I know I’m not the only person who can say this, but unfortunately I am an extremely accident-prone individual. A trip here, a bump there, or a burnt finger there – I get hurt a lot. But not only do I get hurt, I bruise ridiculously. I’ve always wondered why that is, and being that I needed another article topic, I decided to take a deeper look into why I bruise like a freshly picked peach.

     First of all: what exactly is a bruise? As written by the National Library of Medicine, a bruise is “an area of skin discoloration, occurs when small blood vessels break and leak their contents into the soft tissue beneath the skin.” Sounds complex, but we know how simple it can be to get them. Dr. Sharon Orrange, an esteemed physician and faculty at University of Southern California, cites three common ways bruising takes place. “The first being A problem with your platelets from medications.” This doesn’t apply to me, so naturally I kept reading on to number two, “A clotting problem aka coagulation disorders: coagulation factor deficiency, liver disease, vitamin K deficiency.” This seemed more appropriate as I could probably stand to eat more vitamin K enriched foods like dark greens, prunes or spices. And number three says, “A problem with blood vessels and surrounding tissue: physical abuse, vitamin C deficiency, connective tissue disease.” This doesn’t seem to apply to me either, while I’m no physician I tend to be very well balanced in my vitamin C intake.

     Dr. Orrange also identifies when to start questioning the problem of sensitive bruising. “When there are five or more bruises greater than 1 cm in diameter.” Suddenly, my self prognosis didn’t seem so important, never have I had five or more bruises on a given body part. The article I researched also said some anti-inflammatory drugs can cause non-problematic bruising. If you or anyone you know may be suffering from serious bruising, contacting a physician is suggested.

The information cited in this post can be found here.