What causes a bruise?
A ball hits you in the leg or you fall down. Ouch! But what causes those funny colored marks on your body? Your body is equipped with thousands of tiny tubes called blood vessels. These blood vessels carry blood, oxygen and nutrients (that’s food) to fuel your muscles, bones, skin and other parts of you body. When you fall or bump into something hard, these blood vessels can break, leaking blood out under the skin. This causes the reddish-purple color that we call a bruise. Special cells called platelets come and plug up the holes or cracks in the blood vessels to stop the bleeding. Over a few days to up to two weeks, the blood under the skin is reabsorbed and recycled. That’s why bruises start out blue or black or purple, then fade to green, yellow and finally brown as they heal. Bruises heal more slowly as you move down the body. Bruises on the arm heal more quickly than those on the legs. How can you get a bruise to heal faster? First, if you hurt yourself apply ice over the area fo
Bruises are most often caused by broken capillaries (small veins of blood near the surface of your skin) after a sudden impact. These broken capillaries then allow blood to go where it usually doesn’t, which is what you see when the bruise starts to turn red and then purple. Now, we’re not going to get into how to prevent bruises here because that should be left to someone who knows something about children, child safety products, and child proofing a home–or adult proofing a home if you’re particularly clumsy or suffer from a blood clotting deficiency like Hemophilia. I’m here to tell you how to get rid of that bruise. Getting rid of a bruise isn’t really possible. Well, it is and it isn’t. Your body does most of the work itself, but there are some things you can do to help speed your body’s natural healing processes. Read on if you want to know how to get rid of a bruise.
