comprehensive overview, we address the important question “What is stasis dermatitis?” We offer you a deep understanding of this condition. Let’s delve into its causes, symptoms, and management options.
Stasis dermatitis: What is it?
Stasis dermatitis is a type of eczema that occurs most commonly on the lower legs of people with poor blood flow. It is caused by venous insufficiency, which is a situation where a valve that pumps blood back to the heart weakens as we age. This results in the leakage of fluids out of the blood vessels to the legs, where they stay. This pooling of fluid is called stasis, which exerts pressure on the skin, causing discoloration, itchiness, pain, and sores.
This disease is also known as gravitational dermatitis, venous eczema, and varicose eczema.
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Who are likely to develop this disease?
Stasis dermatitis are more likely to develop as we age. This is because of the wear and tear on the valves on the blood vessels that help regulate blood flow. However, age is not the only factor that can cause the pooling of fluid on the legs.
Here are other risk factors of developing this circulatory skin condition:
- being diagnosed with venous insufficiency
- family history of venous disease
- high blood pressure
- pregnancy
- being a female
- having an occupation where you need to stand for a long time
- obesity
- heart failure
- kidney failure
- history of blood clot in the leg (deep vein thrombosis)
- having undergone surgery
- little physical activity
What are its symptoms?
Stasis dermatitis is a skin condition that primarily affects the lower extremities, particularly the legs and ankles. As a result of impaired blood flow, it manifests through a range of symptoms that can impact a person’s quality of life.
The early signs and symptoms of stasis dermatitis include the following:
- swelling and discoloration in the legs or ankles
- discoloration of skin to a yellowish-brown color
- redness (if skin tone is light) or having purple, brown, or gray color (if skin tone is dark)
- itchy skin
- scaly skin
- skin dryness
- feeling heavy or achy after standing/sitting for a long period
Treating this condition is very important. If left untreated, it can cause more severe symptoms:
- swelling beyond the ankle, extending to the calf
- shiny skin
- venous ulcers, which are open sores, that can ooze, bleed, and leave scars
- severe stasis dermatitis, which can change the skin permanently
- thickening and hardening of skin
- skin darkening
- cobblestone-like appearance
If you have any of the mentioned symptoms, see a physician for diagnosis and treatment of symptoms. Lifestyle changes may be necessary and recommended.
See Related: How to treat eczema flare-ups symptoms
Treatment for stasis dermatitis
Treating stasis dermatitis involves addressing the underlying circulatory issues and providing symptomatic relief. A holistic and personalized approach is essential for effectively managing the condition.
Here are some strategies you can do to help manage stasis dermatitis and its symptoms:
- Elevate your legs: Elevate your legs above your heart level to improve blood circulation and reduce swelling. You can do this by using pillows while lying down. It is recommended to do this whenever possible, or for 15 minutes every 2 hours.
- Compression therapy: Wearing compression stockings can help promote blood flow and reduce swelling in the affected areas. Make sure to consult a medical professional to find the right compression level for you.
- Skin care: Keep your skin clean and moisturized to prevent dryness, itching, and cracking. Use gentle cleansers and moisturizers specifically for sensitive skin. CANhaveTODAY offers skin care products that are powerful moisturizers and have other beneficial properties for the skin: Waters Mist, Soothing Juggernaut, Healing Legends, and Sparkling Rain. We will talk about their properties later in this article.
- Avoid scratching: Scratching can cause further damage to your skin and increase the risk of infection. Keep your nails short and consider using anti-itch creams like CANhaveTODAY’s Waters Mist and Soothing Juggernaut.
- Exercise: Little physical activity is one of the causes of the pooling of fluids in the legs. Engage in regular physical activity like walking or swimming to promote healthy circulation and reduce the risk of blood clots.
- Weight management: If you are overweight or obese, losing weight can help improve blood flow and reduce the pressure on your veins.
- Medications: Your doctor may prescribe medications to reduce inflammation, manage other symptoms, or treat inflammation.
- Seek professional help: If your symptoms do not improve or worsen with the said measures, see a doctor to give you guidance.
Managing stasis dermatitis requires patience and persistence. Use the above strategies to take control of your condition and improve your blood vessels and skin’s health.
See Related: What are the different types of skin rashes?
Managing stasis dermatitis symptoms with CANhaveTODAY
If you’re worried about the symptoms of stasis dermatitis and how they affect your skin, CANhaveTODAY is here to take your worries away. Our Imagine line of skin care products can help in managing your symptoms and even protect and nourish your skin. We proudly present our all-natural soothing salves Waters Mist, Soothing Juggernaut, and Healing Legends, and our unique Sparkling Rain moisturizer.
How can Waters Mist help?
Waters Mist can provide relief for stasis dermatitis symptoms, containing the main ingredients tea tree oil, lemongrass essential oil, and cinnamon essential oil. The combination of these essential oils in one salve make it an ideal product for treating symptoms of different types of skin problems like contact dermatitis and eczema.
The essential oil from lemongrass, cinnamon, and tea tree have strong anti-inflammatory properties (Table 1). This makes them ideal for soothing irritated skin symptoms like redness, swelling, rashes, and pain. All of them are also strong antibacterial agents, which may help protect the skin from infections.
Aside from the abovementioned, these essential oils can help make wound healing faster (Table 1), which may help if you scratched your dermatitis or it has developed open sores. Additionally, they possess antioxidant activities (Table 1). This means they can protect the skin from environmental damages like that from ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
You can also solve your dry skin problems using Waters Mist! Lemongrass and tea tree essential oils are proven to have moisturizing properties, according to de Andrade et al. (2023) and Wallengren (2011).
Normally, you’ll have to dilute these essential oils with carrier oils so you can use them on your skin safely. As Waters Mist is a salve, these essential oils are already diluted with carrier ingredients, reducing the risk of skin irritation. However, it is still important to perform a patch test before applying it to larger areas.
What properties does Soothing Juggernaut have?
Soothing Juggernaut is an award-winning innovative salve that has excellent anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antifungal properties. These properties may be beneficial for skin health and soothing the discomfort caused by stasis dermatitis.
Frankincense essential oil is known for its anti-inflammatory properties, as shown by this study, which may help with itchiness, rashes, redness, and swelling. Arnica essential oil, this study shows, and cypress essential oil, this study proves, also possess properties to fight inflammation.
Are your feeling pain on your stasis dermatitis? Soothing Juggernaut can alleviate pain, having arnica essential oil which is a potent pain reliever, as evidenced by this study. Frankincense essential oil can also help alleviate pain, according to this study. Meanwhile, this study mentions the ability of cypress essential oil to relieve pain.
But there’s more! Cypress essential oil, frankincense essential oil. and arnica essential oil have strong wound healing properties that can help you accelerate the process. Moreover, frankincense and cypress essential oils can moisturize the skin.
With all these properties combined, you’ll be able to relieve the symptoms of stasis dermatitis like itchiness, pain, swelling, discomfort, skin dryness, and redness. But remember, it is essential to perform a patch test before applying the salve to larger areas.
See Related: Get rid of bruises with Frankincense bruise cream Soothing Juggernaut
What symptoms does Healing Legends help with?
Healing Legends is a blend that features myrrh, bergamot, and frankincense essential oils. It can help with a variety of stasis dermatitis symptoms, owing to the properties of these main ingredients.
Myrrh essential oil is known for its antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and wound healing properties (Table 1). This means that this essential oil can potentially help your symptoms by preventing infections, decreasing inflammation, and promoting wound healing.
Meanwhile, bergamot essential oil has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, wound healing, and anti-hyperpigmentation properties (Table 1). These properties protects your skin from infection, relieves itch, swelling, redness and irritation, makes wound heal faster, and reduce dark spots from wounds.
Frankincense essential oil, as mentioned earlier, is recognized for its anti-inflammatory, pain-relieving, and wound healing properties. In addition, this essential oil have strong wound healing properties, which makes Healing Legends the best CANhaveTODAY product if your goal is to heal wounds quickly with reduced scar formation.
Before using Healing Legends, it’s crucial to perform a patch test before using the salve on larger areas. It is also important to keep in mind that Healing Legends, Waters Mist, and Soothing Juggernaut are not treatment for stasis dermatitis, but they can help relieve its symptoms.
What can Sparkling Rain do to the skin?
Sparkling Rain is a moisturizer that can help with skin dryness caused by stasis dermatitis. It is a powerful combination of grapefruit essential oil, chaga mushroom extract, aloe vera, shea butter, mango seed butter, and more! These ingredients are known to have potent moisturizing properties, but what makes them so good at it?
Grapefruit essential oil and chaga mushroom extract contain magnesium (Straka & Belous, 2016, Mazurkiewicz, 2006), which has may benefits to the skin. This study shows that magnesium-rich Dead Sea salt solution improves the function of the skin barrier, hydrates the skin, and reduces the inflammation in dry skin due to atopy. These ingredients are also excellent in preventing infections, being strong agents in inhibiting and killing bacteria and fungi (Table 1).
Moreover, grapefruit oil and chaga mushroom extract are string antioxidants, which protect the skin from the damage caused by environmental factors like sunlight. This study states that chaga mushroom extract protects human lymphocytes from free radicals, which cause DNA damage and skin aging. Meanwhile this study proves that grapefruit essential oil helps by scavenging free radicals, which are unstable molecules that build up on cells and damage its components.
Sparkling Rain has many other benefits to the skin due to its composition. Like other CANhaveTODAY products, Sparkling Rain is not a treatment to stasis dermatitis, but it is a moisturizer you can use to relieve skin dryness.
Learn more about Waters Mist, Soothing Juggernaut, Healing Legends, and Sparkling Rain using Table 1.
| Waters Mist | Soothing Juggernaut | Healing Legends (with Frankincense) | Sparkling Rain | |||||||
| Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) | Cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) | Tea Tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) | Arnica (Arnica montana) | Frankincense (Boswellia carteri) | Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) | Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha) | Bergamot (Citrus bergamia) | Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquuu) | Grapefruit (Citrus paradisi) | |
| Antibacterial | Mild to Strong [1,2] | Strong [25] | Strong [42] | Mild to Strong [53,54,55] | Moderate [64] | Moderate to Strong [77] | Mild to Strong [90] | Mild to Strong [102] | Strong [119] | Strong [129,130] |
| – Acne | Mild to Moderate [3] | Strong [26] | Strong [42] | Mild to Strong [53,54,55] | Moderate [65] | Moderate [42] | Moderate [90] | Mild to Strong [102] | – | Strong [131] |
| – Cellulitis | Mild to Strong [1,2,4] | – | Strong [42] | – | – | Moderate to Strong [42] | – | – | – | Strong [129,132,130] |
| – Itch | Mild to Strong [1,2,3] | – | Strong [42] | Mild to Strong [53,54,55] | Moderate [64] | – | Strong [91] | Strong [103] | – | Strong [129] |
| – Skin infections | Mild to Strong [1,2,3] | Mild to Strong [27] | Strong [42] | Mild to Strong [53,54,55] | Moderate | Strong [78] | Strong [90] | Mild to Strong [104] | Strong [119] | Strong [132, 130, 133] |
| Anti-inflammatory | Strong [5] | Strong [28] | Moderate to Strong [43] | Strong [56] | Strong [65] | Strong [79] | Strong [92] | Strong [105] | Strong [120, 121, 122] | Strong [134, 135] |
| – Acne | Mild to Moderate [3] | Strong [26] | Strong [42] | – | Strong [65] | Moderate to Strong [42] | Moderate [90] | Strong [106] | – | |
| – Swelling | Strong [5] | Strong [28] | Strong [118] | Strong [56] | Strong [65] | Strong [79] | Strong [92] | Strong [105] | Strong [120, 121] | Strong [134] |
| Antifungal | Strong [5,6] | Mild to Strong [29] | Moderate to Strong [44] | Mild to Moderate [55] | Moderate to Strong [42] | Moderate [80] | Moderate to Strong [93] | Moderate to Strong [107] | Moderate to Strong [119] | Mild to Strong [136, 137, 138, 139] |
| – Athlete’s foot (Foot itch) | Strong [7,8] | Strong [29] | Moderate to Strong [45] | – | Moderate to Strong [42] | Strong [81,82] | Moderate to Strong [94] | Strong [108] | – | Strong [140] |
| – Itch | Strong [9,10] | – | Moderate to Strong [42] | – | Moderate to Strong [42] | Moderate [81] | Moderate [90] | – | – | Strong [140] |
| Antimicrobial | Mild to Strong [1,2] | Strong [30,25,31] | Strong [42] | Mild to Moderate [53,57,58] | Moderate to Strong [64, 42] | Strong [83,84] | Mild to Strong [90,93] | Mild to Strong [102,107] | Strong [119,123] | Strong [140, 141, 142] |
| Antioxidant (fights skin damage and aging) | Strong [11,2] | Strong [32,33,25] | Moderate to Strong [46] | Strong [59] | Mild to Strong [66] | Strong [80] | Mild to Strong [90] | Mild to Strong [109] | Strong [124, 125] | Strong [142] |
| Antiparasitic | Strong [12,13] | Mild to Moderate [34] | Strong [47] | – | Mild to Strong [67,68] | Strong [80] | Mild to Strong [95] | Strong [126] | Moderate [143] | |
| Antispasmodic (relieves muscle spasms) | Strong [14] | Mild to Moderate [35] | – | Moderate to Strong [57] | Moderate to Strong [69,70] | Strong – Muscle spasms – Menstrual cramps – Restless leg syndrome | Strong [96] – Intestinal spasms | Strong [110] – Intestinal spasms | – | – |
| Insecticidal (Kills insects) | Strong [15] | Strong [36] | Strong [48] | Mild to Moderate [60] | Strong [71] | Strong [80] | Moderate to Strong [97] | – | – | Strong [144, 145] |
| Moisturizing (for dry and/or cracked skin) | Moderate to Strong [16] | – | Moderate to Strong [49] | – | Strong [72] | Moderate to Strong [85] | Strong (Very Strong with Frankincense) [98] | Strong [111] | Strong [127, 128] | Strong [146, 147] |
| Reduces bruising | Moderate to Strong [17] | Strong | Strong [50] | Moderate to Strong [61,62] | Strong [73] | Strong | Moderate | Moderate to Strong | – | Strong [148] |
| Very Strong | ||||||||||
| Reduces cellulite | Strong [18] | – | – | – | – | Moderate to Strong [42] | – | – | – | – |
| Reduces hyperpigmentation | Moderate to Strong [19] | Mild to Moderate [37] | Strong [51] | Strong [63] | Strong [74,65] | Moderate [86] | Moderate [63] | Strong [112] | – | Mild to Strong [149] |
| Very Strong | ||||||||||
| Reduces or relieves pain | Strong [20] | Strong [28,38] | – | Strong [56] | Strong [75] | Moderate to Strong [87] – Joint pain – Arthritic pain – Muscle pain | Moderate [99] | Strong [113] | Strong [151] | – |
| Repels Insects | Strong [21,22,23] | Moderate to Strong [39,40] | Strong [48] | – | Strong [76] | Strong [88] | Strong [100] | Mild to Moderate [114,115] | – | Strong [144, 145] |
| Treats cramps | – | – | – | Strong [57] | – | Strong [89] | – | – | – | – |
| Wound Healing | Strong [24] | Strong [41] | Moderate to Strong [52] | Strong [56] | Strong [65] | Strong [42] | Strong [101] | Moderate to Strong [116,117] | – | Strong [150] |
FAQ
Venous stasis dermatitis is a type of eczema that occurs on the lower legs when there is poor blood flow.
Venous stasis dermatitis is caused by venous insufficiency, a condition where the veins can’t help the blood flow back to the heart. This causes the pooling of fluids on the legs, which increases the pressure on the skin, leading to its symptoms (discoloration, pain, and itchiness).
Stasis dermatitis is a lifelong condition, but you can manage its symptoms by taking steps to manage their root cause, which is poor blood flow. Keep moving, monitor your blood pressure, moisturize your skin, manage your weight, and seek medical attention to treat your condition.
The early signs and symptoms of stasis dermatitis include swelling and discoloration in the lower leg/s, redness in lighter skin or having purplish, brownish, or grayish color in darker skin, itchiness, scaliness, and skin dryness.
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