Causes of Water Retention

The veins (venous) also referred to as blood vessels are tubes or ducts that transport blood to the heart. The veins contribute to our circulatory system by carrying oxygen-poor blood from the leg back to the heart.

There’re two reasons why water retention occur in patients with lung diseases:

• The flow of the blood from the heart to the lung backs up because of increased pressure in the blood vessels. The blood build-up will leak into the surrounding tissues and lead to pulmonary edema, abdominal fluid retention, ankle and feet swelling, etc.
• The lung capillaries become leakier and cause fluid retention in lungs (pulmonary edema).

There’re many conditions and problems which lead to water retention from hormonal, physic, diseases to body disorders. Here is a list of what causes water retention / swelling / edema.

In chronic liver disease, the liver is scarred and damaged thus it can not function as normal as it should. One of the complications of this condition is excessive water retention build-up in the body. Abdominal fluid retention or ascites occurs mostly in patients with cirrhosis of the liver, although other liver disorders can cause it too. Abdominal fluid retention may be accompanied by swelling in the ankles.

Kidney is one of our vital organs. It removes excess fluid, waste, toxic substances from the blood, regulates blood volume and controls our blood pressure. Click here for more detail about the kidneys and how they work. When the kidneys fail to function normally because of some factors, many symptoms will be present.

Water retention occurs in patients with heart problem or disease because of two main reasons:

• The blood from the body to the heart backs up causing the fluid leaks into the lungs and veins.
• The heart fails to deliver adequate volume of blood to the body. The kidneys maintain the balance of salt, potassium and acid thus when the kidneys sense a significant decreased of blood flow, it'll try to compensate the seeming loss of fluid by retaining salt and water.