Bruising more common as we age

DEAR DR. GOTT: I enjoy your column. I’m a 68-year-old female in good health but recently developed unsightly red bruise marks on my arms and legs. These seem to occur without my even knowing that I have hit something. Sometimes the skin breaks, and it is hard to stop the bleeding. My dermatologist says the bruises are due to lost skin elasticity.

I grew up in an era when sunscreen was unknown. Do you know of anything that would help? The only thing the dermatologist recommended was to moisturize.

DEAR READER: You share a common problem with many other people. As we age, our skin becomes thinner and loses some of the fat that cushions our blood vessels against injury. [Read more...]

Abnormal bruising needs testing

DEAR DR. GOTT: My mother is 63 and doesn’t take anticoagulants or OTC pain relievers but bruises for no apparent reason. An area of her body will begin to itch and then bruise. The bruise follows the normal course of color change and then disappears.

Her eye doctor saw “floaters” in her eye and sent her to a specialist because he thought she had a detached retina. After testing, it was discovered her “floaters” were flecks of blood.
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Can aspirin cause bruising?

DEAR DR. GOTT: I am a 66-year-old female in good health. I have been on an 81 milligram aspirin a day for the last six years. I had a pacemaker inserted in 2007, owing to an electrical problem in my heart. Since then, I have had a problem I attribute to the aspirin, but I’m not sure that’s the culprit. I have blood that pools right under the skin on the lower part of my arms. The blood is very dark — almost black — and sometimes a bit raised. It takes from three to four weeks to fade away, and when it does fade, it leaves a brown spot where it was. I don’t have to hit or scrape my arm. The blood just appears. Right now, I have four large spots on my right arm near the wrist. They are most unsightly, and I have taken to covering them with Band-Aids, but then people ask me what happened to my arm. The only way to hide them would be to wear a long-sleeved blouse all the time. Since I live in Louisiana, where the summers are steamy, I just could not do that.
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