How Do Blood Clots Form?
A blood clot is caused by blood cells clumping together. In most cases, this happens when the skin breaks in response to injury, surgery or other trauma, and the blood clots seal the skin, preventing you from bleeding excessively in response to a minor injury. People with certain conditions such as hemophilia lack certain chemicals that trigger clotting, and are unable to form blood clots. Those people are at risk for severe bleeding, even from minor injuries.
However, while most clots are beneficial, in some cases, the body forms abnormal blood clots inside the body -- in the legs, lungs, heart or brain, for example -- which can block blood flow and tissue oxygenation, leading to severe organ damage or even sudden death.
Risk factors for these conditions vary greatly, and you may be surprised to note that people who are otherwise completely healthy may be at an increased risk for developing a potentially life-threatening blood clot. Among the surprising risk factors that increase your risk of developing a clot:
Being An Athlete
When you think of an athlete, you picture someone who is in great overall health, with a high level of fitness. And this is true -- especially athletes who keep their bodies free from performance-enhancing drugs and who follow healthy diet and lifestyle routines. Even the healthiest, most fit athlete, though, is at an increased risk of developing certain types of blood clots, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). Even scarier, according to the National Blood Clot Alliance, diagnosis of these conditions is often delayed by healthcare providers, family members or the patients themselves, even when they exhibit classic symptoms of clots – because blood clots are perceived to be a condition that strikes the elderly or the infirm. In fact, athletes have a number of specific risk factors that put them at a far greater risk of developing a blood clot, including: