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Weird Bruising

JAH

Senior Member
Messages
497
Location
Northern California
Do you get weird bruising? Many years ago, I went to the emergency room, and was accused of being a drug addict (not the last time) because my arm had strange bruising. I told the doc that I had had a blood test that week, and was told "bruises don't look like that." Nice. I was reminded of that today when looking at the 3 track marks on my arm after a painless and routine blood test yesterday. Does that happen to you??

JAH
 

Lynn

Senior Member
Messages
366
Yep, that happens to me too. I bruise very easily. I had my grand kids staying with me last week. I have many bruises that I cannot even tell you when I got them. Honestly, the two year old didn't beat me up! I have been like this for years.

Lynn
 

kat0465

Senior Member
Messages
230
Location
Texas
In my early Years with cfids, i did bruise really easy, pics of me years ago looked like someone was beating me.
In fact somebody asked me if my husband was,lol. besides the bruises i had ( and still have) bad circles under my eyes. the bruising has gotten much better over these 22 years

Don't know what causes it, i wasen't anemic. Another Mystery i guess

Kat
 

beesknees

Senior Member
Messages
117
I had horrible bruises on my leg once that looked like I had been abused. It turns out I have low potassium. Not sure if that is common in CFS.
 

Dainty

Senior Member
Messages
1,751
Location
Seattle
The circles under and around eyes could be allergy shiners. They can get bad enough to look like a black eye, and can worsen on exposure to an allergen.

The easy bruising could potentially be Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, and inherited connective tissue disorder that causes unusual hypermobility of joints, among other symptoms, easily bruised being one of them. I Know ED has been discussed here before as being common in PWC...I once followed a link to a "self diagnosis" like thing and it was like "ho hum, okay, so according to this I have it....file for later, maybe have a doctor look into it for me someday." I did not have hypermobile joints before my CFS became severe, and as a gymnast at the time I should know. Now my elbows, for example, hyper-extend beyond a 180 degree angle, whereas before that was not even an option.

And I do bruise with nearly every blood draw--the only times I haven't are when I cheerfully challenge the person drawing it to do so without leaving a bruise, and talk about how many have tried in the past but weren't able to. It seems to result in them being extra gentle with my vein which appears to minimize bruising.
 

caledonia

Senior Member
I get lots of weird bruises which I have no idea where they come from. I've heard that if you do lots of fish oil (which I do), it thins the blood somewhat and can causing the bruising.

I was always an easy bruiser before CFS and before the fish oil, but not as bad as it is now.
 

Athene

ihateticks.me
Messages
1,143
Location
Italy
I get lots of spontaneous bruises, but I am not sure what looked exactly weird about yours, so I don't know if they were the same.
Mine come up in odd places like behind my ears, the palm of my hand or between my toes, as well as in all the usual places - especially on my legs. I also get them welling up out of joints, and spreading out up and down my limbs.
I've seen a great improvement from taking Vitamins C and K. C alone didn't make much difference, but adding K did.
 

leaves

Senior Member
Messages
1,193
You can get easy bruising if you have a vitamine k2 defficiency. You can buy a dropper from Thorne.
 
Messages
92
I get these 'bruising crisis' a couple times a year that last a couple weeks. It is very strange, because my kids also get this, and sometimes we are even synchronized. So I am wondering what kind of phenomenom this is, but I have a feeling it might be related to some gut problem (just a guess). What happens is that any little shock produces a huge bruise, several inches across. My kids get bumps all the time with usually not much traces, but during those 'crisis' their legs get covered in bruises. I must say that this seems to happen more infrequently and to a lesser extent since we started taking vitamin K (Jarrow MK7) every day, two years ago.

During one of those bruising crisis, one of my kids had blood drawn (he was three at the time). The nurse tried sticking needles 4 times before she succeeded, she said it was very weird it seemed like his veins walls were extremely thin and she kept breaking through the other side (and he got a lot of blood draws there so that was not his problem usually). The next day he had huge bruises on his arms. And again, it was not the nurse fault, because she usually always does a great job.

So this is very mysterious.
 

JAH

Senior Member
Messages
497
Location
Northern California
I recently picked up k2, but haven't been taking it regularly-- that is a good idea. Wish I knew what was the cause of this (and many other) weird symptom...JAH
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
I used to bruise a lot with all this but I dont do so nowdays. I used to get all these like finger mark bruises anywhere on my body.

I used to also bruise quite a bit after blood was taken. I nowdays only really bruise during that if the one doing it isnt very experienced. eg a doctor taking blood i find will usually leave a bruise, where as if i get it taken by a blood nurse, that never nowdays does.
 

Athene

ihateticks.me
Messages
1,143
Location
Italy
Hi Tania,
Have you changed your diet or anything else that could explain the improvement?
 

BEG

Senior Member
Messages
1,032
Location
Southeast US
I bruise so easily I can't remember where they came from. The bruises can be pretty pronounced, and I will have others ask me how I got them. I've been this way for a long time.
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
Hi Tania,
Have you changed your diet or anything else that could explain the improvement?

I've not a clue why that stopped.

Recently thou I found out that I dont seem to store iron well (hardly no iron stores, thou i eat meat at least twice a day and a lot of it... so my blood iron level is always good when eatting much meat, but my iron store level is very low). So maybe my past bruising was due to iron issues seeing I dont seem to get stores to be able to rely on?? (anemia?).

maybe it would be worth those with bruising issues to not just get iron level tested but also iron store level tested???