Have you ever noticed that you bruise easily? You know what we mean. Those black and blue marks that look unsightly, and even after time turns them yellow, they aren’t any prettier. Not only do they look scary, but in some instances they can also be painful. And sometimes they’re a cause for concern because they may mean that you have an underlying medical problem, and it could be serious.
In today’s blog, we’re going to share some of the reasons why bruising occurs and offer some tips to address the issue, hopefully allowing you to prevent future bruising or, figure out why your body is sending you this signal that something might be amiss.
BLOG: Which Deficiencies Can Cause Leg Cramps?
Oh, and here’s a hint about one possible cause: let’s just say you can add bruises as one more potential thing that may result from a lack of specific vitamins. More to follow on that.
Definition of Bruising
Ecchymosis. That’s the medical term for bruising. It sounds as icky (that’s a non-medical term) as your bruises may look.
A bruise is what happens when small blood vessels burst underneath your skin’s surface, causing the blood to spill out from the capillaries and form a puddle just underneath the skin (as opposed to when you cut yourself and the blood pours out). There are lots of reasons as to why bruises happen, but some of the medical conditions associated with bruising may not necessarily cause the actual bruise but may make you more vulnerable to bruising.
Bruising also generally occurs when there’s been some acute trauma that’s happened to your skin. You accidentally bumped into your coffee table or walked into a wall or banged your arm against your night table, maybe even while you were sleeping. Or perhaps you’ve had your blood taken and it’s left a bruise, likely because your veins weren’t popping that day.
Whether you remember what happened or not, you’ll remember what a bruise looks like. Generally, a dark mark, like red or black or blue. Over the next several days, you’ll see the colors change, kind of like the trees changing in the fall, but not as pretty. Going to purple or red, then green or yellow means the blood is being reabsorbed by your body and that the bruise is healing, until eventually there’s no tell-tale sign left.
Read more about the changing colors and the timeline of bruises here.
More About Bruises
Usually, the bruises show up on your arms or legs and they are not generally a cause for concern. However, if your bruises show up on your stomach, buttocks, genitals, ears or the back of your hands, or they occur more frequently, or don’t improve and start to change colors within a few days, or if they last longer than two weeks or so, talk to your doctor.
We’ve blogged before about the some of the problems you might encounter if you’re low in some vitamins, such as vitamin D for instance. If you’re not getting enough vitamin D or some of the B vitamins, you may be making yourself more susceptible to bruising.
Usually, the bruises show up on your arms or legs and they are not generally a cause for concern. However, if your bruises show up on your stomach, buttocks, genitals, ears or the back of your hands, or they occur more frequently, or don’t improve and start to change colors within a few days, or if they last longer than two weeks or so, talk to your doctor.
BLOG: Does Vitamin D Deficiency Cause Bruising?
We’ve blogged before about the some of the problems you might encounter if you’re low in some vitamins, such as vitamin D for instance. If you’re not getting enough vitamin D or some of the B vitamins, you may be making yourself more susceptible to bruising.
Here are two more vitamin insufficiencies that could lead to frequent bruises:
Vitamin C Deficiency
When you’re not getting enough vitamin C in your diet, from the foods you eat (e.g., citrus fruit, tomatoes, broccoli, etc.) to the dietary supplements you take, you may be low on this vitamin—especially if you’re a smoker.
Collagen is a protein that keeps your blood vessels healthy; vitamin C helps your body produce collagen. Without enough vitamin C, you may not have enough collagen. Without the right amount of collagen, the more fragile your blood vessels may become—all of which means you’re more likely to bruise easily or more frequently.
Vitamin K Deficiency
Vitamin K may not be the vitamin that’s most top-of-mind. But if you’re vitamin K- deficient, your blood might be slower to clot, leading to too many bruises. Vitamin K also strengthens capillary walls and stronger capillary walls means they’re less likely to break and leave you with bruises.
Other Dietary Supplements
Other over-the-counter dietary supplements, in addition to vitamins C, K, D, and some of the Bs, can lead to frequent bruising. Some botanical supplements, including ginkgo, ginseng, ginger and garlic, can act as natural blood thinners. That can be beneficial, but it may also make it more difficult for your blood to clot leading to easier bruising after an acute trauma to your skin (and potential other problems).
Even omega-3 fatty acids, saw palmetto or vitamin E can contribute to bruising, due to their potential effects on blood platelets, says
Other Possible Causes of Bruising
- Medications—If you’re on prescription blood thinners or regularly take aspirin or ibuprofen, your body might have trouble with blood clotting. In addition, steroids can make your skin more fragile and some antibiotics or antidepressants may also be the reason you’re more easily bruising.
- Aging—you’ve heard of being thin-skinned? In this case, we’re not talking about having your feelings easily hurt. The fact is that as you age, your skin gets thinner as you lose the fatty layer underneath. Aging also causes your blood vessels to weaken.
- The sun—years of basking in the sun may lead to weakening the walls of your blood vessels which, in turn, makes your skin more susceptible to frequent bruising.
- Medical conditions—diabetes, blood diseases (e.g., hemophilia) and blood cancers (e.g., leukemia, lymphoma) and iron deficiency anemia may make you more prone to blood vessel damage, blood clotting problems, or inefficient blood circulation. Excessive bruising may also be a sign that you have a serious medical problem like one of these conditions.
- Contact sports injuries—muscle contusions are the second leading cause of sports injuries (strains, being the first), according to this post. These bruises, which occur in children too, can be caused by a direct blow to the body causing surface skin damage, and possibly to deeper tissue. The term bruise and contusion are pretty much the same thing.
Treatment Options for Frequent or Excessive Bruising
If you’re bruised and it bothers you, try the suggested remedy for inflammation—RICE—not the food. In this case, RICE stands for rest, ice, compression and elevation. Then after a few days, try applying a heating pad to the injured area. The Cleveland Clinic also suggests taking an over-the-counter pain medication, such as acetaminophen (but remember that aspirin or ibuprofen might actually be part of the problem).
If your bruises are a result of falls (especially in the night), make sure your home lighting is sufficient (and turn on the lights if you’re heading to the bathroom and you’re just waking up), avoid floor clutter including those pretty throw rugs that are easy to slip on, and keep your multitude of electrical cords in a tidy fashion (wall plugs, perhaps?).
If you think your bruises are a result of your dietary supplement routine, don’t just be suspicious, find out if you can test to see if your vitamin levels are too low. Learn more about whether your botanical supplements are causing a blood-thinning effect that’s not the right thing for you. Hopefully you have a doctor who is attuned to the potential benefits and issues with dietary supplements.
Especially if you have thin skin, keep an eye on those bruises to be sure that the skin is not breaking as open skin is an invitation for infection to set in. Ask your doctor what protective ointments or creams will be most effective and whether you should bandage the area up.
Most bruises are likely to heal on their own. But if yours are not going away or are happening more than you’d like, asking your doctor to help your figure out what is causing the bruising makes perfect sense. For instance, if you’re bruising because of your diabetes, it’s another reminder to test your glucose levels and manage those levels as best as possible.
If, in fact, your bruises are related to serious medical conditions, you’ll want to know that so you and your doctor can figure out the next steps.
today we’re going to talk about bruising and the type of bruising that doesn’t involve some trauma okay so people are getting bruising and they’re like you know I didn’t hit myself I wasn’t abused by anyone I didn’t have any type of physical impact so why do I have this bruising that’s the topic for today and it’s actually a very interesting topic now if you look up
bruising you’ll see all sorts of um descriptive types of bruising that classifies bruising by size like a small bruise would be classified under this condition and you have a moderately sized bruise would be this or a larger bruise will be called something else but that’s not really the important thing about bruising the important thing is to find the obvious cause of a bruising that’s very very common there’s rare things like leukemia other types of cancer blood clotting disorders genetic disorders that could cause bruising certain viruses can cause you to bruise and a lot of different medications as their side effect can give you bruising like when you’re on warfin which is the blood thinner or certain antibiotics or prednisone which is steroids or a weight loss medication called orlestat you can even get it over the counter as something called Ali and even certain types of bowel disorders like Celiac or ulcerative colitis can increase your risk of bruising a fatty liver can increase your risk of beauty and bruising so what is the common thread among all of those things I just mentioned that’s the topic for today you have this one vitamin it’s called vitamin K1 so you may already know that vitamin K1 comes from leafy green vegetables right that’s the highest source and vitamin K1 is also stored in your liver and we also know vitamin K1 is part of the fat soluble vitamins and so the other fat soluble vitamins are vitamin A D E okay and you also have a different form of vitamin K called K2 so we need vitamin K1 very desperately because it prevents bleeding okay so it helps clotting because if you had a paper cut and you could never stop the bleeding um you’d literally you could bleed to death so the point is that vitamin K1 is a very important vitamin in relationship to survival because we don’t want any internal bleeding or external bleeding going on now some people have this idea if they consume too much vitamin K1 they’re going to get extra clotting and they’re going to develop a clot that is absolutely 100 percent false okay if you get too much vitamin K1 there’s a limit to how much clotting you’re going to have it’s not going to be more than normal okay but that extra vitamin K1 goes to two other very important purposes number one it’s involved in a very potent anti-inflammatory mechanism so it helps you get rid of inflammation that’s only if you have extra vitamin K1 so vitamin K1 it’s not just about clotting it’s also about getting rid of inflammation then if there’s extra K1 left over it ends up in the bowel where it’s converted into Vitamin K2 and vitamin K2 is vital in preventing calcification in your arteries and in your joints and also making sure that your bones are very very strong and so you don’t end up with soft bones like osteomalacia or osteopenium or even osteoporosis so let’s just take some of these medications for a second and just take a look at how they would deplete you of that K1 let’s take the first one called Warfarin okay that’s a blood thinner well that actually is a drug that blocks the absorption of K1 directly okay and so it thins your blood in fact it’s uses one of the poisons to kill rats right it’s a rat poison it blocks vitamin K2 and then they bleach it out of course when someone’s giving Warfarin they’re not giving you massive amounts it’s just it’s highly regulated to thin the blood to make sure it doesn’t clot so this is why people on Warfarin don’t have a significant amount of vitamin K1 and so they might bruise so that could be reason number one why you have bruising let’s go to number two and antibiotics certain antibiotics increase your risk of bruising well here’s the reason bacteria make a secondary backup type of bile salt okay so your liver can make bile but your microbes also make bile so if you wipe out a good significant amount of your microbes especially the ones that make bile then you’re going to have a heck of a Time extracting this vitamin K1 from your Foods okay because bile is all about helping you pull these Fat Cycle vitamins from the food that you eat also these microbes have the potential to make vitamin K1 directly so if you don’t have those microbes then you can’t make vitamin K1 not to mention you’re not going to be able to convert K1 to K2 very well so you’ll be deficient in vitamin K2 so pretty much all these medications I’m talking about also will inhibit or create a deficiency of vitamin K2 as well now let’s take statins okay the purpose of a Statin is to block the production of cholesterol now what’s this relationship between cholesterol and vitamin K1 well guess what bile salts are made from cholesterol and if you don’t have enough cholesterol you can’t make the bile salts that help you absorb the fat soluble vitamins this is why there’s even a condition as a side effect called statin-induced calcification wow so without vitamin K1 or K2 you are going to get buildup in the arteries of calcium so it’s pretty wild that you’re taking this medication to reduce cholesterol to prevent heart problems yet it increases the amount of calcium that builds up in the arteries which will pretty much create the same thing and I’m not telling you to come off medications I’m just giving you the information but one of the side effects from statins is bruising now you know why all right what about these steroids like prednisone what’s wild about Prednisone is that prednisone causes more osteoporosis than any other medication you can possibly take so one of the reasons it does that is it blocks vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 so then you don’t have the factors to make your bones really really strong and prednisone uh really destroys the gallbladder okay it will inhibit the bile production and increase your risk of gallstones which by the way people that have gallstones also have a higher risk of bruising and that is because you need bile salts to prevent gallstones okay and so gallstones are really caused by a lack of bile and that bile is also necessary to extract these fat soluble vitamins from your food like vitamin K1 then we get oralistat okay it’s an over-the-counter weight loss pill so this is supposed to help you lose fat and I’m not sure the mechanism if it blocks fat or whatever but it definitely lowers your bile output okay from your liver and without enough bile you’re not going to be able to absorb vitamin K1 and you’re going to be more at risk for bruising I mean even this medication has one of the side effects is increasing your risk for something called thrombocytopenia which is definitely a disorder of your platelets that can cause bruising now also one of the side effects from having a fatty liver is bruising and now you know why because without a fully functioning liver you’re not going to be able to produce enough bile to again extract these fat soluble vitamins remember when I told you where vitamin K1 comes from leafy greens the question is how much actual greens does an average person consume in America well you might be surprised to find out it’s only on average one and a half cups okay per day one and a half cups you’re not going to get enough vitamin K1 from one and a half cups now your microbes can produce vitamin K1 but if there’s some problem with the microbes then you’re not going to produce K1 and this is why other problems that are associated with the gut microbiome like ulcerative colitis Celiac also give you this increased risk factor for bruising because without enough microbes number one you can’t make vitamin K1 you can’t convert K1 to K2 you can’t make the bile salts that are necessary for the extraction of this K1 from your food so you can see it’s a big issue now we talked about bruising as the primary thing with this video but also realize that vitamin K1 has a lot to do with preventing inflammation as well as giving you more vitamin K2 which is kind of keeping your arteries free of calcium keeping your joints free of calcification keeping your bones from getting osteoporosis and also there’s quite a few other symptoms that you can have like for example you can have nosebleeds you can have more problems with varicose veins or spider veins if you’re deficient in vitamin K1 so that’s all interesting it just might give you another reason to beef up no pun intended the amount of vegetables dark leafy greens that you should be eating per day especially if you have any of the problems that we talked about especially if you’re on these medications we talked about especially if you have a fatty liver so like parsley has probably the most vitamin K1 of any green then we have kale brussels sprouts spinach any of the dark leafy green vegetables iceberg lettuce does not have a lot of K1 now as far as K2 is concerned you can get K2 from egg yolks you can get it from animal liver you can also get it from hard cheeses you can get it from extra vitamin K1 if you have any extra left that is provided into your gut but your microbes can also make k2 directly so this is why you can also get vitamin K2 in sauerkraut and also this fermented soy dish called NATO and of course if you’re not from a certain Asian country you may not like that dish so maybe you want to stick with sauerkraut but if you have bruising on your body and you didn’t have trauma suspect vitamin K1 deficiency but with a catch it could be lack of bile it could be all these other reasons that are preventing you from getting enough vitamin K1 now I think the next most important video for you to watch would be the one on vitamin K2 check that out I put it right here
