Medical Advice in this blog is based on experience and education from myself and my colleagues. For all medical emergencies please go to the Emergency Department if one is available or call 911. For serious conditions medical providers should always be your first line of defense. This blog is NOT a substitute for a DOCTOR. For Chronic conditions please seek out a specialist in that area.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Butter on a Bruise?
Yes it works. If you haven’t heard, if you get punched in the face or bump your noggin, you should put butter on in right away. This will help prevent bruising and I’ll tell you why. Your skin is very vascular (meaning lots of blood vessels in it) when you bounce your fore head off of a pole the tissue gets irritated and releases histamines into the surrounding area. The histamines break down the cell walls of your blood vessels and cause you to bleed into the tissue thus presenting a bruise. The cell walls of your vessels are made up of phospholipids and that is what is dissolved when the histamine is released. Granted a number of vessels break on impact but not so many it goes all the way up to your knee when you sprain your ankle, once again histamine is the culprit. Anyway back to the butter. Butter is full of fat which is high in phosphate; phosphate is the leading ingredient in phospholipids which make up the blood vessel cell walls. By applying butter you sustain those phospholipids and prevent bleeding into the tissue. This is the same reason putting raw steak on a potential bruise can help, because it is packed with phosphate. Now a cold pack that you all are so familiar with helps slow the release of histamines and reduce the chemical reaction brought on by it. But in the end it won’t stop the histamine forever. And that is the why behind the butter on the bruise. P.S. using real butter is better than margarine but margarine will still work because it is fortified with phosphate.