Ecchymosis: When a Bruise Is Ordinary and When It Is a Warning

You notice it in the shower: a plum-colored patch on your thigh, the size of a silver dollar, and no memory of earning it. Was it the corner of the desk on Tuesday? The car door? Or nothing at all? Most of us shrug and move on — and most of the time, that instinct is right.

The chart in your medical record would call that patch ecchymosis. The word sounds ominous, which is part of why so many people search it at midnight. In reality, it describes something your body handles thousands of times over a lifetime: a small leak, sealed and recycled without any help from you.

Still, skin is an honest reporter. Certain patterns — where bruises show up, how often, and what arrives with them — genuinely deserve a doctor’s eyes. Here is how to read the difference, based on evidence rather than alarm.

What Does Ecchymosis Actually Mean?

Ecchymosis (pronounced eh-kih-MOH-sis) is the clinical name for a flat, discolored patch of skin caused by blood escaping from damaged capillaries into the surrounding tissue. By convention, dermatologists reserve the term for patches larger than roughly one centimeter — about the width of a fingernail. Smaller spots get different names, which matters more than it sounds, because size hints at cause.

The mechanism is simple plumbing. Capillaries are vessels so narrow that red blood cells pass through in single file. A knock, a twist, or a shearing force tears some of them open, and blood pools just under the surface. Because the skin itself is unbroken, the blood has nowhere to go. It sits there, visible as purple or blue-black through the skin, until your immune system’s cleanup crew — mainly cells called macrophages — breaks the hemoglobin down and carts it away.

Two features define a true ecchymosis. First, it is flat; you can see it but usually not feel a lump. When leaked blood collects into a raised, swollen pocket, that is a hematoma, a related but distinct finding. Second, it does not blanch: press on it, and the color stays. A rash caused by dilated vessels turns pale under pressure because you are squeezing blood out of intact vessels. With ecchymosis, the blood has already left the vessels, so there is nothing to squeeze away. That single fingertip test, described by the NHS as the ‘glass test’ when done with a tumbler, separates bruising from most ordinary rashes in seconds.

Is Ecchymosis Just a Fancy Word for a Bruise?

Mostly, yes — and that should be reassuring. When your clinician writes ‘ecchymosis of the left shin,’ they are documenting a bruise, not diagnosing a disease. The Latinized term exists because medicine needs precision: it tells another clinician the lesion is flat, larger than a centimeter, non-blanching, and caused by extravasated blood rather than inflammation or pigment.

There is one useful nuance. In everyday speech, ‘bruise’ implies trauma — you hit something, or something hit you. Ecchymosis is cause-neutral. A bruise from a soccer cleat is an ecchymosis, but so is a patch that appears spontaneously because platelets are low or a clotting protein is missing. Clinicians deliberately use the neutral word because the appearance is identical; only the story behind it differs.

That distinction is the spine of this entire topic. A bruise with a believable explanation — proportional in size to the injury, in a plausible spot like a shin or forearm, fading on schedule — is biology working exactly as designed. An ecchymosis without a story, or one that keeps company with other bleeding signs, is the version worth investigating. Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic both frame it the same way: the lesion itself is rarely the problem; the pattern is the message.

So if a discharge summary or radiology report mentions ecchymosis, translate it as ‘bruising was observed’ — a description, not a verdict.

Ecchymosis vs. Petechiae vs. Purpura: How to Tell Them Apart

These three terms describe the same event — blood outside its vessels, visible through skin — at three different scales. Size is not pedantry here. Pinpoint bleeding and palm-sized bleeding often point to different underlying causes, which is why clinicians measure before they theorize.

Term	Size	Typical look	Common associations
Petechiae	Under 2 mm	Pinpoint red, purple, or brown dots, often in clusters; flat; non-blanching	Low platelets, certain infections, intense straining (coughing, vomiting, childbirth)
Purpura	Roughly 2 mm to 1 cm	Purple spots or small patches, sometimes slightly raised	Platelet or vessel problems, some medication reactions, vessel inflammation
Ecchymosis	Larger than 1 cm	Flat blue-purple patch that shifts through green and yellow as it heals	Trauma, aging skin, blood-thinning medicines, clotting-factor issues

A practical way to think about it: petechiae are the finding that should most quickly prompt a call to a clinician, especially in a child with fever, because they can signal low platelets or serious infection. Purpura sits in the middle — worth attention when new, widespread, or unexplained. A single ecchymosis on a bumped shin is usually the least concerning of the three.

One more wrinkle: ‘purpura’ is also used as an umbrella term for conditions that cause this whole family of spots, as in senile purpura, the harmless forearm bruising of older skin covered later in this article. Context tells you which meaning applies.

Why Does a Bruise Change Color? The Timeline Under Your Skin

A healing bruise is a chemistry demonstration you can watch. Each color marks a stage in the breakdown of hemoglobin, the iron-rich protein that makes blood red.

• Hours one to two days: fresh blood near the surface looks red or reddish-purple. As it loses oxygen, the patch deepens to blue, dark purple, or nearly black.
• Days two to five: enzymes convert hemoglobin to biliverdin, a green pigment. This is the stage that makes people wonder if something has gone wrong; nothing has.
• Days five to ten: biliverdin becomes bilirubin, which is yellow — the same pigment behind jaundice, here in a harmless local form. The bruise turns yellow-green, then yellow-brown.
• Days ten to fourteen: macrophages store leftover iron as hemosiderin, leaving a faint brown tint that gradually fades.

Most bruises clear completely within about two weeks, per MedlinePlus, though deep ones and those on the lower legs — where gravity slows drainage — can take a month. Skin tone changes the palette, too: on deeply pigmented skin, a fresh ecchymosis may read as dark brown or nearly black rather than blue, and the green-yellow stages are subtler. The healing sequence is identical; only the visibility differs.

The timeline is diagnostic gold. A bruise cycling through colors is actively healing. One that stays uniformly dark past two weeks, keeps growing, or becomes increasingly painful and swollen has broken the script and deserves a professional look.

Bruising Easily: The Everyday Causes Doctors See Most

Before considering anything rare, it helps to know how ordinary easy bruising is. Mayo Clinic lists it among the most common — and most benign — complaints in primary care, and the usual explanations are refreshingly mundane.

Anatomy comes first. Women tend to bruise more readily than men, partly because their skin is structurally thinner and the fat layer beneath is distributed differently, offering capillaries less padding. Family history matters as well; easy bruising often runs in families without any identifiable disorder behind it.

Age is the biggest single factor, and it works through two mechanisms: the dermis thins and loses collagen, and the tissue anchoring capillaries in place weakens, so smaller forces tear vessels. Decades of sun exposure accelerate both processes, which is why forearms and the backs of hands — the most sun-exposed real estate on the body — bruise first.

Lifestyle plays a supporting role. Contact sports and strength training cause micro-trauma you may not register in the moment. Heavy alcohol use impairs both platelet function and the liver’s production of clotting proteins, a double hit. Very low body weight removes the subcutaneous cushion that normally absorbs impact.

What none of these causes produce, importantly, is bruising in odd locations. Shins, knees, forearms, hips — the body’s bumpers — are expected sites. Everyday easy bruising respects that geography. Bruises that ignore it, appearing on the back, abdomen, or face without trauma, belong in a different category, addressed below.

Can Medications and Supplements Make You Bruise More?

Frequently — and this is the first question any clinician evaluating new bruising will ask, because it is the most common fixable cause in adults.

Several categories of medicine work by design against clotting. Prescription anticoagulants and antiplatelet medicines exist precisely to make blood less likely to clot, protecting against stroke and heart attack; easier bruising is a known and usually acceptable trade-off, not a malfunction. Many over-the-counter pain relievers in the anti-inflammatory family also dampen platelet function as a side effect. Corticosteroids, whether taken as pills or applied for years as skin creams, thin the skin itself, so vessels sit closer to the surface with less collagen protecting them. Some antidepressants and certain antibiotics can affect platelets in a smaller number of people.

Supplements deserve equal scrutiny, because ‘natural’ does not mean neutral for clotting. Fish oil, ginkgo, garlic extracts, and high intakes of vitamin E have each been associated with reduced platelet stickiness, and the effect stacks when supplements are combined with blood-thinning prescriptions — a combination the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements specifically flags.

The critical safety point: never stop a prescribed medicine because of bruising. A medication protecting your heart or brain is doing a far more important job than keeping your shins pristine. Instead, bring a complete list — prescriptions, over-the-counter products, and every supplement — to your clinician. Often a simple adjustment, or reassurance that the bruising is expected, resolves the worry without changing anything that matters.

Which Vitamin Deficiency Causes Ecchymosis?

Two nutrients have a genuine, well-documented link to bruising: vitamin C and vitamin K. Each works through a different mechanism, and it is worth understanding both before reaching for a supplement bottle.

Vitamin C is required to build collagen, the protein scaffold that gives blood vessel walls their strength. When intake stays very low for weeks — the deficiency disease called scurvy — capillaries become fragile enough to leak under normal wear. The NIH notes the classic signs: easy bruising, pinpoint bleeding around hair follicles, corkscrew-shaped body hairs, swollen or bleeding gums, and slow wound healing. True scurvy is uncommon in high-income countries but not extinct; it still appears in people with severely restricted diets, alcohol use disorder, or absorption problems.

Vitamin K plays a different position: the liver needs it to manufacture four of the body’s clotting factors. Deficiency is rare in healthy adults, because the vitamin is abundant in leafy greens and gut bacteria produce some, but it can develop with long-term antibiotic use, liver disease, or conditions that impair fat absorption. Newborns are routinely protected against it precisely because their stores are low at birth.

An honest caveat: vitamin deficiency is an uncommon explanation for bruising in someone eating a reasonably varied diet, and megadosing without a diagnosed deficiency will not toughen your capillaries. If a deficiency is suspected, a blood test settles the question. That is a far better path than self-treating a symptom whose actual cause might be a medication, aging skin, or something that needs different attention entirely.

Why Do Older Adults Bruise So Easily? Understanding Senile Purpura

Walk through any retirement community and you will see it: dark purple, sharply bordered patches on forearms and the backs of hands, often with no injury anyone can recall. The condition has an unflattering traditional name — senile purpura, sometimes called actinic or solar purpura — and it is one of the most common skin findings after age 60.

The mechanism is structural, not a blood problem. Decades of ultraviolet exposure degrade collagen and elastin in the dermis, and skin naturally thins with age, losing much of its protective fat layer in the process. Capillaries that were once cushioned and anchored now sit near the surface in fragile tissue. A minor brush against a doorframe — force that younger skin would absorb without a mark — tears vessels and produces a striking bruise. Platelet counts and clotting tests in these patients are typically completely normal.

Distinctive features help identify it: the patches favor sun-exposed forearms and hands, appear with trivial or unremembered contact, lack the swelling and tenderness of traumatic bruises, and often skip the green-yellow color sequence, fading slowly and sometimes leaving a brownish stain from residual iron pigment.

Senile purpura is cosmetically frustrating but medically benign, and it does not signal a bleeding disorder. It is, however, a reason for gentler skin care: long sleeves during yardwork, moisturizer to reduce fragility, daily sunscreen to slow further collagen loss, and padding sharp furniture corners. And because older adults also take more blood-affecting medicines, any sudden change in bruising pattern — new locations, much larger patches, bruising with other bleeding — still merits a check-in rather than an assumption.

Ecchymosis Without Injury: What Unexplained Bruises Can Mean

First, a calibration: ‘I don’t remember hitting anything’ is not the same as ‘nothing hit me.’ We bump into the world constantly — grocery carts, armrests, an enthusiastic dog — and the resulting bruise surfaces a day or two later, long after the moment is forgotten. A few unexplained bruises on the arms and legs of an active person are, statistically, almost always this.

Genuinely spontaneous ecchymosis is different, and location is the sharpest clue. Bruises on the trunk, back, abdomen, or face raise more concern than bruises on limbs, because those areas rarely take accidental knocks. Number and size matter too: many new bruises appearing over days to weeks, or patches dramatically larger than any plausible trigger, break the pattern of ordinary life.

Timing is the third signal. A person who has bruised easily since childhood, with relatives who say the same, most often has a mild inherited tendency. Bruising that changes abruptly — someone who never bruised now marking up weekly — points toward something acquired: a new medication or supplement, developing liver or kidney disease, or a change in platelets.

There is also a pattern that deserves explicit, respectful mention: bruises in unusual places on a child, an older adult, or anyone in a dependent situation can be a sign of physical abuse. Clinicians are trained to consider it, and anyone worried about their own safety or someone else’s should know that raising it with a doctor or nurse opens a door to confidential help.

When a Bruise May Signal a Bleeding Disorder or Blood Condition

Here is the principle worth carrying away from this entire article: a bruise almost never matters on its own. It matters for the company it keeps.

Blood needs three things to clot properly — enough platelets, working clotting proteins, and sturdy vessels. Trouble with any of the three tends to produce bleeding in more than one place at once. So the questions clinicians ask are less about the bruise and more about everything around it:

• Frequent or prolonged nosebleeds, or gums that bleed with routine brushing
• Menstrual periods that have become notably heavier or longer
• Small cuts that ooze far longer than they used to
• Blood in urine or stool, or stool that is black and tarry
• A fine sprinkle of petechiae, especially on the lower legs
• Fatigue, pallor, recurrent fevers, night sweats, or unintended weight loss alongside new bruising

Behind these patterns sit real but individually uncommon conditions: low platelet counts from immune causes or medications, inherited disorders such as von Willebrand disease (the most common heritable bleeding condition, often mild and undiagnosed for years), liver disease that reduces clotting-factor production, and — rarely — blood cancers such as leukemia, in which abnormal cells crowd out platelet production. Published case reports, including in the NIH’s literature, describe ecchymosis as an early clue to such diagnoses, which is exactly why the symptom cluster deserves evaluation.

Honest perspective: among people who see a doctor for easy bruising, serious disease is the exception, and a normal exam plus normal basic labs is the most common outcome. The point of knowing the warning signs is not to fear every bruise — it is to recognize the rare one that is trying to say something.

When to See a Doctor About Ecchymosis

Use two lists: one for prompt or emergency care, one for a routine appointment.

Seek urgent care or emergency help if bruising comes with any of these:

• A widespread rash of pinpoint spots with fever, headache, stiff neck, or confusion — press a glass against the spots; if they do not fade, treat it as an emergency, per NHS guidance
• Bruising after a significant head injury, especially patches behind the ears or around both eyes, which can indicate a skull fracture
• Deep bruising around the navel or flanks without trauma, a possible sign of internal bleeding
• Uncontrolled bleeding anywhere, coughing or vomiting blood, or black tarry stools
• A rapidly expanding, intensely painful bruise with tightness or numbness after an injury

Book a routine appointment if:

• Bruises appear repeatedly without any plausible injury, particularly on the trunk, back, or face
• Your bruising pattern has clearly changed — more frequent, larger, or slower to heal than your normal baseline
• A bruise has not started fading after two weeks, or any bruise lingers beyond a month
• Bruising began after starting a new medication or supplement
• Bruising is paired with nosebleeds, bleeding gums, heavier periods, or unusual fatigue
• You have a family history of a bleeding disorder and new symptoms of your own

When in doubt, err toward the appointment. Easy bruising is one of the cheapest, fastest complaints in medicine to evaluate, and reassurance backed by a normal blood count beats months of quiet worry.

What Tests Will a Doctor Order for Easy Bruising?

The workup is straightforward, usually painless beyond a single blood draw, and often complete within days. Knowing what to expect takes much of the dread out of making the appointment.

The conversation comes first, and it does most of the diagnostic work. Expect questions about when the bruising started, where it appears, every medication and supplement you take, alcohol intake, your diet, family bleeding history, and companion symptoms like nosebleeds or heavy periods. Then a physical exam: the clinician looks at the bruises’ size and distribution, checks for petechiae, and feels for an enlarged liver, spleen, or lymph nodes.

If labs are warranted, the first tier typically includes:

• Complete blood count (CBC): measures platelets — normally about 150,000 to 450,000 per microliter of blood — along with red and white cells, screening for low platelets, anemia, and abnormal cell patterns in one test
• PT/INR and aPTT: two timing tests that check whether the cascade of clotting proteins is working; together they cover most clotting-factor problems, including vitamin K–related ones
• Liver and kidney function panels: because the liver builds clotting factors and kidney disease can impair platelet function

When the story suggests it, second-tier tests follow: a von Willebrand panel, specific clotting-factor levels, or vitamin C measurement. Only rarely — persistent abnormal counts, suspicious cells — does evaluation extend to a hematologist or bone marrow testing.

The most common result of this entire cascade, worth repeating, is normal everything: a documented tendency to bruise easily with no disease behind it. That answer, in writing, is worth the blood draw.

How to Treat a Bruise at Home (and What Actually Speeds Healing)

No cream, patch, or pill reliably erases a bruise ahead of schedule — the timeline belongs to your macrophages, and they do not take requests. What home care genuinely does is limit how big the bruise gets in the first hours and keep you comfortable while biology works.

In the first 24 to 48 hours: cool the area with a cold pack or a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a thin towel, 10 to 20 minutes at a time, several times a day. Cold narrows the leaking vessels, so less blood escapes and the eventual bruise is smaller. Never place ice directly on skin. If the bruise is on a limb, elevate it above heart level when you can — a leg on pillows, an arm on the sofa back — which uses gravity to reduce pooling. Rest the area; a bruised muscle pushed hard keeps leaking.

After 48 hours: switch to gentle warmth — a warm (not hot) compress for 10 minutes a few times daily. By now the leak has sealed, and warmth increases local blood flow, helping cleanup cells clear the debris. Light movement helps for the same reason.

What the evidence does not support: rubbing or massaging a fresh bruise (it can worsen the leak), ‘drawing out’ remedies, and most topical products marketed for bruises, which have thin or mixed research behind them. If pain relief is needed, ask a pharmacist or clinician which option suits you, since some common pain relievers can themselves promote bruising.

Call a clinician instead of waiting it out if the bruise sits over a joint that will not bear weight, involves the eye with vision changes, or develops a firm, growing lump.

Can You Prevent Bruises? What Actually Helps

You cannot bubble-wrap a life, and some bruising tendency — age, sex, genetics — is simply dealt at birth. But the preventable share is larger than most people assume, and the highest-yield moves are unglamorous.

Engineer the environment. Most everyday bruises come from the same six collisions on repeat: the coffee table, the bed frame, the dishwasher door, the car door, the bathroom counter, the shopping cart. Widen walking paths at home, pad or reposition the worst offenders, tape down rug edges, and light hallways and stairs properly — nighttime navigation in the dark is a bruise factory, and for older adults, a fall risk with far higher stakes.

Protect the skin itself. For anyone with thinning or sun-damaged skin, long sleeves during gardening and household projects prevent a remarkable number of forearm bruises. Daily moisturizer keeps fragile skin more supple, and broad-spectrum sunscreen slows the collagen loss that drives actinic purpura — prevention that pays out over years, not days.

Feed the scaffolding. A diet with regular vitamin C sources (citrus, peppers, strawberries, broccoli) and vitamin K sources (leafy greens) supports vessel walls and clotting-factor production. This is about adequacy, not megadoses; supplements beyond your needs will not armor your capillaries and, in some cases, can tip the balance the other way.

Review the medicine cabinet annually. Bring every prescription, over-the-counter product, and supplement to a yearly review with your clinician or pharmacist. Redundant blood-thinning effects hiding across multiple bottles are among the most common — and most easily fixed — causes of new bruising in adults.

The Bottom Line: Read the Pattern, Not the Patch

A single bruise, however lurid its colors, is almost never the story. Skin bruises because that is what skin does when capillaries meet the physical world — and the body’s cleanup system is so reliable that the entire drama, from purple to green to gone, usually resolves in a fortnight without anyone’s help.

What deserves your attention is deviation from your own baseline. You know your body’s bruising habits better than any chart: where marks usually show up, how big they run, how long they take to fade. When that pattern shifts — new locations like the trunk or face, sudden frequency, bruises that stall mid-heal, or bruising joined by nosebleeds, gum bleeding, heavy periods, or bone-deep fatigue — that shift is the finding, and it earns a medical conversation.

The evaluation, should you need it, is about as gentle as medicine gets: a conversation, an exam, one blood draw. The overwhelming majority of people walk out with normal results and a name for their tendency rather than a diagnosis. The small minority whose bruising is a genuine early signal benefit enormously from having listened to it, because conditions caught through skin signs are often caught early.

So keep the balance this article has tried to strike. Do not catastrophize the shin bruise with a perfectly good coffee-table alibi. Do not rationalize away the pattern that has genuinely changed. Between those two errors sits the sensible middle: notice, compare against your baseline, and let a clinician — not a search bar at midnight — settle any real doubt.

Frequently asked questions

What is ecchymosis vs a bruise?

They describe the same thing: blood leaked from broken capillaries pooling under intact skin. Ecchymosis is simply the clinical term, usually reserved for flat patches larger than about one centimeter. One useful distinction: ‘bruise’ implies an injury caused it, while ecchymosis is cause-neutral — it can follow trauma or appear spontaneously from a medication effect, fragile skin, or a clotting problem. Seeing the word in a medical report means bruising was observed, nothing more.

What is the difference between ecchymosis and purpura?

Size, primarily. Purpura refers to purple spots roughly 2 millimeters to 1 centimeter across; ecchymosis is larger than 1 centimeter. Both are flat, non-blanching, and caused by blood outside its vessels. Purpura is also used as an umbrella term for conditions producing such spots — senile purpura, for example, is the harmless forearm bruising common in older, sun-damaged skin. New, widespread, or unexplained purpura deserves a medical review, since it can reflect platelet or vessel problems.

When should I worry about ecchymosis?

Worry about patterns, not single bruises. See a doctor promptly if bruises appear without injury on the trunk, back, or face; if bruising suddenly becomes frequent or unusually large; if a bruise has not begun fading after two weeks; or if bruising arrives with nosebleeds, bleeding gums, heavier periods, blood in urine or stool, or marked fatigue. Pinpoint spots with fever, or bruising after a serious head injury, warrant emergency care rather than an appointment.

Which vitamin deficiency causes ecchymosis?

Vitamin C and vitamin K deficiencies are the two with solid evidence. Severe vitamin C deficiency (scurvy) weakens collagen in capillary walls, causing easy bruising, bleeding gums, and pinpoint hemorrhages around hair follicles. Vitamin K deficiency impairs production of four clotting factors in the liver. Both are uncommon in people eating varied diets, so a blood test to confirm deficiency is smarter than self-treating with supplements, which will not help if the real cause lies elsewhere.

What is the difference between ecchymosis and petechiae?

Petechiae are pinpoint dots under 2 millimeters — smaller than a sesame seed — while ecchymosis is a patch larger than 1 centimeter. The distinction matters because tiny, clustered petechiae more often signal low platelets, certain infections, or intense straining, whereas a single ecchymosis usually reflects ordinary trauma or fragile skin. A widespread crop of petechiae, especially with fever in a child, deserves urgent medical attention; press a glass against the spots — if they do not fade, seek care.

Why am I suddenly bruising easily?

A sudden change most often traces to something new: a recently started medication or supplement (blood thinners, anti-inflammatory pain relievers, fish oil, and ginkgo all reduce clotting activity), increased alcohol intake, or age-related skin thinning crossing a visible threshold. Less commonly, it reflects low platelets or liver disease. Because the change is recent, it is worth a medical review — bring a full list of everything you take, since medication effects are the most common fixable cause.

How long should a bruise take to heal?

About two weeks for most bruises, per MedlinePlus, cycling from red-purple through green to yellow-brown as hemoglobin breaks down. Deep bruises, large ones, and those on the lower legs can take up to a month because drainage there is slower. See a doctor if a bruise shows no fading after two weeks, keeps enlarging, becomes more painful over time, or develops a firm growing lump, which may indicate a hematoma needing evaluation.

Can exercise or straining cause bruising and petechiae?

Yes. Strength training and contact sports cause micro-trauma that surfaces as bruises a day or two later, often without a remembered impact. Intense straining — hard coughing fits, vomiting, heavy lifting, or childbirth — can spike pressure in small vessels of the face and chest enough to burst capillaries, producing temporary petechiae. These fade within days. Petechiae without any straining trigger, or accompanied by fever or fatigue, are a different matter and should be evaluated.

Can unexplained bruising be a sign of cancer?

Rarely, and almost never as the only sign. Blood cancers such as leukemia can lower platelet production, and bruising may be an early clue — but in those cases it typically arrives with companions: petechiae, fatigue, pallor, recurrent infections or fevers, night sweats, or unexplained weight loss. Isolated easy bruising in an otherwise well person is overwhelmingly benign. The symptom cluster, not the bruise, is what determines urgency, and a basic blood count screens for it quickly.

Why do older adults get dark purple patches on their forearms?

That is senile (actinic) purpura, one of the most common skin findings after 60. Decades of sun exposure degrade collagen, skin thins, and capillaries lose their cushioning, so trivial contact tears vessels. The patches favor forearms and the backs of hands, often skip the green-yellow healing colors, and may leave a brownish stain. Blood tests are typically normal. It is medically harmless, though long sleeves, moisturizer, and daily sunscreen help reduce new patches.

References

• Bruises — MedlinePlus
• Bruises (Ecchymosis) — Cleveland Clinic

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.