5 Visible Signs Your Arteries Are Clogging (Doctor Explains)

Most people assume clogged arteries stay completely silent until the day a heart attack or a stroke happens. But what if that's not true? There are specific signals that your body sends long before that event ever happens, some obvious once you know what to look for, and some showing up in places that many people would not even associate with their artery health at all. Today, I want to walk you through five signs that you can see and feel that show you your arteries are clogging and why catching each of these early matters so much. Let me start with the classic one, and that is leg pain that comes and goes with walking. This is called claudication, and it's one of the clearest, most well-documented physical signs of poor arterial health outside of the heart. Here's what it feels like, a cramping, aching, or heavy sensation in your calf, thigh, or hip that reliably shows up after walking a certain distance and then eases once you sit down and rest. This pattern happens because narrowed arteries in your leg cannot deliver enough oxygenated blood to keep up with the demand of working muscle during activity. This is the same mechanism that causes chest pain during exertion in someone with narrowed coronary arteries, but it occurs in your legs instead. This condition is known as peripheral artery disease, and it shares the same underlying cause as coronary artery disease, the same plaque, same atherosclerosis, but it's located in a different part of your circulatory system. Research has consistently shown that people with peripheral artery disease carry a significantly elevated risk of heart attacks and strokes, even when their chest has never hurt once before. If you notice a consistent pattern of leg discomfort, especially after longer walks, and it gets relieved when you stop walking, this is something you absolutely should bring up to your doctor right away. The second one on our list is one that most people genuinely do not connect back to the health of their arteries at all, and the research behind it is genuinely surprising. Sign number two is chronic low back pain. The arteries supplying blood to your lower back and spine are among the earliest in your entire body to accumulate plaque. Research has found that roughly 10% of Americans already show advanced blockages in these specific arteries by age 20. When blood flow to this region becomes reduced, which contributes to disc problems and pinched nerve issues. Studies looking specifically at chronic back pain, the single most common form of any pain reported in the United States, have found that people suffering from it are significantly more likely to have blocked lumbar arteries compared to people without chronic back pain. Now this does not mean that every cause of chronic back pain has to do with arterial insufficiency. Most back pain is mechanical or musculoskeletal in etiology. But if you have persistent unexplained chronic back pain, particularly alongside other risk factors on this list that we're going to get through in a second, this deserves to be a potential vascular risk sign and it shouldn't just be chalked up to wear and tear disease. Now before we get into the last three signs on this list, if you've already learned something new in this video, please consider subscribing as it really does help push this information out to the people that genuinely need to hear it the most. It's completely free and it truly does help improve the growth of this channel. Without each and every one of you, I wouldn't be able to make these videos, so for that I am truly grateful and I want to say thank you. Sign number three is one that a doctor can check for, but it's one that most don't detect on a routine physical exam. Sign number three is a carotid brui or a whooshing sound in the neck. When plaque builds up in the carotid arteries running through your neck, it narrows the space that the blood has to flow through it and it therefore can create a distinctive whooshing sound called a brui, which is audible through a stethoscope placed on your neck. In the early stages, carotid artery narrowing frequently produces no symptoms and you wouldn't notice it on your own at all. Often people do not discover that they have this condition until they experience something called a transient ischemic attack or often known as a mini stroke or even a full-blown stroke. This is exactly why a routine physical exam matters beyond just simply checking a box. Ask your doctor directly whether they have listened for a carotid brui during your next physical exam, particularly if you have any other risk factors on this list or if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or a family history of strokes. The fourth sign on this list is a little bit peculiar and unfortunately, ladies, it only applies to the men out there, yet it's backed by some of the most reliable research of anything on this entire list. Sign number four is erectile dysfunction. The arteries supplying blood flow to the penis are smaller in diameter than the coronary arteries feeding your heart. Because of that difference in size, plaque buildup tends to restrict blood flow here first, often years before the same process becomes significant enough to cause chest pain or cardiac event. Medical researchers now describe erectile dysfunction as a legitimate warning sign that a man may be at higher risk for atherosclerosis and its long-term complications. A large study found that systematically screening men who present with erectile dysfunction for underlying heart disease could prevent roughly 1 million heart attacks or strokes over the following 20 years simply by catching the arterial problem at the smaller vessels before it progresses to the larger ones. If this has been happening to you and you're consistently attributing it to old age, this is something I would ask directly with your doctor about, telling them I have this problem. Should I be worried about any other type of atherosclerotic disease that may be occurring in my other arteries? Sign number five is, in my opinion, probably the most fascinating one on this entire list. And it's a whooshing sound, but it's only one that you can hear. This is called pulsatile tinnitus. It's a rhythmic whooshing, pulsing, or thumping sound in your inner ear. And this beats in perfect sync with your own heartbeat. This is different from ordinary tinnitus where you have this low-grade buzz or high-pitched ringing sound in your ear all the time. This specifically has to be synced with your heartbeat. Plaque buildup creates a rougher, less smooth path for blood to travel through. And when blood moves over that roughened surface, instead of flowing smoothly, it creates turbulence, which leads to an audible sound that your ear picks up because of how close major blood vessels sit to your inner ear. In medical nerdy terms, this is taking blood from its normal laminar flow into a turbulent flow that creates this sound. Research has found that tinnitus can be among the first signs of atherosclerosis, potentially present in close to 20% of individuals with narrowed arteries. And studies specifically examining carotid artery stenosis have identified tinnitus and hearing changes as some of the earliest nonspecific symptoms of significant narrowing in that region. If you notice a whooshing or thumping sound in one or both ears that tends to rise and fall at the beat of your own heart, please bring this up to your local healthcare provider. Now, here's the thing that I genuinely want you to take away from this video. Every single sign that we covered today shares something in common that most people don't realize soon enough. Atherosclerosis does not begin the moment that symptoms appear. Research has found that the formation of plaque can actually start as early as late childhood or early teenage years. And that measurable detectable level of artery narrowing shows up in a lot of people in their early twenties. This means that these five warning signs are not the beginning of the problem. They're simply the moment that the problem finally becomes large enough to create issues. The actual disease process may have been running in the background silently for literal decades. But the good news is that these five warning signs that we talked about today happen months to years before a fatal event. So you do have some time to change it and make a difference. Now, none of these five signs on their own in isolation guarantees that you have arterial problems. But if you have any one of them, especially alongside other risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, a strong family history of heart or vascular disease and or blood sugar issues, then you definitely want to take one of these signs if you have it seriously. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. This is from the book of Hebrews chapter 12 verse 1. In my next video, I cover two incredibly common foods that have been shown to melt clogged arteries better than any other foods out there. If you want to know what these two foods are, you're going to want to check out this next video right here.