“Is This Just Getting Older?” A Man at 63 on Heavy Evenings

“I'd decided it was just age. That's the thing I want to say, because I think a lot of blokes my age have decided the same thing and they're only half right.”

A conversation on a garden bench with a man in his sixties, after work, cup of tea going cold. Lightly edited.

“It arrived so slowly I never made a decision about it”

When did you first notice your legs?

I didn't. That's the honest answer. There's no first time. Somewhere around fifty-eight, fifty-nine, evenings changed. I'd get in, sit down, and that was the day finished. Not tired-tired. Legs-tired. Heavy, like they'd been filled with something.

And you put it down to age.

Completely. You turn sixty and everything gets filed under “well, that's sixty.” Knees, sleep, eyesight, legs. You stop asking questions about any of it. My father was the same and his father before him, and nobody in that line ever once said “actually, why?”

Did it stop you doing things?

Yes, and that's the part I didn't clock at the time. We've got five steps up to our front door. I started planning around them. If I'd forgotten something in the car I'd think, do I actually need it, or can it wait till morning.

Five steps. I was negotiating with five steps.

“The first thing I did was check it wasn't something else”

What made you look into it?

My wife, mostly. She said something offhand about my ankles — that there was a groove where my sock had been, still there while I was sat watching telly at nine. And I looked down and she was right, and I thought, how long has that been happening.

Did you see anyone about it?

I went to the GP, and I'd say to anyone reading this: do that bit first. I wanted to know it wasn't the artery kind — the sort where the problem is blood getting down into your legs rather than back up. That's a proper condition and I gather compression can make it worse rather than better.

Mine wasn't that. Mine was the boring, common, gravity-and-a-desk version. But I wouldn't have known, and I'm glad I asked rather than guessed off the internet.

“I thought they'd look like something from a hospital”

What did you expect compression socks to be?

Beige. Surgical. The sort of thing that arrives in a box with a leaflet in it. Something you'd hide.

And?

They're socks. That's genuinely it. I wear the brown ones with work trousers and nobody has ever said a word. My son didn't notice for four months, and he notices everything.

Did it feel like a step towards something? Age-wise?

Ha. Yes, at first. There's a thing where you don't want to be the man who's Started Wearing Special Socks.

Then I thought about it properly. I wear glasses. I've got a decent mattress. Nobody thinks either of those is giving in. This is the same category — it's just kit. The idea that you should tough out something that's fixable is stupid, and it's cost me about four years of decent evenings.

“Nothing happened for two weeks. Then I noticed what wasn't happening.”

What was the first week like?

Firm. Firmer than I thought, round the ankle particularly. And fiddly — I was hauling them up by the top like an idiot until I read that you're meant to turn them inside out to the heel and roll them up. Takes ten seconds once you know.

And the effect?

Nothing. Genuinely nothing, for a fortnight. I'd have told you they didn't work. I was ready to write the whole thing off as money down the drain.

What changed?

Nothing changed. That's the point I keep trying to explain to people and it sounds like nonsense.

I came in one evening in about week three, went up the steps, went straight through to the kitchen, put the kettle on. And halfway through filling it I stopped, and I thought: I didn't think about the steps.

I hadn't braced. I hadn't done the calculation. I'd just walked up my own front steps like a man walking up steps. And I'd apparently been doing that for days without noticing, because there's nothing to notice when a thing stops happening to you.

Have you tested it?

By accident. Went away for a weekend, forgot to pack them. Sunday evening I was back to being careful on the stairs and I thought — right. That's the answer, then.

“What I'd tell a bloke my age”

Go on.

Four things.

See a doctor first if anything's odd — one leg not the other, pain when you walk, anything with the skin. Don't guess.

Morning, before you're on your feet. I put them on at teatime once and it was awful. Turns out your legs are already swollen by then, so it's a different job entirely.

Measure your calf. Not your shoe. I'd have got it wrong.

Give it three weeks and don't sit there waiting to feel something. You won't. Write down what your evenings are like now, and read it in three weeks. That's the only way you'll see it.

And the age thing?

Some of it is age, I'm not daft. But “heavy legs at sixty” isn't a law of nature the way I thought it was. It's mostly gravity and sitting still, and gravity doesn't care how old you are — it does the same thing to a twenty-five-year-old at a desk.

I'd just decided to stop asking questions, and that cost me more than the socks ever did.

The mechanism, briefly

Blood gets down to your feet easily — gravity does it. Getting back up is the hard part, and your heart doesn't do it alone: the main pump is your calf muscle, and it only works when it contracts.

Sit still or stand still for hours and that pump goes quiet. Blood pools low, pressure rises, fluid moves out into the tissue. That's the heaviness and the sock groove.

Graduated compression is firmest at the ankle and eases up the calf, giving pooled blood a direction. A study measuring leg volume at 7:00am and again at 7:00pm found compression significantly reduced the fluid built up across a working day — sitting, standing and mixed.

What we won't claim: that it treats or cures anything, that it prevents clots, or that it gives you energy or sharper thinking. No evidence for the last one, and we looked. What's covered is narrower and more useful: less swelling and less end-of-day heaviness.

Keep reading: Poor circulation: what actually helps · The complete wear guide · Do compression socks actually do anything?

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Composite account based on conversations with our customers. Names and identifying details changed.

The Well Socks compression socks are a comfort and wellness product and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have circulation problems, diabetes-related foot complications, peripheral artery disease, neuropathy, severe or sudden swelling, slow-healing wounds, skin infections, or known vascular disease, consult a qualified healthcare professional before use.

Sources: Mayo Clinic · Cleveland Clinic · Harvard Health · Mota/Belczak et al. 2018, International Journal of Vascular Medicine · Garcia et al. 2021, Human Factors