How to Dissolve Blood Clots

Blood clots, which are cells that have joined together, are often dissolved naturally within the human body. However, those that aren't dissolved can cause restriction and pain. Worse yet, their movement can result in serious ailments like heart attack or stroke. Conditions resulting from blood clots kill thousands of individuals all over the world each year. For that reason, medical research continues to explore ways to dissolve blood clots in order to head off life-threatening situations.

Things You'll Need

• Compression hosiery
• Hot and cold packs
• Tumeric
• Blood thinner prescription
• Antiplatelet drug
• Vena cava filter
• Thrombolytic enzyme

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Instructions

• 1

  Wear compression hosiery to keep new blood clots from forming or old ones from growing larger in the legs, leading to vericose veins. According to Planet RX, although there is debate over whether or not such hosiery actually helps break up clots, erring on the side of caution is generally advised.

• 2

  Use a combination of hot and cold packs, along with elevation, to prevent blood clots from forming as a result of a bodily injury. According to Your Total Health, keeping damaged limbs elevated will help reduce the swelling, which could lead to clot formations. Heat packs help dissolve clots that form close to the skin naturally while cold packs help keep swelling down and reduce pain.

• 3

  Take one tumeric tablet or drink tea laced with one teaspoon of tumeric with each meal. According to several alternative medicine sites, including Right Health, many medical researchers believe that the spice is helpful in dissolving blood clots.

• 4

  Take a prescribed blood thinner, known as an anticoagulant. According to the American Heart Association, these drugs work well to prevent the blood from being able to clot too easily. Even after a clot has formed, anticoagulants can prevent it from getting larger and lodging in the body, causing temporary or even permanent damage.

• 5

  Take an antiplatelet drug like aspirin daily to prevent blood from easily combining together to form a clot, according to the American Heart Association.

• 6

  Consider a vena cava filter. Implanted by a physician, it filters out particles that activate the clotting process, thus preventing clots from forming and making their way into the lungs, resulting in pulmonary embolism.

• 7

  Submit to an IV treatment of a thrombolytic medication, sometimes referred to as a clot buster. According to Discoveries in Medicine, this technique is used whenever the blood clot is unusually large, causing the patient extreme and undue pain, if the clot is obviously moving rapidly through the body, or if heart attack has already happened.

• 8

  Undergo a catheterization to introduce a thrombolytic enzyme directly into the clot or to remove the clot altogether. This is often the preferred method for stroke patients, according to Discoveries in Medicine.

• 9

  Take a tissue plasminogen activator to dissolve the clot. These can be very expensive and are not widely available. However, according to the American Heart Association, these drugs specifically target the clot site to work on dissolving the clot before it has time to move or grow larger.