by mpthompson » Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:38 am
Not a dumb question at all. Remember from school -- arteries carry oxygenated blood from the heart and lungs to the rest of the body while veins return blood from the body to the heart and lungs. In textbooks, arteries are typically represented as red pathways that branch from the heart and lungs to deliver blood to the rest of the body while veins are represented as blue pathways that come from the rest of the body and merge together to deliver blood back to the the heart and lungs.
Heart attacks and strokes are caused blood clots that form in arteries. Because arteries are branching they get smaller in the direction of blood flow and can be blocked quite easily by a clot. This blockage can prevent oxygen carrying blood from reaching muscle tissue in the heart or nerve tissue in the brain -- injuring or killing the tissue who's blood supply is blocked by the clot.
DVT is a clot forms in the veins of the legs which are on the other side of the circulatory system. These clots usually form due to poor circulation and/or blood that clots very easily. I developed DVT a few years ago after sitting on a cramped international plane flight without getting up to move around for many hours. Because DVT forms within the veins, the major danger is that a substantial clot could dislodge from the leg, travel up the body, through the heart and into the lungs where a life-threatening pulmonary embolism can form. Such a large clot can move so freely through the body because the pathway through the veins back to the lungs gets wider and wider until the lungs are reached. If the clot is large enough and injury to lungs severe, the lungs may no longer function well enough to sufficiently oxygenate blood which can be a life threatening condition.
So to answer your question, heart attacks, strokes and DVT/PE involve dangerous blood clots, but the underlying mechanism which causes a heart attack or stroke and the resulting injury is much different than that from DVT/PE. Because DVT/PE is typically not related to an underlying chronic illness related to diet, but rather a condition or injury that caused the clot in the leg, this WOE probably wouldn't make much of a difference in preventing DVT/PE.