Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Bruising
Episode Date: September 28, 2021Well, in one of the classic parenting whoopsies, Justin and Sydnee dented their daughter (she’s fine). In honor of her contusion, this week on Sawbones we’re talking about bruises. Are steaks par...t of it? Should you put most of a charcuterie board on there? Also, what’s up with the little irons boxing guys get rubbed on their face bruises? All of your questions about bruises will be answered, friend. Hold tight!
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Hello everybody and welcome to Sobhones, an heirloom tour of
Miss Guy to Medicine. I'm your co-host
Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy.
And uh, well, let's just
carate to the chase folks. We
dented our kid. We, we is an
interesting choice. Fate dented our kid. We, we is an interesting choice.
Well, no choice.
Fate dented our kid.
Now by we, do you, you don't mean you and I?
Here's the very brief version of this story.
We were over at Uncle Travis's house.
Yes.
And we were playing on the monkey bars
and Charlie was swinging on the monkey bars.
And she, for some reason, I don't know why.
I don't know if it was this kid.
She skipped a bar and jumped straight for the second bar.
And much like a scene from wipeout, she grabbed it
and she just slipped.
Right now, you know what it was like?
It was like the bit in home alone.
Do you know where he's greased up the ladder
with slime in home alone too?
I guess it is.
Where he's greased up the ladder,
and he jumps and he swings and he falls.
I should know, Charlie is fine. She's up, the lot of any jumps and he's swinging and he falls. I should know Charlie is fine.
She's fine, but she fell on like a bottom support of the thing.
Right on her butt.
Right on her butt and got, you know, it's one of those things where the bruises she got
was so wild that I was trying to play it cool.
Like as a parent, you don't want to act like anything's like something you haven't seen
before, but in my head I was like, this is the wildest
breeze I've ever seen.
Something is terribly wrong.
It looked Charlie and Cooper thought it looked like a galaxy.
So Charlie said she had a space butt for a while.
She really enjoyed it.
I mean, she was really fine.
Like it scared her.
She put like, there was no, it was just a big bruise.
It looks scary, but she was totally fine.
It did leave behind a small indentation,
which I am hopeful we'll go away with time.
It's a dent in our kit.
When you have a severe enough bruise, you can actually damage the adipose tissue, like
the fat cells there, and destroy them sort of. And so my thought process is that if this
happens in an adult, sometimes it never
goes away. But if you like when you're pre puberty, there's going to be some like redistribution
of fat tissue and stuff as you get older. So maybe I don't know. Not that it matters. She's fine.
All that matters is that she's fine. She thinks it's hilarious. She thinks the whole thing is funny.
I blame Justin a Travis ultimately. And my blame Travis, so it's kind of a opacity.
But because of this, we thought we would talk about bruises.
Justin, I like this because we haven't done a saw bones like this in a while, I feel like.
Yeah, it's been a lot of MLMs and COVID stuff lately.
Yeah, and this is kind of a good old fashioned,
hey, humans have been getting bruised
since the beginning of humans, right?
Like everybody, and because they're visible,
typically not always, but because usually you can see something,
people must have been trying to figure out like,
what are they and what do you do about them
as long as we've been getting them.
So when you have something like that in medical history,
you get a lot of wild treatments that result and theories.
And so I thought that might be,
talk about, let's talk about bruises.
It's a fun respite from the world.
Yeah, quick break.
Now Justin, I'm assuming you know what a bruise is.
Yeah, I mean, wait, do you mean what a bruise is. Yeah, I mean, wait, do you
mean what a bruise is or what causes a bruise? Yeah, like when I, when you see a bruise,
what is going on there? What's the deal? It's like you, it's like you like, I don't know.
You, you, you, you, bruise, you bruise it. You not supposed to use the word in the bed.
It's blood.
It's just a collection of blood in the tissues.
Yeah, why is it in there?
It's just bleeding, but there's no break in the skin.
It's internal bleeding.
It's internal bleeding.
That's all it is.
It's just bleeding out of the skin pretty much.
It usually is the result of some sort of blunt force trauma.
You fall, you get hit with something, you know, whatever.
To usually that kind of thing.
Now obviously there are lots of reasons one might get a bruise, but in most cases it's
like you banged your shin against something and I got a bruise on it, right?
What happens is there are all these little tiny blood vessels
called capillaries underneath your skin.
Right, I know what these guys.
Right, little teeny ones, and they rupture,
and then there's blood there, and then you see it.
Hey, that's it.
And over time, your body resorbs it, and it goes away.
And that's the bruise.
There was an injury, healed, you're fine.
There are
bruises you can't see like really deep bruises sometimes.
I don't know. We can feel they can be painful. We forget that off too often.
That too. And there are other words for bruises like the medical term that you could know one
uses is echinosis. No one ever uses that. I mean like I know that.
Contusion. Contusion.
Yeah, contusions more common.
If you want to sound fancy, but you can't remember the other one, that's what Sydney uses
contusion.
And like, echinosis, contusion, bruise, even hematoma, which is sort of a type of bruise,
but like all these things kind of get used interchangeably right, there's some bleeding
and there was no cut for it to come out of because then
it's hemorrhage. Then if I mean like if you're bleeding out to the space around your body,
that's hemorrhage. That's bleeding. We know about that one too. The word echinosis comes from the
Greek for to extravacate blood, which is pretty literal there. And juice. Ugh. I'm part.
So that makes sense. But, and you can use any of these words for bruise
that you prefer, but I'd say most people know bruise.
If we go back to the ancient Greeks
for their advice on bruising though,
it's not maybe as helpful as the term,
the quite literal echinmosis term.
Hippocrates advised in
Day of a scene in Medici that if you have a bruise or a contusion
Whatever you want to call it a spray some swelling basically some sort of injury, you know like an
Athletic injury or because you were working on something kind of injury
You need to release the blood
Get it out. That's bleeding, right?
Yes, so yeah.
You need to bleed yourself.
Just bleed yourself.
So blood letting for bleeding under the skin.
You know, I could get it, like, when you...
Let the blood out.
Yeah, you look in there and it's like,
it looks like the blood, especially they're swelling.
It looks like the blood wants to come out. Like, it looks like, oh, let the blood out. Let the blood, especially their swelling, it looks like the blood wants to come out.
Like, it looks like, I'll let the blood out.
Let the blood out.
And what I love is that he couples it with like,
so you should do some bleeding.
And then you, but then you do need to wrap a lot of bandages
around it afterwards, ostensibly to stop the bleeding
that you have caused to treat the bleeding.
Right, this is a cycle.
Again, and he, he does make the note
like just use lots of bandages. So don't wrap them too tightly. Just make sure you use numerous.
So you really were bleeding. Yeah a lot. That's a lot of bleeding.
The Egyptians who of course came before Hippocrates, but like we're probably better at managing
bruises or a lot.
Actually, a lot of traumatic injuries.
If you look at the Edwin Smith Papyrus,
you will find a lot of pretty decent advice
as if somebody falls, don't move their head,
hold it still, those sorts of spinal injuries.
There's actually a lot of kind of pretty accurate
thinking there.
And for bruises, they were treated a lot like wounds
in general, like just put some honey on it.
Which again, is not gonna fix everything,
but isn't gonna make a bruise worse.
Yeah.
Other than like you might get some ants on there.
Make a bruise sticky.
Yeah.
Nobody likes that.
I don't know, maybe some people like a.
Sticky bruise.
Sticky bruise.
Nice sticky bruise. You know Pluce. A nice sticky bruce.
You know plenty of the elder is going to have some thoughts.
We, I don't know if you're going to, like you're probably going to discuss this as at length,
but like bruising, I suspect, is prone to the, what I think of as the hiccup effect,
where it's like it will get better.
It won't necessarily get better on our predictable schedule.
And whatever the last thing that happened to you
before got better is what you assumed the cure was.
So a lot of random treatments.
Well, and especially as you move into a lot of topical treatments,
meaning things that you would apply to your skin,
the thing about that is that,
like typically the way they would be prescribed
is continue to put this ointment,
sav, poultice, tincture, whatever it is.
Continue to put it on the bruise until it goes away.
So eventually it's gonna be like,
this sounds really work.
Right?
So like, I mean, it all works.
Yeah.
It's 60% of the time.
It works every time.
Plenty advice in natural history,
putting fresh cheese mixed with wine on the bruise,
which I like.
So it's a lot of things for my taste.
Well, I like this idea because if you're gonna do it,
like if you're already at the fresh cheese and wine stall,
like I'm not just gonna get a,
like they don't even sell it in bruised sized amounts.
Like you, you're probably gonna wanna buy extra.
A hunk for yourself and then slice off a little for the wound.
And then, and you don't want it to go bad.
So you're like, now I've already opened the wine.
You know, like at this point in history,
I bet they didn't have like some really sophisticated
like wine stoppers to like put back, you know?
Yeah, in the wine.
So like you've opened the bottle,
you're gonna have to drink it.
You've already got that cheese,
you don't want it to get moldy.
No, eventually like you've gotta eat your own bruise cheese.
Look, right?
I mean, you get hungry.
Bruise cheese.
It's hard to find cheese back then. How would
they even do it? It weren't craft singles. I'll tell you that much. I would not put craft
singles on my brews. Put the craft singles on your brews. Then eat your own brews
cheese. Please, if you want to get better. No, I like it because it's like a great excuse
for a party too. It's like, well, I mean, maybe I'll have a few friends over, help me out with the wine and cheese. And my bruise.
And my bruise cheese as a dare. He also noted that you could use old walnuts for bruising,
but I feel like old walnuts. How are these ancient peoples deciding these walnuts are old?
I don't know, and I think you can just eat them.
Like the way that he, it's written,
it's not really clear on like the method.
I think you just eat them, like eat some old walnuts.
Just eat these old walnuts.
If we could take the old out, like now we got nuts
and cheese and wine.
We're gonna, we're halfway shakutri.
It's our Bruce Lee.
Is there something that I need panchetta for?
I don't know what else is on a Sharkuterie tray.
I make Sharkuterie trays for our children, but they're kid Sharkuterie trays.
So they don't have the fancy.
Yeah, they have the where you roll out the bread really flat, then make a fluffernutter,
and then roll it up in the fluffernuttersouche.
I make fluffernutters for their shark cuterie tray.
You should become beloved on TikTok
by explaining that length.
How you make your kids shark cuterie boards?
Gosh, no.
Because then the rest of it, I don't wanna like front here.
The rest of it is like, here's a pile of baby carrots.
Here's some grapes.
I probably took the time to
rinse. I at least rinsed them. I didn't you know cut them in half or pull. Anyway, here's some
goldfish. In the medieval period, there were a lot of like brews and wound treatments. Again,
a lot of like any sort of injury would be treated very similarly. And you have to imagine like the
the idea that a bruising was related to bleeding would not be a stretch because it looks that way right it looks like there's blood there so that was pretty easy for people to figure out and so they would be treated pretty similarly. and appointments. A lot of folk medicine at this time, like in a lot of houses, in a lot of homes
in this period, you would have had like probably whoever the like oldest woman was in the house,
sort of like the like matriarch of the house would kind of take control of this part of medicine,
of this part of like survival, the medical part, and would be making
of survival, the medical part, and would be making saves and treatments and cures and things to use in the home.
And so it would probably be some sort of herbal
sav is what would result.
And there are lots of different examples of these for bruises.
I found one recipe from Bald's Leech Book.
We've talked about that before, collection of different
treatments and cures. And one in particular
for bruises, you take a variety of herbal things, yaro, broom, centauri, some ground
ivy, and then you boil it all together and some butter and honey, which sounds lovely.
And then you just apply it to the bruise. Which would, you know, it's not gonna,
no.
Yeah, that's nice.
Yeah.
I bet it smells nice.
They don't want to get too aggressive
because it's not that big of a deal, right?
I mean, if you're doing this,
you're worried about the appearance of the thing.
So yeah, you don't want a bunch of stinky oils on there
because you're just worried about the ascetics.
Well, but then, I mean, yes, we know that,
but at the time, you have no idea.
I mean, there's a very vague understanding of like,
because there are gonna be, at the same time period,
maybe the home sort of folk remedy is like,
here's this cool sav, but if you go to a doctor,
there's a decent chance he's gonna bleed you.
Yeah, let's try to avoid that rub心 cheese on it.
So and then there was also another recipe where like just take a bath and put some like
bracken and green elbbarc and mead in your bathtub, just like chill in there in your bath
of your mead.
Again, another great excuse to buy the whole bottle, you know, of mead.
Of mead. Yeah. And this is all okay in the sense that like you said, most brews go away
and they're not a big deal. And if you want to smear stuff all over you in the meantime,
that's not in my business, that's just fine. The last recipe though that I found for brews
is, and this represents sort of like that dichotomy where like there
were there were people who were practicing kind of these folk remedies which certainly
we have talked about many times on the show could be dangerous there were dangerous things
but a lot of it was this these sort of herbal traditions that maybe some help a little
bit with some things a lot of them are just sort of harmless and smell nice. And then there was like the medical world
where people were trying some really wild stuff
because nobody understood what was going on
and the scientific method was still not firmly established.
And so like, in ethics.
Yeah.
And then on the flip side though,
there were really aggressive methods
to actually try to fix things.
This last recipe was basically, you take some different things that you're going to cook
together.
There's this Ella campaign, the lower part of a hammer sedge and some old lard, so some
different substances, herbal things, some lard.
You're going to grind it all together.
You're going to warm through a cloth by the fire, and then you're gonna scarify continually the area for seven nights. So we've talked about this before. This was a way of
actually like cutting the skin, like abrating and cutting. A light cutting, right?
Of the skin. So not like a bleeding, you're just trying to like, scratch it all up.
For how long? Seven nights. Yeah, I mean, that will, the brews will change.
It will get reaction for salt.
Then you set a horn on the open scarifications,
smear with the black salve for a night or two,
or as many as you need, because at that point,
I don't know, now we're into a whole other territory, right?
And now we have a big giant infected open wound that you've created that might or might not
be bleeding at this point. Anyway, you are definitely worse. That's what we can all agree on.
This has gone badly. Also, as with many other ailments during this time period, if you had some
powdered mummy, bruising was one of the things you could treat. We talked about this on the show
before. There was a time period where people got treat. We talked about this on the show before.
There was a time period where people got confused
and thought we were supposed to eat mummies.
Like, as in people who had been mummified.
As in like, actual mummies.
The best period, if I could travel in time
and I'll go back to this exact party
where it was like, was it mummies for power?
Yes, so you would take mummy,
you would turn into a powder
and then carry it around in a little pouch at your waist.
So if you got sick or whatever, you would have your, you would turn into a powder, and then carry it around in a little pouch at your waist, so if you got sick or whatever,
you would have your mummy right there,
and you could just like,
knock your mummy, your mummy.
You gotcha, I need your mummy.
Anyway, you would put it in like a drink, stir it up,
like quick, and then drink it.
For mummy's.
And that was great to take internally for a bruise.
Sure.
Put a powdered mummy.
Justin, I also want to talk about the flip side of like, what if sometimes bruises
are good?
Okay.
But before I do that, let's go to the building department.
Let's go.
The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my cards before the mouth.
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pre-spersed is, maybe they're good?
Yes.
So I think it's interesting, and we've talked about one example of this on the show before,
that sometimes, and again, this is not unique to bruising.
There have been many times where we thought, like, for instance, lottable pus, that if a wound
was doing something, that was all part of the healing process.
So, like, it was important if you had a cut for it to get infected and get filled with pus.
Now, we didn't know that it was infected infected and that's why it was filled with pus.
We thought, like, oh, good, it's doing the thing it does on the way to healing.
When you almost die, but don't.
Bruises have been thought to be positive in some treatments.
As a, like, the bruises, a desirable outcome as a result of a certain treatment.
Like, that's how you know it's working?
Exactly.
As in, cupping.
We have talked about cupping on the show before, where basically you take these little cups,
little like glass cups, and you want to create a vacuum inside them, usually like by lighting
like a mat, or a lighter or something inside them, create a vacuum and then, usually like by lighting like a match or a lighter
or something inside them, create a vacuum
and then stick them on somebody's skin very quickly.
If you've seen the limited series,
a taste of luxury on YouTube, those two funny guys
and that one did cupping to each other in the spa episode.
So you'd know.
That's right, there you go.
That's the best reference I think for that.
A best relatable error base scene. Absolutely. So basically you put them on your back, your extremities, that that's the best reference I think for that. Those are the most relatable everybody has seen that.
Absolutely. So basically you put them on your back, your extremities, wherever you're trying to
like increase blood flow is the thought, right? Like because when you put the cup on there and
you've created that vacuum, you will see like the skin sort of like, like get sucked up into.
She should right up there. If you see a bruise, you know, like, oh, I must have been working.
Yes, you got blood to the area.
Yeah, it worked.
The blood is supposed to be good for oxygenation
and just the muscles will be stronger and looser
and work better and all that kind of stuff,
which is why you have seen this as recently
as this past Olympics.
You'll see people with those cupping marks
on their back or their shoulders or their arms or whatever.
And that's what that is. They're having cupping done because cupping is done to this day.
And it's interesting because cupping and we have a whole episode on this, but it spans the centuries.
It dates back to thousands of years to traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, but it's been used in Asian Egypt and Rome throughout the Middle Ages and even up to now.
And while there is lots of anecdotal evidence, like people claiming this really helped, we
don't have any actual like hard science to back up, cupping.
But the bruises the point, if you don't get the bruise, you didn't do it
right. So like the bruises, the treatment. There's another bruising type practice that
we haven't talked about on the show before. Again, this is, this comes from traditional Chinese
medicine called guashah, which I had never heard that term. What I was told in medical school
was coining. Coining. Coining is in English that is
usually like English speakers are taught the words coining or scraping or spooning but coining is
the one that I was familiar with and this is because you basically you're going to use some sort
of implement. Traditionally this would be like a ceramic soup spoon that they use in China.
And you would use this spoon and repeatedly like pull it across like oiled skin.
So you would like oil the skin all up on the back or wherever you're going to do it.
And then most of the pictures you'll find are on the back.
And then you would just continually, and it's like a, it's a blunt surface.
It's a rounded blunt surface.
So you're not like actually scratching the skin, but that's repeated
pre like firm pressure applied motion over and over and over again, you do result in
bruising. So you'll see these streaky kind of bruises in the area. And then again, this
is the point. The the bruise indicates that you've done it correctly. You've stimulated
blood flow to the area and oxygenation. Like the idea is that there are places where the
blood might
be too stagnant, and this is the treatment.
To move it along.
Yes.
You're moving it along.
The reason coining comes in is because you could use a coin, and like, for this.
And in some cultures who have adopted these practices as well, a coin is more frequently
the thing that is used. And so the problem with practices like this
is that if you are completely unfamiliar with it
in your culture, which is why,
this was the context in which I was taught about this
actually in medical school,
not as in like here is a treatment,
but this is a practice that you will find
in certain cultures and it is mistaken for abuse.
So someone comes in, you see this, you think that they have been intentionally harmed
in some way.
Instead of, no, they went to a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner and they had this
done willfully and this is the purpose.
So.
So then be aware of for sure.
Yeah, yeah, it's them.
And I had never, I didn't know the actual name of it. Guashai aware of for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
And I had never I didn't know the actual name of it.
Guashah.
I just heard.
I feel like it sounds like it'd be kind of relaxing at first.
I mean, it probably eventually would get a little irritating.
Sounds like because it does prove, but like I mean, you have to be kind.
It's it's again, they're they're these sorts of practices that have been done for thousands
of years, which many people who have them done and who do them will attest, work great for them.
But I mean, you know, my, well, my bias is that I practice evidence based medicine.
And so I look for double blind, you know, placebo controlled trials to tell me that something
works or doesn't work.
And that's the stuff that I advised my patients.
And you know, I that is that is the condition of medicine I come from.
And that's why I that is the summons bias.
That is the so yeah, that is what I'll continue to to advise people to do.
There are some I titled this section interesting ecuimosis, which is really just for my own delight.
I realize that nobody, like you look at that
and you're like, this my wife is such a nerd.
Interesting echinoces.
I should have said it that way.
Are you gonna talk about any other,
can I ask about steaks?
Like you see steaks for black eyes in like TV,
a lot of the time
the people who have to stake on it.
Is that it?
Is that, I think that helps?
No, I don't, I don't think it.
You're furtively Googling, like you've never seen someone
put a stake on the screen.
Yeah, but I don't know why people do that.
Well, you just put a stake on a black eye.
Why?
But why? What do people
think they're doing? I mean, I have to imagine this to make it better because it's cold.
To make it worse. Oh, it's apparently dangerous. Well, no, I would never put raw meat on my
face. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The cause of cause it's cold. So maybe it's just because
it's cold. So this is why people do that. It's just because it's cold
now I was gonna say I have no idea why you would ever put raw meat on your face. Please don't do that
I'm a you know me I like my meat cooked if I'm gonna eat it because
I'm I'm not messing around
Get a nice pack. Yeah, if you need to apply and I was gonna get to that that you could put ice on a bruise
I'm sorry to you. No, that's okay. That's okay. We can jump ahead
But no, I don't know there. Please do not put stakes on your face. Yeah, please. Please don't put raw meat of any kind
Not just stakes why why stop there? Don't put raw meat on your face. Keep that stuff away from there
Don't throw raw meat anywhere on your human body. Yeah
So there are a few bruises that we are taught. Unless you're one of those sushi table people.
You know the people are the sushi.
I don't think the sushi goes directly on their skin, right?
Are they like the leaves?
There's probably leaves.
I've never been to one of those events,
but I feel like I saw it on like a reality TV show.
You know if I ever went to one,
it'd be all I talked about.
You know, one time.
I'm too much.
This is pretty good, but obviously, but um.
I'm too much of a nerd for this.
Like I can't eat food off of someone else's skin.
Like it has to be on one of those leaves
because if it is really, truly on their skin,
I'm not, I'm sorry.
I actually love that this thing has been going on
so long that anytime someone tells a story now
that has multiple people in it,
they have to announce like, this was obviously before this is pre-cooked, that obviously.
So anyway, there are a few bruises I wanted to talk about because I think that I hope
you think this is interesting.
I think this is interesting.
We are taught certain patterns of bruises or echinosis that indicate something else might
be going on in the body.
It's not just like I got punched in the arm and now I have a bruise there.
I fell on my knee and it's bruised.
You look at someone's body, see these bruises and go, oh, there's something wrong inside
and this bruise is telling me that. There is one that was named in 1920 by Dr. George Gray Turner, who was a British surgeon,
who wrote a description of a patient with a very peculiar bruising pattern.
He had bilateral flank bruising, right?
And so like you wouldn't immediately think trauma if you've got two distinct, some kind
of symmetrical bruises on both flanks, right?
And what he eventually figured out
is that this was resulting from this particular patient
had severe pancreatitis, inflammation of the pancreas,
actually necrotizing pancreatitis,
meaning that it was like dying tissue in the pancreas.
And that can cause this sort of pattern of blood
in the way that there are like planes of tissue in the body,
the blood tracks in certain patterns
when you get bleeding in different organs
and it tracks symmetrically to the flanks.
That's a nice case.
So this is called the gray turner sign.
And it's, you think pancreatitis
is what we're talking about med school,
think about pancreatitis when you see this.
There are other reasons why you might have bleeding, you have bleeding inside the spaces in the back of your abdomen
that could cause this as well.
But the gray turner sign is a pattern of bruises.
Similarly, in 1918, Dr. Thomas Stephen Cullen wrote of a particular pariambilical meaning
around the belly button, this bruising around the belly button.
This was in a patient who had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy,
so a pregnancy in the fallopian tube and then ruptured.
That because of that bleeding inside the abdomen,
again, just where things track,
there was this pattern of bruising right around the belly button.
That if you see that, again,
it could be some sort of bleeding in the abdomen.
Actually, again, it could, pancreatitis can also do that, but other things that cause bleeding in
there. There's another one in 1903, Dr. John Henry Bryant was going actually through some like
post mortem, studying like, why did patients die and trying to understand like the presentation of different diseases. And he found two patients who had bruising in their scrotums
and they had had this ruptured aneurysm
in their abdominal aorta, the big aorta in their abdomen.
And then it caused this specific pattern of bruising
in the scrotum.
And it is either called Bryant sign
or what I kept finding it referenced as was
Bryant's Blue Scrodom.
Yeah, I bet people probably prefer Bryant sign, Bryant probably prefer his Bryant sign,
try to guess if Bryant's Blue Scrodom.
For to be consulted.
And I should say too, like all of these signs that get these names, they don't most of them,
the bruising is not going to occur until like well into this being a big problem.
Right.
So this isn't really something that like you should be looking for because in this day
and age we should really know what's going on before this happens.
If you get bruising right on the bottom of your foot, right in the middle, on the bottom
of your foot, and you didn't actually step on something or whatever, it can mean a very
specific fracture and dislocation of one joint in your foot.
Plantarachymosis is what we call pathonomonic, meaning almost always indicates.
You see this, it almost always means this.
And raccoon eyes or periorbital bruising.
So symmetrical bruising around both sides.
Yep.
If you see that, that can mean that one of the bones in the base of your skull has a fracture
from some sort of head trauma or something.
That's a lie.
I had an idea.
That can go along with if you get bruising behind the ears on both side, that can be called battle sign for Dr. William Henry battle, who saw it and said, hey, that's my sign.
That's my sign.
That's your sign, my sign.
My sign?
Battle sign.
Bruising over the mastoid process.
What I like about all these epinem, all these things that are named for people, is that
if you read the history of any one of them,
some people were describing this stuff
way before these dudes did.
Like, I mean, like some of these date back to like,
Hippocrates was talking about the great Turner sign.
Like, I mean, he didn't call it that
because like, he didn't have a time machine
and great Turner wasn't around yet.
Unless maybe like Bill and Ted got him both
for some reason at some point.
And anyway, it was just that these dudes were the ones
who were like, I'm not gonna call that me.
That's mine now.
You're gonna have a name this.
It's a lesson that you should learn.
Like if there's something you find,
you just get your name on it, you know?
Because if you don't, it sounds like like if there's something you find, you just get your name on it, you know, because if you don't,
it sounds like a British dude's going to.
Yeah, you're right into it.
Um, I also should note to briefly, um,
kidding aside, patterns of bruising are also really important in medicine.
Um, when it comes to accidental first, not accidental trauma.
Um, so specifically and there are people trained in this area of medicine to understand like whether it be largely children.
Looking for signs of abuse.
Yeah, looking for signs of abuse, because there are some bruises we expect, especially with little kids, that we can attest to this, right?
They fall constantly off of everything all the time. So there are some bruises that we expect to happen and then other patterns of bruising that we don't expect to happen. And there are experts in that area
of medicine. Do you know why bruise changes the skin can look red initially because it's fresh
blood, it's red. And then as it's losing its oxygen, it starts to turn like blue purple
kind of color when the space bruise arose. Then your body starts to break down the hemoglobin
over time and it creates these other compounds that are yellowish or kind of greenish that
kind of color starts to form and then finally brown before it completely resorbs
and fades away.
Most bruises, like we already said,
just need maybe some ice.
You can use it over the counter pain reliever
if they're really bothering you.
You know, cut man has a tool for this boxing ring.
You know, you receive what it's called an ins well,
they keep them on ice and then they press them
onto the, when you're like a human tumor or something like that, that is an appearing vision,
like they keep it on ice, they take it at, it looks like a tiny iron.
Does it reduce the swelling so much that you can still see?
I mean, it makes it better.
It reduces the blood flow to the area so it doesn't get worse.
Well, that's exactly, well, and you just, that was the next thing I was going to say,
this is why the ice works. That's exactly it. Reduces the blood flow to the area as it doesn't get worse. Well, that's exactly, well, and you just, that was the next thing I was going to say. This is why the ice works.
That's exactly it.
Reducing the blood flow to the area.
A bruise that occurs without a known trauma.
And these are reasons like, so most of the time
a bruise is no big deal.
You know why it happened, right?
You know what caused the bruise.
You look at it, you maybe take some Tylenol or don't,
and it goes away with time.
If you have a bruise and you have no idea why it happened, that could be a sign of,
that could be concerning, right?
Like, bruises shouldn't just occur randomly.
Certainly, people who are on blood thinners
and those kinds of medications can bruise more easily.
But if you do have a bruise,
you don't know where it came from.
That's a good reason to see a healthcare professional.
If a bruise continues to grow in size or is extremely painful, these are not typical of bruises.
Be more cautious if it's around the head or neck, you know.
And if it interferes with anything, like a bruise shouldn't make it so that you lose feeling
and your fingers are toes or you can't move a part of your body or you can't see if those
things are happening.
This is not your typical run of the mill, no big deal bruise.
You need to go see somebody right away.
Obviously, also, if you think there's a broken bone underneath, please go get that checked
out.
And while Tylenol and over-the-counter anti-inflammatories are typically okay, over-the-counter anti-inflammatories
can increase the risk of bleeding further.
So if it is a really big bruise, you might want to talk to somebody before you take that.
Certainly aspirin can as well.
So you got to be careful with those kinds of medications.
You can also use compression and elevation, you know, the standard treatment stuff.
That's the good thing.
Like if you want to smear some nice smelly herbal ointment on your body when you get a
bruise. I don't know if anybody tell you not all how to do that. Yeah well don't do it too close to
me though because so many things irritate my allergies. So if you could just do that in your home.
I'm just saying. Thanks so much for listening to our podcast. We hope that you have not suffered any
bruises today. And if we have, we'll be providing at
least context. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song Medicines is the intro and
outro program. And thanks to you for listening. Oh, we did a live show with my brother, my brother,
me that you could still watch. If you want to, you can head on number to bit.ly-forod-slash-mb-mb-am-virtual.
We rebranded vaccines as a TikTok wellness trend.
It was a lot of fun and you can still watch that
for the next couple weeks.
So it's 10 bucks and please go check it out.
If you didn't get a chance to live, it was a lot of fun.
And go get vaccinated if you haven't.
You can tell a friend.
Yeah, thanks so much for listening.
Oh, you don't forget flu shot.
Yeah, flu shot time too.
There's two vaxes you can get now.
Woo!
And others probably, like if you want to get wild about it,
it's like, well, I mean, just like go check
with your doc and make sure you do.
Like don't just go get.
Just go get a sense of guy.
Well, no, no, make sure you need them.
You need them.
Back up the truck, load them up.
Vax me to the back.
That's going to do a rest until the next time.
I didn't just do backrolls.
I'm Sydney McRoy.
And as always, don't johole in your head. Alright!