5. Thinning Skin and Easy Bruising: The External Signs of an Internal Struggle
When your skin starts to look like tissue paper and bruises at the slightest touch, you know something’s awry. Thinning skin and easy bruising aren’t things most people expect, especially not at a young age.
These symptoms might not be the first you notice, but they’re among the most startling. You might wake up with a new bruise and have no recollection of bumping into anything. Your skin may also appear transparent, revealing more veins than you remember. What gives?
Again, cortisol has its hand in the cookie jar. The hormone affects collagen production—the building blocks of skin.
In a body saturated with excess cortisol, collagen breaks down faster than it gets replaced. This leads to fragile skin that can tear or bruise with minimal force. While stretch marks and weight gain might be more glaring signs of Cushing’s syndrome, thinning skin and easy bruising are just as telling and just as concerning.
Easy bruising serves as an unnerving reminder of the internal changes happening in your body. Each bruise signifies ruptured blood vessels under the skin, and if that’s happening with minimal pressure, it raises questions about what else might be going wrong inside your body.
Could blood vessels in crucial areas like the brain also be at risk? The answer isn’t straightforward, but the fact that these bruises appear so effortlessly should be cause for concern. (5)
