Mary Earhart is a registered nurse, a public health nurse and licensed midwife. Her articles have appeared in professional journals and online ezines. She holds a Bachelor of Science in nursing from California State University at Dominguez Hills. She works in a family practice clinic, has a home birth practice and her specialty is perinatal substance abuse.
How to Prevent Bruises
My career started in the fashion industry but quickly changed as I searched to find my drive and passion through helping others who struggle with addiction. Plus, you’re more susceptible to an accidental fall or bump after you’ve been drinking, anyway. A traditional bruise comes about after your body endures some impact.
Reasons You Bruise So Easily
These pinpoint spots can be a sign of different conditions — some minor, others serious. If your doctor suspects domestic abuse, you may be referred to a social worker. After your injury, put an ice pack on it every once in a while for the first hours.
If you’re concerned about alcohol abuse, we offer personal treatment programs at Ohio Community Health Recovery Centers in Cincinnati, OH. And when the blood vessels underneath your skin break, it causes blood to leak out. Under normal circumstances, your brain communicates with your body by sending signals through your central nervous system. Alcohol, like other psychoactive substances, interacts with your central nervous system by altering some of the chemical communication processes. When you want to unlock your front door to go home after a night of drinking, you see the lock, and your brain sends a signal to your hand to move the key toward it.
- Vitamin K and Vitamin C are particularly relevant to blood clotting and vessel integrity.
- This means it’s a substance that actually relaxes the muscular walls of the blood vessels and allows more blood to flow to the skin and tissues — aka a blood thinner.
- Frequent, large, or unusually appearing bruises without a clear cause should also be evaluated.
- This increased risk of skin tears comes with an equal risk of abnormal bleeding.
Holistic Addiction Treatment: How Whole-Person Care Supports Lasting Recovery
Alcoholism and liver malfunction affects the nervous system, overheating the body and affecting normal blood sugar levels, often resulting in hives. Hives are red, bumpy rashes that come and go for varying lengths of time and often appear on the most sensitive areas of the skin, such as the chest and forearms. Itchy skin, or pruritis, is a consequence of heavy drinking and liver disease.
Who Is at Greater Risk for Bruising After Drinking?
Which treatment you might need depends on the cause of your bruises. Your doctor has medicines for liver and kidney disease, HIV, and cancer. If a drug caused ecchymosis, you may what is alcoholism need to stop taking it or change medicines. They combine with proteins called clotting factors to form a clot.
Sometimes alcohol causes such severe damage to the body that a liver transplant may be necessary. Nerves don’t have a resilient ability to regenerate if they are severely can alcohol cause bruising on legs damaged. So, the nerve damage of alcoholic neuropathy is generally permanent and likely to worsen if the person does not stop drinking. In a superficial bruise, the blood supplying the overlying skin is compromised. Within the muscle, a superficial bruise can lead to compartment syndrome and dead muscle cells if the blood supply to the muscle is decreased.
- People diagnosed with a mast cell disorder may also bruise easily.
- Platelets are the body’s first responders to wounds and will form blood clots in broken blood vessels.
Deficiencies in vitamin K can exacerbate bruising and prolong the healing process. Furthermore, alcohol can impair judgment and coordination, increasing the risk of falls and injuries that result in bruising. When it comes to drinking alcohol, several factors can increase the risk of bruising. Drinking can hinder the body’s capacity to clot blood, making bruising more likely.
Experts suggest that males restrict themselves to two drinks per day, while women limit themselves to one drink per day. Reach out to Addiction Free Recovery today, and let us be your partner in the journey to a healthier, addiction-free life. I was not sure about it first but I went ahead and started the treatment from them anyways and so far it’s been a dream. If minor trauma causes bruises and bleeding under the skin, more serious injuries from accidents or falls can cause more bleeding than expected. These conditions combined can lead to coagulopathy (bruising and bleeding even with the slightest trauma).
James Concato is a Hospital Administrator in the Chicagoland area. He holds a Masters Degree in Healthcare Administration from Quinnipiac University and has worked in or lead many different departments. Writing on cancer treatment and cancer prevention through natural treatments is his passion. James, like many others, has had family members pass away from cancer and he knows that Cancer screening is the key to better outcomes. As an https://ecosoberhouse.com/ administrator of different physician practices like Pediatrics, Surgery, Anesthesia, and Oncology James brings a wealth of knowledge to his writing. Some precautions can help you prevent the unexplained bruising on your legs.
When you get a bruise, an injury crushes blood vessels, but the skin doesn’t break, so there’s no external bleeding. Erin is a Nurse Practitioner with 8 years of experience in midwifery and women’s health. She has spent the past 5 years specializing in the treatment of opioid and alcohol use disorders. What all of this means is that people who live with an alcohol use disorder are likely to consume large quantities of alcohol. While some people may have just a drink or two on special occasions, people with an alcohol use disorder may lose control of their drinking, and consume ten or more drinks, for example.
- Medications that disrupt the circulation can increase your chances of unexplained bruising.
- For the first time, to our knowledge, an association of purpura with serum levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE), as well as the induction of fresh SD purpura via drinking vinegar, is shown.
- Symptoms of scurvy include bleeding issues that may lead to bruising.
- Additionally, older adults may have underlying health conditions that make them more susceptible to bruising.
Your doctor will likely suggest you use a brace or crutches for bone bruises in your legs and feet. Rarely, if your bone bruise is very large, you may not recover blood flow in that area. Call your doctor if your symptoms don’t start to get better in a few days or if you have any symptoms of an infection, such as a high fever. Some conditions can make it harder for your blood to clot, which may increase your chance of bruising and bleeding. People with von Willebrand disease (about 1%-2% of the population have this) make little or no von Willebrand protein, which is important for blood clotting.