Clotting
I scratched a piece of cuticle on my left hand middle finger today and it started to bleed like crazy. I was driving at the time, so I thought it would be best to let it bleed, clot, and dry, and then clean it up later.
That plan worked OK, but it seemed to skip the clot step, and go right to dry. It took a few seconds or even minutes (I was paying attention to the road), and I even had the console vent blowing right near my left hand.
While the apparent lack of clotting could be attributed to the location of the blood source, i.e. right next to my finger nail, I have suspected that I have a vitamin K deficiency in the past.
Vitamin K
While vitamin K deficiencies are rare, I might just have one. In the past, I’ve had frequent and long running nose bleeds in dry weather. I read online somewhere that other people were able to put and end to nosebleeds like this by taking vitamin K, which apparently is involved with blood clotting.
I mentioned this to my grandmother and she said that her doctor had advised her to watch her vitamin K intake as she was on a blood thinner. I think it was coumadin that she was taking, and everything I had read seemed to add up.
I couldn’t find vitamin K supplements easily, but eventually I did get some, and they seemed to subside my nosebleeds. I had also read up on what types of foods have naturally occurring vitamin K and found that it is usually found in green, leafy vegetables.
Green Leafy Vegetables
When I hear the words green leafy vegetables, I think of flowering kale, spinach, parsley, lettuce - vegetables like that.
I’ve read that these types of vegetables have good all around nutritional value so I increased my intake of them. Besides, I really like their texture and flavor, especially raw romaine lettuce and steamed spinach. I was surprised to find that like spinach, romaine lettuce is a good source of iron, too.
While I don’t eat a lot of kale or spinach these days, I eat romaine lettuce almost everyday. In salads, on tacos, and on sandwiches.
I haven’t had a nosebleed in years, but when my finger was bleeding today, I got thinking. I thought about everything I’ve just mentioned: nosebleeds, vitamin K, and clotting. Then I remembered a conversation with a doctor I recently had during my daughter’s 15-month checkup. The doctor asked if either of her parents had any health issues, and I mentioned that although I’ve never been diagnosed as having it, I’ve been told I might have anemia ( less than normal amounts of red blood cells) because I bruise easily.
Anemia, or “Why do I bruise easily?”
The doctor’s response surprised me. He said that attributing easy bruising to anemia is a common misconception. However, he said it is sometimes related to a clotting disorder, but that if I ever had been operated upon or required stitches for a cut, the doctors would have probably diagnosed it.
I said I had received a minor skin graft when I lost a tiny bit of my finger as a young child, and that I had received stitches before, but never heard anything about a clotting disorder. We left it at that and resumed focus on my daughter.
With anemia seemingly no longer the cause of my easy bruising, I thought about other causes for it for awhile after my daughter’s checkup. One day I heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) about Melinda Merck, a forensic veterinarian and how it can be difficult to investigate animal abuse because animals do not bruise as easily as humans due. I don’t recall the exact details but I started thinking that maybe the issue at hand is not that I bruise easily, but that they are more noticeable because I have very light and pale skin.
That rationale satisfied my curiosity for the time being until today when my finger started bleeding. I thought that maybe I actually do bruise easily, and that easy bruising is not always, like the doctor alluded, attributable to anemia. What if it is instead related to blood coagulation (clotting)?
Thanks to my nosebleeds, I had read up quite a bit on coagulation and that’s how I found out about vitamin K. Tonight I decided to research if there is any connection between bruising and vitamin K deficiency.
Blood Coagulation and Bruising
I just read up on the wikipedia page about blood coagulation and did not find any reference to bruising. The page on bruise does includes a statement that seems to suggest that patients with coagulation disorders may exhibit bruising.
More significantly though, the Vitamin K page on MedlinePlus at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website includes this simple statement:
“Individuals with vitamin K deficiency are usually more likely to have bruising and bleeding.”
That’s good enough reason for me to start taking vitamin K supplements again and see if it has any effect on my bruising.
I’d worry about getting too much vitamin K, but unlike many other supplements such as iron, the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) has not been set for vitamin K. I’ll start with a little more than the Adequate Intake ( 125 mcg/day for men in my age group ) and see how that goes.
UPDATE: I just bought some at Amazon.com for only $2! Since shipping was $3.99, I decided to take advantage of it and buy a couple more items. DHEA and chromium were cheap and the medline search engine result articles seemed more positive than negative with regard to these two, so I’ll try them out and see if they produce any benefits for me.
NOTE: I am not a doctor and this post is for my own personal reference. Nothing on this site should be considered medical advice.