Ask The Expert May 17, 2013 It sounds like you have a very
common and harmless skin condition. Doctors call it senile
purpura. In this case senile means nothing more than old age.
And purpura is Latin for purple, the color of the splotches. As
we get older, the tiny blood vessels near the surface of the
skin become increasingly fragile. So blood tends to leak out of
them. The splotches youíre seeing are small amounts of leaked
blood under the skin. For reasons that arenít entirely clear,
the condition develops most often in the arms. Sometimes the
iron in the blood can stain the tissue. So the skin becomes
brown or black and permanently discolored. The purplish mark you
get from a bruise is also caused by blood that has escaped from
blood vessels. But senile purpura occurs without any sort of
injury. The tiny blood vessels just leak on their own. Many
people take baby aspirin (81-milligram doses) to reduce the
chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke. Aspirin makes the
platelets in blood less ďsticky.Ē So