Everyone gets their share of bruises in a lifetime. After all, it doesn’t take much to bump into something like walking into a piece of furniture and bruising part of the leg or a toe. Usually as soon as we do, we get a reminder of that injury from pain due to the blood pooling up from damaged blood cells beneath the skin. However, if you find that you’re bruising too easily and can’t understand the reasons this may be happening to you, then here are some possible explanations that may help you figure it out.
One reason that you may be bruising too easily has a lot to do with your age. The older that you get, the more likely you are to suffer from thinner skin than your younger days. Therefore, any excess pressure against the skin can wound the blood vessels due to that change in the skin’s thickness. Something as unexpected as grasping the hand when helping a wobbly, elderly person up from a chair can produce a bruise.
Though you may not be up there in years, another reason for why you’re bruising easily could be strenuous exercise. The friction that you are putting the muscles through could also account for microscopic tears in some of your blood vessels.
Medication also can cause bruising easily in some people. The reason for this is because some medications from over the counter drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen to prescription meds such as warfarin, heparin and other anticoagulants can thin the blood as well as steroids. Similarly, certain vitamins for some people such as vitamin K, vitamin E and fish oil, especially for those on blood thinning drugs can also cause the unexplained bruising problem.
For this purpose, you also need to think about the foods that you eat. If you’re bruising too easily, you might want to try eliminating foods with a high amount of vitamin K that can overly thin the blood. For example, too much garlic, ginger, spinach, cabbage, cayenne peppers, and broccoli are just a few choices to be wary of.
Of course, some underlying medical conditions can also cause easy bruising. You may drink alcohol more than you should without realizing what it is doing to your liver. One health-related problem such as liver disease could be a possible reason for overly easy bruising. Other diseases also could be at play such as hemophilia and leukemia to name just a few.
This post is not meant to diagnose, but to present information that could give you clues to the reasons why you’re bruising so easily. To determine the real cause of why this is happening to you is to visit your physician. He or she will need to perform a thorough examination and blood tests to check your platelet levels and how your blood clots to see if they are within normal range.
