Top 10 Exercises to Improve Circulation & Blood Flow in Your Feet and Legs

Hello Health Champions today I want to talk  about 10 exercises and things you can do to  

improve circulation in your legs and your feet  and exercise number one is walking which is a  

fantastic exercise because you can do it for a  very long period of time you can basically do  

it for hours which means that you do thousands and  thousands of repetitions that improve circulation  

so what exactly is circulation to start  understanding this a little better we want to talk  

about cardiovascular circulation and interstitial  circulation so cardiovascular circulation like the  

name says starts with the heart and then the heart  pumps out through the arteries and these arteries  

have thick walls so that they have muscles they  can contract and change the tension in that artery  

so we pump into the artery and then it gets into  the peripheral tissues into the cells and then a  

lot of this comes back in and it is circulated  back through the veins but on the way there we  

also have a bunch of cells and that's where the  purpose of the blood is that to deliver oxygen  

and nutrients to the cells so some of this leaks  out the oxygen leaks out but with it also some of  

the fluid and it gets into the cell it does its  thing so inside the blood vessels it's called  

the cardiovascular the vascular portion and in  between it's called the interstitial so we have  

fluid going from the blood vessels outside into  the interstitial area the extracellular fluid  

which is between the cells and then we also have  the intracellular some of this fluid is now going  

to go in and out of the cells themselves but  then this fluid the interstitial fluid needs  

to get back in so a little bit of that will seep  back in through the veins a few percent but most  

of this is going into the lymphatic system so we  have lymph vessels that are going to pump this and  

Pump It Up Against Gravity and dump it back into  the vein so that the vein can take it back into  

the heart and start all over and we'll talk about  some of these details so we really understand the  

difference between the two and which exercises  address which one and when is it appropriate and  

now when you're walking what happens is first of  all you're increasing circulation because you're  

making your hard work a little bit more but the  thing to understand about this whole system is  

that the heart is a whole lot higher then your  feet are so gravity is going to pull all this  

liquid down towards your feet and the question is  how does it get back up and this is partially why  

we have blood pressure because the pressure has  to be high enough to return the blood to the heart  

but that's only half the story because with the  veins it doesn't have enough pressure to get it  

all the way from the veins back to the heart so in  these veins in your calves you have little valves  

that assist the pressure so it can't backflow  as much but that's not enough we need a pumping  

action from the muscles in your calf your calf  muscles can create very tight pressure that  

pushes on these veins and on these Valves and  Propel the blood upwards and that's the beauty  

of walking that let's say that you walk for an  hour you probably take in the neighborhood of 5  

000 steps so that means this pump the muscle pump  and the squeezing is helping the blood return 5  

000 times during that walk another great  exercise would be calf raises so if you just  

stand flat on your feet and you raise yourself  up lifting the heels you're also Contracting  

this calf muscle and you're doing it much more  forcefully than when you're walking so on the  

one hand you get more force in the pumping  action but on the other hand you can't do 5  

000 reps so do as many as you can but you're not  getting as much effect you're getting more Force  

but less repetition and you can also do these  calf raises as a form of resistance training to  

improve your muscle mass and your muscle tone and  then you can do them on both feet you can do them  

on one foot at a time and if you really want to  push it you can also get on a wedge put your toes  

on a wedge that way you get more Dynamics you  get more amplitude on that muscle work another  

great exercise is squats because you don't have  to use any equipment you can just use your body  

but what's really important is to position  yourself so you don't hurt yourself and the  

key is to keep your whole foot on the ground and  try to put a little bit more weight on your heels  

than on the front of the foot a lot of people feel  that they're too stiff so they put more weight on  

the front of the foot and then you're going to be  hurting your knees you're going to be putting two  

much pressure on the knee so you put the whole  foot flat down and then as you go down you can  

lean forward a little bit but make sure that  you keep your back straight so keeping your back  

straight doesn't mean you can't lean forward it's  all right to lean forward a little bit stick your  

butt out but keep the weight more so on the heels  than on the front of the foot a fourth exercise  

is to ride a bike and here again it's sort of like  walking you can keep this up for a long long time  

you can do thousands of repetitions and just like  the walking you're getting a nice long extension  

with your foot you're pumping that calf and you're  also engaging the glutes and the quads you're  

getting a lot of circulation through the whole leg  and of course this could be done on a stationary  

bike or if you have access to the outdoors then  feel free to go outside it's always nicer to  

ride in the open number five is stretching and  here you want to stretch the back of the calf  

and the back of the knee and the back of the  hamstring so some of the things that you can do  

is you can stand on the edge of something and just  let the heel drop down or you can put your leg up  

on something and lean forward and when you do this  if you bend the knee a little bit now it's going  

to take mostly the hamstring but if you straighten  the knee now you're going to get the back of the  

knee as well and if you want to stretch the whole  chain of muscles all at the same time now you can  

pull the toe towards you you can straighten  the knee and you can straighten your back and  

lean forward a little bit now you're going to  get that entire muscle chain all at the same  

time number six is foam rollers and they're great  they can come in different hardness so if they're  

a little bit softer then they don't push as much  depending on how much pressure you can tolerate  

and you can just use these on any muscle group and  roll back and forth and they act kind of like a  

massage there's like a squeegee they just push the  blood in the direction that you're rolling it but  

remember how we said that gravity is a challenge  here because as we're trying to get the blood back  

gravity is pulling it down and this is why so  much of the circulation problems happen in the  

legs and the feet and most of these exercises  we're going to have gravity working against us  

which is okay for most people who are healthy  but once we start having some challenges this  

may not be enough and this is where we need to  understand how edema relates to circulation so  

a lot of people talk about edema as being the  same thing as circulation but it's not really  

poor circulation can lead to edema because  gravity pulls down and then we get a pooling  

if we don't return the blood properly we get a  pooling of the blood in the lower extremities  

and then over time this can lead to leakage and  event essentially edema so again here we have the  

heart pumping and we have now the blood pumping  into a blood vessel and then we have these cells  

and if we get this pooling gravity pulls down we  get the pulling of the liquid some of this liquid  

is going to seep out in the interstitial fluid  and now if we don't have that proper return if we  

don't have enough muscle tone and a few different  factors we're going to cover then we can get  

leakage and edema so edema looks like puffy skin  like there's a swelling of the skin and oftentimes  

they call it pitting edema because if you push  on it then it leaves an indentation that could  

take several minutes to go away so now a great  exercise to deal with this is called ankle pumps  

and what you want to do now is you want to do them  laying down and if you lay down on your back now  

you don't have gravity working against you so much  and if you also raise your feet a little bit above  

Heart level now you actually have gravity assist  gravity doesn't work against you but but now your  

feet is higher so gravity helps return this fluid  to the heart and then you move your ankles you can  

pump them up and down you can move them around in  circles and now this pumping action in the vein  

kicks in but you have gravity assist so you have  a much greater chance of returning the fluid to  

the heart if all of those things aren't working as  well as they should another thing you can do for  

edema is called compression stockings so basically  what's happening is the heart creates pressure  

that's called blood pressure which means the  pressure is literally higher inside the blood than  

it is in the surrounding tissue and if liquid has  pressure on it it's going to have a tendency to  

leak out but if you add a compression stocking now  you're adding an external barrier you're pushing  

this together from the outside so therefore there  is less of a tendency for this liquid to leak out  

and you can also also with enough pressure you  can assist the lymph drainage the lymph vessels  

to return it up to the vascular system and if you  need a little extra help with your edema of course  

you can do the combination of the compression  stockings and elevating your feet so now you  

have the pressure and you get gravity assist so if  you already have edema this can be a good thing to  

do it helps to reduce the edema it helps return  the fluid to circulation but we want to realize  

that this is more of a symptom treatment that in  a sense you're improving circulation by returning  

fluid from the edema into the vessels but you're  not really helping the body with the root cause  

there was a reason that this stuff leaked out in  the first place or that it's not being returned  

properly so we want to understand some of the  other factors that can cause poor circulation and  

edema and is obesity one of them well very often  they blame all sorts of things on Obesity that  

the fat gets in the way and so forth but obesity  does not cause these problems instead obesity is  

caused by insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes  and if you have insulin resistance that leads to  

elevated blood glucose and high insulin levels  and high blood pressure and these things are the  

actual causes of poor circulation because the  extra blood pressure obviously can increase the  

leakage of fluid into the tissue and then the high  blood glucose tends to seep out it leaks into the  

tissue so we have higher blood glucose levels in  the blood and around that blood glucose is going  

to bind it's going to attract some fluid to it  and now we get a little bit of a swelling and  

that interferes with the circulation so one of the  things that's very common with type 2 diabetes is  

called macular edema and what happens here is  that the tiny tiny blood vessels in the back  

of the eye and the retina they swell because  of that high blood glucose the circulation is  

interfered with and now the retina doesn't get  the blood supply and the oxygen that it needs  

and there's why type 2 diabetes is the leading  cause of blindness but just like the tiny blood  

vessels in the eye can swell we can also have  other blood vessels other capillaries swell up  

so we get vascular swelling and edema in other  places as well another couple of organs often  

involved with type 2 diabetes are the liver and  the kidney and the kidney has lots and lots of  

little micro vessels also and the kidney is of  course responsible for fluid regulation so kidney  

with the minerals and the kidney filtration is the  organ that actually filters and regulates fluids  

that's super important and the liver is who  makes albumin and what's that it's a protein  

that is the main blood protein and it kind of acts  like a sponge it floats around here inside the  

bloodstream and it holds the fluid back inside so  that's one of the factors that resist this leakage  

of fluid if we didn't have the albumin then there  would be virtually nothing holding the fluid back  

in so if our albumin drops too much if the liver  can't make it properly or if we have severe kidney  

disease then this albumin is actually going to  leak straight out of the kidney filter and we're  

going to lose albumin that way and again if we  don't have enough albumin in the bloodstream then  

we're going to increase this leakage dramatically  so the vascular swelling can interfere with the  

actual circulation the cardiovascular circulation  inside the blood vessels but all the rest of these  

factors are more about how edema develops but  then if we get back to the actual circulation  

of blood in the blood vessels one thing we  need to understand is vasoconstriction and  

this is the primary mechanism that the body uses  to determine how much blood is going to what part  

of the body at what time so vasoconstriction means  tightening or narrowing of a blood vessel and this  

happens because arteries and arterioles which  are tiny arteries have muscles built into the  

wall so they can tighten up and narrow the Lumen  of that blood vessels and the thing that causes  

vasoconstriction is called stress so we're going  to talk about two types of stress one is acute  

and that is happens short term it happens quickly  and it's usually going to be very intense but not  

last so long so that could be exercise or it could  be running from a tiger for example so now what  

happens is the heart is going to pump harder and  faster the heart is going to squeeze much harder  

it's going to increase that blood pressure and  we do have the vasoconstriction so the heart is  

pushing against an increased vascular tone so the  blood vessel Narrows down but the heart is pushing  

much much harder which increases the speed of the  blood and it's going to increase the circulation  

so because the heart is pushing so much harder  it's still it's going to overcome that increased  

muscle tone and that's how we get increased  circulation and that's what we need with an  

acute stress because we're exercising or running  away from something but what happens with chronic  

stress now if we are just sitting in traffic or if  we're at work or we're just feeling bad in general  

but there's no increased physical activity going  on now the heart is going to pump at a baseline  

level it's not going to increase it's not going  to pump significantly harder but because of the  

stress we still have increased vasoconstriction  we still have increase this tone but now the blood  

vessels are tight and the heart is pumping the  same so now the blood can't get through and now we  

get decreased circulation so the same mechanism  of vasoconstriction can cause an increase or  

a decrease in circulation and obviously what  most people have trouble with is the chronic  

stress so if chronic stress is contributing to  vasoconstriction and poor circulation there's a  

pretty good chance that you're going to have cold  hands and feet and one of the best ways of dealing  

with that is breathing exercises and there's all  kinds of different breathing exercises but we're  

going to talk about a very specific one for a very  specific reason and that's to improve the balance  

between your fight flight and your feed breed  system so here's how that works when you breathe  

in your heart speeds up a little bit because your  body is so smart it knows when there's more more  

oxygen in the lung it makes more sense to speed  up the heart send a little bit more blood there to  

pick up the oxygen and vice versa when you breathe  out there is less oxygen there so let's slow down  

the heart so we don't waste resources and when you  breathe in your heart speeds up and that can only  

happen if we get a little bit of stimulation  from your sympathetic nervous system from the  

fight flight branch of your nervous system and at  the same time this fight flight response creates  

a tiny little bit of vasoconstriction so on the  other hand the opposite happens when you breathe  

out now your heart slows down and we fire off the  parasympathetic nervous system the feed breed and  

we get vasodilation now the problem is that  people already have a lot of stress in their  

lives but when you breathe wrong you may make it  worse so most people they breathe in for a couple  

of seconds and they breathe out really fast and we  breathe 18 to 20 times per minute and that doesn't  

give this system any time to balance so what you  want to do is you want to breathe in for about  

five seconds and then you want to breathe out for  about five seconds and that's the part that people  

Miss they don't breathe out slow enough so they  don't allow enough time for the parasympathetic  

to balance out the sympathetic the feed breed  the relaxation system doesn't work long enough  

to balance out the stress system but by practicing  this five seconds in five seconds out for five to  

ten minutes a day you're in training your system  you're building up some long-term plasticity some  

long-term Automation in this system to balance  it out so it's not something that just works  

when you do it it's a skill in your nervous system  that you condition if you do it consistently and  

the tenth thing that you can do is you can  assist your body with some supplement there  

are some excellent excellent supplements that we  use a ton of and standard process we'll put a link  

down below they have a product called circuplex  which has nutrients that assist the body with  

vasodilation to improve the circulation and a  specific one is called cataplex E2 this one is  

more for the heart so if people have angina from  vasoconstrictions and their coronary arteries very  

often the cataplex E2 can be enough to handle that  angina and then we have Ginkgo Forte it's a very  

concentrated strong form of Ginkgo which helps  improve circulation also especially with brains if  

you have brain fog or if you're trying to get some  more nutrients and circulation to the brain Ginkgo  

can be a good option and then there's a couple  of more which is livaplex and Rena food so these  

two are for liver support and for kidney support  so these would be if you have reason to believe  

that part of your problem of circulation is that  your liver has a lot of stress that your liver  

is not functioning optimally then liver Plex can  be a good one and likewise if you think that your  

kidney is the source of the problem if your kidney  filtration for on blood work they have something  

called egfr if those values are kind of low then  you might want to get on some Rina Foods so these  

don't directly improve circulation but if you have  some liver or kidney stress that contributes to it  

then that could be a great idea if you enjoyed  this video you're going to love that one and if  

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