I bruise like hell after each caving trip and I cave approx 3 times per week. I use a furry thats got double thickness on knees and thick kneepads.

Is my technique really that poor or do some people just bruise more?

Also I keep getting told that continuous bruising can lead to embollisms...is that true or is my mum still upset im not a ballerina and just paranoid for me?

jude

You'll grow out of it. It's your technique, I reckon.

Many years ago, after caving, it was common to look like the result of a frenzied baseball bat attack. Now, even after trips with hours of crawling on pointy stuff, there's not a blemish.

For reasons on which I will not speculate, it seems that female cavers, especially less experienced ones, bruise more than male ones. However, both groups bruise less with increased experience, as Chris notes. My advice is not to undress in front of your mum.

Coincidentally, we were discussing this at karate, with several people of the opinion that some people bruised more easily than others, ad this did not appear to be connected with the number of fights people took part in or their ability at fighting and defending against attack.

Bruising is basically damage to small blood vessels and leakage of blood. I could guess at possible factors - eg  skin tone making minor bruises less visible, maybe more fat has a cushioning effect? Obviously technique does have an influence in caving - the more you bash bits of you against bits of rock, the more you will bruise.

From a random web site:

"If you bruise easily it may simply imply that your body is especially sensitive to capillary leakage. Other causes of easy bruising may include vitamin deficiency, aging, platelet disorders, kidney disease, leukemia, cirrhosis of the liver, side effects to medication (especially aspirin and warfarin) and Marfan syndrome...

Bruising easily is not always the sign of a serious disorder. In fact, it usually just means you are more prone than others to the phenomenon. Sometimes, it suggests a slight abnormality of the blood vessels or a deficiency in blood clotting. Also, if you are fair skinned, bruises tend to be more prominent and even the slightest bruising is visible.

Certain nutritional factors can also increase your tendency to bruise. For instance, excess use of ginkgo biloba, fish oil, garlic, ginger and vitamin E can lead to excess bruising. A deficiency in vitamin K, vitamin C and flavonoids can lead you to bruise easily. Vitamin C helps bruising and flavonoids are usually recommended along with vitamin C, since they increase the effectiveness of the vitamin..."

Thankyou Kay, that was a bit nicer than a certain other replyee who has made some assumptions! Just out of friendly interest Chris, are you an instructor? Or is that an assumption on my part  :ang:

Maybe people who cave in areas with caves that are a bit more vertical  with climbs or with lots of rifty thrutching or squeezes just bruise more due to the nature of the cave.........I must admit to being pretty bruise free after my little bimble around swildons 

Been pondering this whole bruising thing this morning too, it seems to have gotten much worse recently when doing slightly harder trips with the lads (much faster than me) so probably in my haste to keep up I am not the most delicate of cave fairies. Also doing drain cave at bullpot farm this weekend in significantly less clothing that caving kit probably hasn't helped my legs, shoulders, back, hips or hands.

Digging also hasnt helped. I have horrible scarred knuckles due to lack of decent fitting small gloves.

Anyway, ta Graham for your input too, you make your point with a bit more tact 

jude

Jude said:

Digging also hasnt helped. I have horrible scarred knuckles due to lack of decent fitting small gloves.

jude

Click to expand...

Can you do anything like getting a cheap pair of ladies' gloves and wearing them under small marigolds? Or small marigolds and wear on top a pair of tough gloves with the ends of the fingers chopped off? I'm working on th principle that the real problem with non-fitting gloves is the 1 inch of empty finger end flapping around making it totally impossible to pick up anything with your fingers.

Jude, it sounds like you've been undressing in front of more than just your Mum! 

On the gloves front, the dear lady wife uses "Glovlies" & swears she'll give up caving if they ever stop making them. She uses "large" which are way too small for me - & they don't seem to sell XL any more - so  there should be a size that suits you.

I've noticed I bruise far less than when I began caving - partly technique, you do eventually manage to thrutch without banging forearms and shins quite so violently against protrusions - but partly my body just bruises less than it used to, maybe I've broken the small capillaries so many times they are just tougher now.

But people do just bruise differently, so you may always come out of a cave bruised.

ive always found rubber gloves a bit crap far better imo are the nitted nylon gardening gloves with plastic coated palms and fingers theyre warmer, breath, give better knucle and finger protection last as long if not longer than ruber gloves and fit better  theyre just generaly better...

the other thing ive found to work realy well is sowing sections of carimat on to the knees of my undersuite so much better than just having kneepads cos they stay in place even during realy long crawls.

I know a lot of people swear by a set of the hard rubber miners' knee pads to protect their knees. I like to use a pair of neoprene gloves when I use  glovs at all. Generally though, I do think that technique is a definite factor in bruising - I was bruised to hell after doing Bye George the other day and I'd not done any serious caving in about 6 months so my technique was rusty. Failing that, you could always try to rub some of Mr. C's special Egg Nog in to your bruises - sure it'd be better than deep heat. 

When I first started caving my legs bruised so much, but they dont seem to get any bruise now, I think dif bits of your body get used to being battered around and so dont bruise anymore. This was noticable when I took up rugby as my arms bruise loads but compared to the other girls I dont get anywhere near the same size bruises on my legs (they have ones like dinner plates and mine are the size of 1p) but I hurt without the bruise to show for it 

Is it accepted that, as a generality, newcomers to caving sustain more bruising than experienced cavers (which seems to be supported by five respondants, above, so far)?

Thanks for the replies, I just feel like I've started bruising more! I've only been caving since the end of last August but have managed to rack up about 75 trips so far so you'd think by now my technique would be starting to get somewhere. I think maybe the style of trips I've been doing has changed, stuff like Pippikin, Aardvark Country, Woodhouse Way, Vein Pot, Penyghent Pot I suppose are all quite crawly and I'm doing longer stuff for more days in a row. I looked up some stuff on bruising and apparently if you bash yourself a bit then again the next day and the next day then bruises will get worse than if they'd had time to recover. I normally cave Sat, Sun, Tue and Thur on a good week so maybe thats contributing. Or maybe I am just a really shit caver and should take up knitting. I'm not really bothered what they look like just wondered about the embollism thing really more than anything.

I have tried layering gloves and I have tried just wearing bigger gloves but I find rigging and digging in both a pain so I stick to small standard marigolds. The only problems are that I get through a couple of pairs per week and its cold crawling through water although being a short arse I can quite often stoop when others are crawling. I saved myself a lot of crawling in penyghent last week!

Ahh the egg nog, superb.

Cap'n Chris, you either think you know which buttons to press or you need a large helping of social awareness. PS next time you're in the dales I'd love to meet you, maybe you could take me down valley entrance or something xxx

Completely bewildered by the hostility, frankly.

cap'n chris

yeah id say that thet is almost certainly true, but perhaps there are other factors as well eg: where you cave, what type of cave you go down, how fast you are trying to go to keep up with those bloody lads, how often you cave and what type of caves and possibly some physiological factors too. A whole spectrum of possibilities.

No one has answered the thing about embollisms tho!

I'll PM you Chris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruise

Perhaps it's an unfair assumption (!) but "Light Bruising" seems the most relevant to this thread and the item does mention the benefit of resting a bruise for better recuperation - your frequency of trips may indeed exacerbate the bruises, however no mention is made of embolism (perhaps Mrodoc's medical expertise can add to this thread more authoritatively).

Couldn't find much else on the topic at short notice. Shall try a metasearch now.

Probably irrelevant but of interest, however, is Von Willebrand disease which affects 1% of the population. WVD sufferers bruise easily. Link here: http://www.emedicine.com/PED/topic2419.htm

I've never heard anyone mention it but whenever my family see my bruises they get all wound up about it. I just wondered if its all a load of pants or not!

It is light bruising. I do get small hard lumps under the bruises if I cave quite a bit on them again after though which normally last a few weeks before disappearing entirely. the colour goes after a week to ten days just leaving the lump. only about 1p or a bit less sized.

If it worries you, then have a chat with your GP rather than ask a load of weirdos and crackpots on UKCaving.

The weirdos and crackpots haven't logged on, yet, Peter.