Adults with low vitamin K levels may also notice a sudden increase in bruising. Bruising easily can happen to anyone at any age, but people assigned female does drinking make you bruise easier at birth are generally at higher risk. If you catch liver damage in its earlier stages, it may be reversible with treatment and lifestyle changes.
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Type 2 Diabetes
Mindful drinking offers that middle ground where you’ll proactively improve your drinking habits without any pressure to quit. It centers on being more conscious and thoughtful of how much, how often, and why you drink. As a result, you’ll enjoy better sleep, improved mood and energy, and fewer wellness issues. However, giving up alcohol right away isn’t sustainable or desirable for most people. After all, studies have shown that almost 50% of adults wish to reduce their intake without giving up alcohol altogether. Because alcohol is a potent diuretic, it can quickly dehydrate you, leading to the characteristic symptoms of a hangover, including a throbbing headache.
Low Platelet Count (Thrombocytopenia)
Some people — especially women — are more prone to bruising than others. As people get older, the skin becomes thinner and loses some of the protective fatty layer that helps cushion blood vessels from injury. Alcoholic jaundice is usually found in the progressive, final stages of liver disease. Hence, seeking professional medical advice is crucial if you notice such symptoms.
Blood and Platelet Disorders
It’s tough to judge the seriousness of a bruise using the color. How a bruise looks depends on a lot of things, including your natural skin tone, how bad the injury that caused it was, and how long you’ve had it. You will likely see some discolored skin until the bruise completely heals. But a serious bruise is more likely to be large, painful, swollen, or lumpy. People who run regularly may get something called a stone bruise (metatarsalgia). This is swelling and tenderness where your toe bones connect on the bottom of your foot.
When You Should See a Doctor About Bruising Easily
If a bruise does hurt, an over-the-counter pain killer may help. But some drugs used to treat pain, like aspirin or ibuprofen, can actually increase the tendency to bruise, López explains. The pooled blood beneath your skin looks different as time passes, from the moment you get hurt to when you’re fully healed.
- Some people — especially women — are more prone to bruising than others.
- Your skin can reveal many clues about your health, so a tendency to bruise easily might make you worry.
- Deficiencies in vitamins C and K can cause unexplained bruising—but if you live in a developed nation and have regular access to healthy food, then it’s highly unlikely this one applies to you.
- But when you bruise, your vessels are literally injured or broken in a sense, and blood pools around those vessels and rises to the skin.
- When the cause of bruising is unclear, your doctor will likely order blood work to check for platelet problems or other blood clotting abnormalities.
Types of Bruises
Steroids can lead to thinner skin, so you may notice bruising with just slight trauma. Chemotherapy can lower the number of platelets — the cells that help your blood to clot — in your body, the National Cancer Institute notes. But if you notice that you’re bruising more easily than usual, or the bruises are larger and are accompanied by other symptoms, it’s best to follow up with a healthcare professional. To determine the cause of easy bruising, your healthcare provider will conduct a physical examination and review your symptoms, medical history, and any medications you are taking. Hemophilia is a rare genetic bleeding disorder that causes the body to be unable to produce one of the specific clotting factors crucial for clotting. Bleeding continues longer after an injury because the blood cannot clotted properly.
Bruises form when blood vessels beneath the skin rupture and the blood leaks into the surrounding area. Usually, this is caused by some form of trauma like falling, bumping into a door, or experiencing a blow while playing sports. If you, your mom, and your sister all turn black and blue from the tiniest bump, it may be a family thing. Some people just have more fragile blood vessels, and that makes them more likely to bruise, especially on their upper arms, thighs, or butt. Everyone gets a few black-and-blue bruises every now and then — who doesn’t have routine run-ins with their desk or bed frame?
- Some people just have more fragile blood vessels, and that makes them more likely to bruise, especially on their upper arms, thighs, or butt.
- Low levels of hepatic-thrombopoietin (TPO) may lead to fewer platelets in the blood than average.
- They may also develop large bruises after minor injuries or have bruises that take many weeks to heal.
- Then, the healthcare provider may order tests based on your account, symptoms, and physical exam.
- A person with a genetic bleeding disorder has a higher risk of bruising and excessive, possibly life threatening bleeding.
Rarely, an increase in bleeding and bruising may be a sign of leukemia. People tend to bruise more easily with age because blood vessels weaken and the skin thins. “When your own immune system attacks blood cells or the actual blood vessels themselves, it increases the risk of bruising,” Dr. Kappel says. By the 2000s, numerous studies of this kind had suggested that the relationship between drinking and the risk of dying at a particular age made a J-shaped curve. That is, if people drank a little then their risk of dying of any cause went down a bit compared with non-drinkers, but drinking more led to a sharp increase in the risk. Genetic causes can lead to changes in your platelet count or the factors that are involved in clotting.