This video is sponsored by NordVPN.
There are some who collect stamps, others pebbles, or even navel fluff.
Me, I happen to collect bruises.
I have been doing martial arts for 11 years, mainly Taekwondo.
And it's not so much that my opponents were hitting hard, especially since it's
not a full contact martial art, but rather that I bruise very very quickly.
My body is a bit of a wuss when it comes to this.
With so many bruises, I've had lots of time to observe them, to see them evolve….
and ask myself questions.
Two questions in particular.
Why am I bruising so much? Even though in a combat sport, it goes without saying that
everyone gets bruises, I think mine were much more frequent and more
intense than the average….
Or maybe I'm complaining more than the average but... that seems highly improbable to me.
And above all, and this is my biggest question, why do bruises change color?
They go from red, blue or even black to yellow until they disappear.
Why? What is going on underneath?
I went to see Primum non Nocere.
And oh boy.
I certainly got the answers to my questions but I did not expect the magnitude of the
ramifications we were about to get into!
I wanted to make this video for the first time a few years ago.
But I had just quit martial arts and my inexhaustible source of bruises...
had been exhausted.
Since I wasn't going to give myself a bruise on purpose --I'm not crazy you know--
I promised myself that as soon as I got a new bruise, that would kickstart the
creation of what you're watching today.
It's summer 2020.
Mont Tranchant in Quebec.
I will soon be able to attest to the name of this mountain (Mount Sharp).
We are here to climb.
The track is 30m high.
A simple track.
In reality I record very, very rarely when I climb, but this was a dream
opportunity, a beautiful track like that.
A “simple” track, not for me at all particularly as a beginner
to climbing outdoors AND first in line, but anyway.
I recorded it.
Here I am at about 25m high…
"I hurt my pride"
A fall while climbing is normal, there is absolutely nothing exceptional about
what I just showed you.
It is precisely because we fall that we use ropes.
But some falls hurt more than others.
In this case, we cannot see it in the clip but my thigh hit a ledge
that protruded and that I had really appreciated a few minutes before to rest on.
Once the shock was over, because even though I didn't really hurt myself, it gave me a
burst of stress... I was delighted! I had the promise of a great
bruise in front of me! And for those who worry (hi Dad and Mom to whom I haven't said anything),
everything is fine, it's literally more fear than harm.
All the conditions were met.
With such a shock, I was guaranteed a bruise, or ecchymosis.
It means that under what was still than a slightly swollen scratch (which doesn't
interest us at all), there were blood vessels, veins
or capillaries in general, which were broken from the shock and the blood
was probably seeping in my tissues to form my future
bruise!
It would only take a few hours before the bruise started to appear.
And indeed the next day, my thigh showed a beautiful picture...
which would reveal to me a panel of colors thereafter.
So we see that not all areas pass through the same colors but roughly
we have the colors red, blue, mauve, yellow and brown.
Even though my photos weren't taken in ideal light conditions because
I was not in the perfect place for that, I think we can still see
the variations in color.
The very dark red color is the one that's most easily explained, it just comes
from the color of blood, and it is mostly present when the bruise is fresh.
However, as you can see, it's not a bright red like the color of a poppy.
The blood that spills out is usually venous blood, which is blood that carries
very little oxygen.
And when there is little oxygen, blood is very very dark red in color.
What gives blood its color is mostly red blood cells, and even
more precisely, inside red blood cells, hemoglobin.
For the bluish, mauve hue that our bruises can take when they are fresh, there
are three possible reasons for this.
First, it's the depth of the bruise.
The deeper it is, the more it appears blue due to the interaction of light
with the skin.
There will be more blue light reflected with deep bruises than superficial ones.
So if it's a deep bruises that expands toward the surface, we can see
several shades of red blue.
And then also it indicates that the bruise is no so fresh anymore, because the body
has already started the cleaning process.
In particular, one of its evolutions is that how little oxygen was left in the blood
dissociated, bringing hemoglobin to become deoxyhemoglobin, which
is rather bluish.
I think this is the main reason in my case since the blue color in my bruise
did not appear until the next day.
For the rest of the colors, green yellow and brown, they come from the body's initiative
to Marie Kondo-ize the area by asking: “Is this stagnant hemoglobin
that has nothing to do here bringing me joy?" "No", so we clear it away.
Conveniently, hemoglobin contains iron, and we want to reabsorb that in
the body.
So the cleanup will actually consist in bringing in macrophages so that they
break the hemoglobin or deoxyhemoglobin into biliverdin...
which is greenish.
Then it will again be broken down into bilirubin which is yellowish.
But as time goes by, the iron is recovered in the form of hemosiderin which it
is more of a brown color.
Shit, I forgot to make a brown one.
The whole process is not as linear as what I presented and does not happen
at the same speed for everyone and in all circumstances.
Please tell me, do you also find these same colors on your skin?
Either way you will have understood that the general idea is this: our bruises change colors
because of the body's cleaning process that needs to break up the hemoglobin
to recycle what matters most (iron) and send what doesn't matter to
our stools and urine.
And the last stage of degradation it is to produce bilirubin.
It is this bilirubin that gives the dark color to our stools in fact.
Our stools are brown because the bilirubin being yellow brown, the more it is concentrated,
the more it gives a yellow color to our stools.
In fact when we have things that clog the bilirubin channels, and we don't have
any bile in the digestive tract, our stools are totally white.
So the original color of our stool is white.
By the way, François has made a whole video on the subject of the color of our stool,
I invite you to go see it, the link is in description.
When you expose bilirubin to UV, it destroys it.
This is why premature children are put under
UV lamps because they have a slightly defective bilirubin evacuation system...
and that's also why dog ​​poops turn white
after they've stayed for a very long time in the sun.
Because the bilirubin that is contained in the poo has been exposed to UVs and therefore
has discolored.
Ok... okay.
Thank you for this important piece of information.
But to get back to the bruises;
We have a severed blood vessel, the blood is flowing.
OK.
But why would the blood stop flowing? We have two open ends of a blood vessel,
they need to be blocked... and quickly.
The inner wall of the vessels does not react to platelets nor to red blood cells.
That's the inner inner wall, what is called the tunica intima.
Then you have the tunica media and the adventitia.
When you expose the interior of a vessel, that is to say not the intima but the layer
above, meaning the part of a vessel which holds blood, the platelets are instantly
clotting there.
They immediately change shape, they immediately create platelet
aggregation and create a clot, but it's done on purpose.
Ok so this is really a reaction that is done between the blood and the different
layers that make up the wall of the blood vessel.
That’s why we have heart attacks.
That is, in areas where there there is turbulent flow, plates of
cholesterol are formed.
These plates create rigidity in the vessels.
With a turbulent flow, these plates rupture.
So we find ourselves with an open intima and an open vessel wall.
Platelets aggregate and block the vessel and when it is in a coronary,
it's called a heart attack.
This is how a heart attack works.
This is why it is important to limit cholesterol intake to
limit clusters, and that explains why we give KARDÉGIC to people who have had
heart attacks because they are platelet antiaggregants.
It limits platelet aggregation and therefore the first stage of coagulation.
So you see, I didn't think that looking into bruises would lead us to heart attacks.
So? I told you we would go much beyond a simple bruise, and it's not over!
So the blood vessels broke, they've coagulated, perfect.
But since we had vessels that broke, surely we had a use for them and we
need them for the proper functioning of our body... How do they recreate themselves
once they've broken?
The vessels each grow again on their own... and at some point they're going to meet.
Not necessarily head to head but thanks to tissue remodeling and blood flow, they will tend
to reposition themselves properly because that the body likes laminar flow.
And in a small area, they'll meet right away, but when it's
over greater distances, it's a bit messier.
Well I just learned something, I didn't know about this capacity for regeneration
of the body and the ability to grow veins!
We're getting to my last question... Why me? Why do I bruise so easily?
It’s very multifactorial but I think that the main thing is blood vessel fragility.
I think there are people who have vascular fragilities, mainly in the veins.
It shows when you do blood tests.
Some people, you barely touch them and a vein bursts right away, whereas
other people have very thick veins.
It also depends on physical activity.
If we do an activity that involves muscle congestion, typically bodybuilding,
they usually have very large veins.
Blood can no longer flow through the veins which are inside the muscles because
the muscles are too swollen, so the body creates veins outside the muscles which are
very large, very thick and which evacuate a lot of blood.
This is why people who do weight training have big veins that you can see so well.
There are workouts called congestive workouts that allow you to
make your veins work so hard that you create new ones, because when you force
your body to do that, it creates new veins constantly, because it needs
to keep working optimally and it adapts.
And it allows people to endure massive efforts because they pump more blood and therefore
there is less congestion.
It allows them to make bigger efforts.
I used to have highways on my arms, now... I have leftover veins,
but before I had very marked veins and now that I have stopped working out,
I have veins that are much smaller.
You're saying that when we work build muscle, we're creating veins?
Yeah!
I do rock climbing, and in rock climbing that's a big thing, climbers have a lot of
visible forearm veins...
Yeah, because they tetanize their muscles, they have a lot of congestion in the arms.
Whenever I look at my arm and I'm at my most congested,
I can see one vein... maaaybe two, but I can't imagine the billions that
others might have.
So they built those veins, but when they were at my level
they didn't have them either?
In fact it is a reaction of the body, a reaction to training.
There are two parallel venous systems: the deep venous system which is intramuscular
and which follows the arteries, and a superficial venous system, that's what you can see.
And in fact, blood passes through both systems, but obviously if one system is constrained,
for example a vein has no elastic structure which allows it to remain open
despite the pressure, which causes the veins to get crushed and the blood doesn't drain
via this system anymore.
It goes through the external system which is less important than the internal system
(the larger veins are internal).
So if we exercise very regularly with muscles that are very congested
and which crush the internal veins, the blood is forced to evacuate through the external veins
and the body adapts, it makes larger and more numerous veins.
It's crazy.
This is so cool.
It's life.
So if I don't have any veins it's because I am not congested enough and I
haven't created new veins yet.
It takes time, it takes a long time to create a vein.
Especially when it's on a great distance.
When it's a few millimeters that's fine, but when you have to recreate a vein
over the entire length of an arm, it's necessary for the training to be repeated, regular,
and that the constraint be really intense.
But once the vessel is created, it stays.
It doesn't go from there to there directly, I imagine it branches out from
one of the main blood vessels?
There can be crossroads, that's why some people don't have vessels
in a straight line.
Sometimes there are new vessels that appear, large peripheral veins.
But there are veins that are always the same, right.
For example there's a vein that's here on the back of the hand, the cephalic vein, that one
is there for everyone.
We have come a long way since my fall... I was only going to talk about
the color of bruises and we've ended up with the origin of the heart attacks and
the fact that your body can create veins.
I am always amazed by how independent our bodies are, in the sense
that they perform a lot of tasks without our being aware of it, but also
how much we can consciously shape ours.
It’s a pretty great machine.
Maybe if I keep on climbing, I will end up developing new veins.
That would be cool.
Thanks for watching this video, I hope that it was so informative
that it made you want to... comment on the video (you can do the other things
too), and also and above all, to go check out Primum Non Nocere's channel if you don't know it yet.
And on that lovely note, it's time to take a short advertising break.
This video is sponsored by NordVPN.
And you might already know what it is a VPN but just in case, let me remind you.
A VPN lets the rest of the world believe that we are somewhere we are not.
Recently, just a few days ago at the time of recording, I used it to
watch a replay of a French TV show which is blocked for me here
in Canada.
I turn on the VPN and boom, I can see Charles and Clément, two YouTubers that you might follow
as well, go to the final of Ninja Warrior.
That's the show that interested me but you might want to watch the Quebecois show
"Découvertes", or any other show in the world.
In short, for me this is the main use of NordVPN, a way to access content
which is geolocated.
If you go to nordvpn.com/SCILABUS, you will get a really big discount on
a two-year subscription and if you use the code “SCILABUS”, you will have one extra
month for free.
They have a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it for a month and
then cancel it if you find that you don't really use it.
In short, nordvpn.com/SCILABUS with the code SCILABUS.
See you in two weeks. Until next time, bye!