What Causes Bruising? How to prevent bruises.

Bruising is caused by one of two factors.  One is damage to the skin usually from an external trauma, such as inadvertently hitting your arm or your leg on a piece of furniture.  The other factor is the fragility of the skin and the blood vessels in the skin.  Loss of skin elasticity due to elastin loss and skin thickness due to collagen loss results in thin and crepey/wrinkled appearing skin as we age.  Having excess sun exposure (and the ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun) can accelerate the loss of skin collagen and elastin, leading to thin and fragile skin at even younger ages.  Skin that has less collagen and elastic is more prone to bruising not only due to skin thinness, but also due to the loss of skin matrix protecting veins and capillaries in the skin from bursting and leading to bruising.  

As such, bruising can occur via an external trauma.  Usually, that trauma needs to be forceful in order to cause bruising in younger, more resilient skin types.  As we age, we may experience bruising from minimal external trauma.  In fact, we may experience bruising without any trauma at all.  This is due to the skin changes explained above that occur with age and are accelerated by photodamage from UV radiation.  This type of bruising is called actinic purpura, but also known as Bateman purpura or senile purpura.  Being on blood thinners like Aspirin or on immunosuppressive medications like prednisone can further promote bruising.  

Skintensive Bruise & Scar cream was specially developed to target bruising by reducing the time from development of a bruise to the fading of a bruise and by making skin more resilient to bruising in the future with continual use.  Skintensive Bruise & Scar cream does not completely prevent bruising or make bruising magically disappear overnight, but it is effective in both bruising lightening and bruise prevention.

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The content in this article is not medical advice, but rather informational content.  As a service to our readers, Skintensive provides access to our library of archived blog content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles.  No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other medical professional.