Our feet swell due to a variety of reasons. Normally, you’re playing some type of sport and sprained your ankle. Due to this, your ankle is painful and swells due to inflammation. In these cases, stick to the RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) therapy.

The case of swollen feet is a bit different in the older age group. Their feet can swell spontaneously up to even their knees, without no obvious reason. It might not cause much harm, but it can definitely be uncomfortable and worsen their quality of life.

Moreover, people who work while standing or sitting in long periods are also at risk of developing edema in their lower extremities.

What causes feet to swell?

Feet swelling, or edema, happens when there is an accumulation of fluid in the tissues in your body. In this case, the body tissues in your feet are affected.

The fluid that accumulates in these tissues originate from the blood itself. When small blood vessels pass through these tissues, water leaks out into the cells. Eventually, the water either gets absorbed back into the blood vessels or go through the lymphatic system to be drained.

Any issues along this process can disrupt the balance of fluid, causing the fluid in the cells to build up. This is what edema is.

A quick test to see if your foot, or your beloveds are edematous, simply press the skin gently, preferably over bony areas. Once your finger reaches the bone, release your finger. If there is an indent that takes a long time to disappear, then you have edema.

What are the home remedies that can help reduce edema?

A quick disclaimer before we go into the home remedies: always consult a physician to get yourself diagnosed with whatever is causing the feet to swell. Medical conditions such as heart failure, kidney failure, and hypertension can possibly be the cause of your edema.

After being prescribed with the relevant medications to treat the underlying medical condition and reduce the swelling, feel free to try out these home remedies to reduce the swelling and further improve your quality of life.

1. Contrast bath therapy

Contrast therapy is a form of hydrotherapy, which is the use of water for healing and therapeutic purposes. To do contrast therapy, simply prepare 2 basins containing hot water and cold water respectively. The water level should at least reach above the ankles.

There are no strict guidelines on how hot or cold they need to be, but ideally the hot water should be above 40 °C (104 °F), and the cold water should be below 18 °C (64.4 °F) with ice. You can use a digital thermometer or a dial thermometer to get a precise temperature reading.

After you have prepared the hot and cold footbaths, dip one foot into the hot water for about 4 minutes. After that, dip the same foot into cold water for 1 minute. Repeat this cycle for a total of 30 minutes, ideally.

What contrast therapy does is that it alternates the state of the blood vessels between vasodilation and vasoconstriction. When dipped into hot water, the blood vessels in the foot vasodilate, meaning they expand to allow more blood flow. When dipped into cold water, they vasoconstrict, meaning they shrink to reduce blood flow.

The effect is that this creates a pumping motion to squeeze out the excess fluid from your bodily tissues, reducing edema. It’s kind of like a gentle massage, but on the deeper level.

There was a study done in 2023 among kidney disease patients, which studied the effects of a combination of contrast bath therapy and elevating the foot towards edema. They found that this method managed to decrease the severity of edema successfully.

We have also discussed in detail the benefits of hot and cold footbaths in this article, if you’re interested.

2. Foot massages

Massaging has been around for ages, in all cultures and civilizations. Be it to relieve muscle sprains, reduce pain, or even just for relaxing purposes, massaging is a great skill to have.

Foot massages, in particular are useful in reducing swelling of the foot. You don’t need to be some expert Thai massager, either.

To do this, simply squeeze and massage your feet from the ankle upwards until you reach the level where there is no swelling. Release your hands and go back to the starting point to repeat the movement. Make sure not to massage downwards as this will most likely worsen the edema.

You can massage your feet as long as you need, just make sure not to tire yourself. It’s best to have another person massage your feet when you’re out of fuel.

The science-y term for this is manual lymphatic drainage (MNL). The explanation behind this method is that we want to manually squeeze the fluid in the tissues upwards, towards our heart via the lymphatic system. Only then, the excess fluid can re-enter the circulation.

According to an article published in the British Journal of Community nursing, Massages as a solution for edema has been recorded as far back as 100 years ago, in which a German surgeon by the name of Winiwarter used it to promote resorption of fluid in women with lymphedema.

In 1936, Emil Vodder presented a form of manual lymph drainage in a conference in Paris. 30 years later, doctors around the world started to show interest in this method and it grew more in popularity.

3. Lower limb exercises

You might think that when your foot swells, you need to let it rest as much as possible. Well, this is true if the swelling is caused by injury such as ankle sprains. If you injured your foot and it swells, it’s best to practice the RICE method (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation).

However, in the case of edema caused by fluid accumulation, movement actually helps a ton. Every muscle contraction helps to squeeze the fluid back into circulation. This process is called venous return.

There are 2 useful lower limb exercises that can help with edema: ankle pumps and short-arc quads.

Ankle pumps will contract the muscles in your leg, mainly the gastrocnemius, soleus, and extensor muscles of the leg. Short-arc quads will contract the quadriceps muscles at the front of your thighs.

Combination of these two exercises will promote fluid movement from your ankles up all the way to your hips.

To do this exercise, simply follow these steps:

1. Lie flat on your back. Make yourself comfortable.
2. Place something under your legs to elevate them. You can use a regular pillow, or you could invest in a leg elevation pillow.
3. To do ankle pumps, simply move your feet down and up, while keeping your legs and thighs still. Alternate between right and left feet. Do these 15 to 20 times.
4. Then, start doing short-arc quads. To do this, simply straighten your knees and raise your feet up. Alternate between the right and left legs. Make sure to hold the legs straight briefly before putting them down. Do these for another 15 to 20 times.

Now, there are other variations that you can do. We always recommend doing these exercises while lying flat with the feet elevated, as this promotes the fluid to go down into the body with gravity.

However, you can also do these exercises while in the sitting position. The downside to this is that gravity will work against you by keeping the fluid down to your feet. Luckily, there are methods that can minimize this effect.

To do this exercise in the sitting position:

1. Sit comfortably with your knees straightened as much as possible. Preferably, place your legs on a stool with a soft surface.
2. Do ankle pumps by simply move your feet down and up, while keeping your legs and thighs still. Alternate between right and left feet. Do these 15 to 20 times.
3. If you’re not using a stool, do long-arc quads by straightening your knees and lifting up your feet so that they are parallel to your hips. Alternate between right and left legs. Do these for another 15 to 20 times. If you’re using a tool, just continue with the ankle pumps.

4. Compression socks

Socks aren’t just useful to make a fashion statement. There are a variety of socks in the medical space which help patients with them conditions. For example, we have diabetic socks for those with diabetic feet.

For edema and foot swellings, we have compression socks. As the name suggests, these socks apply a constant compression throughout the feet that squeezes the tissues and blood vessels so that excess fluid can be drained.

With so many brands and designs on the market, we have to know what makes a compression stocking effective. Here is a list of properties that you should consider when buying one:

• Graduated compression: According to a systemic review in the United States National Library of Medicine, graduated compression means a decreasing gradient of compression from the ankle upwards. These socks are usually classified by their ankle pressure which range between below 20 mmHg (low compression) to above 30 mmHg (high compression)
• Material: Socks, just like any other clothing, has to be made with comfortable, odorless, bacteria-free material. This means that synthetic fabrics like nylon, polyester, and Lycra work best, especially after being infused with copper. There was a study that showed that infusing fabrics with copper can kill bacteria within 45 seconds.
• Moisture-wicking: Wearing socks for health purposes means that you’re going to wear them for a long period of time. That means our feet will accumulate moisture from sweating a lot, and this increases the risk of blistering. Moisture-wicking socks help by allowing the sweat to evaporate easily.
• Durability: Compression socks work because of they are elastic. Elastic materials such as rubber and springs lose their elasticity when used near their breaking point for a long time. It’s best to find socks that last long so that you don’t need to cash out too frequently.
• Length: This is a case-by-case criteria. Depending on the level of edema, be it up to the ankles, knees, or even thighs, you would want to get a different length of compression socks to suit your needs.

That being said, we would recommend these Laite Hebe Medical Compression Socks. They offer light graduated compression of 15-20 mmHg at the ankles. They’re made of nylon and polyester which are synthetic which are usually odorless. Finally, they’re very durable and can retain their elasticity even with repeated wears and washing.

5. Combination therapy

The final advice home remedy we have on this list is actually not a separate method, but a combination of various methods. To increase your chances of decreasing foot swelling, it’s best to mix-and-match various home remedies.

For example, while you’re bathing your foot with a contrast bath, you can massage your legs to speed up the process.

Let’s have a look at some examples:

• Contrast bath therapy + foot massages
• Foot massages + lower limb exercises
• Lower limb exercises + compression socks
• Foot massages + compression socks

Conclusion

Foot swelling or edema is such an unfortunate thing to deal with. From contrast baths to compression socks, we’ve tried our best to provide you with evidence-based material so that you get the best out of these practices.

In the end, always consult your physician for swellings that might have a more sinister cause such has heart failure, kidney failure, and such.