Eat your veggies... Your life might depend on it!

This one is short and sweet.

Your mom always told you: if you want to be healthy you have to eat your veggies. What either of you probably didn't realize was how much your life could depend on it!

A 24 year old "boy" was brought in by his mother when his nose bleed just wouldn't stop and he was now coughing blood. "He was just picking his nose!" she said. The ER physician packed the boys nose and did some baseline labs. Wierdly enough his aPTT was very high.

Normally whenever you bleed a whole "clotting mechanism" goes into play to stop the bleeding. It uses cholesterol, platlets and multiple types of proteins to form the clot/scab which eventually stops the blood flow. Some of these proteins are part of a cascade of events that help to solidify a clot called the "coagulation pathway." There are screening tests that have been developed to give doctors an idea of which proteins in this coagulation pathway could be creating problems. aPTT is one such screening test.

An elevation in the aPTT blood test tells us that there could be a deficiency in one of the involved proteins or there could be an antibody attacking one of those protein thus, not allowing them to work appropriately. Both of these are fairly severe problems. But, luckily for this boy he had neither of them. His deficiency was created by the lack of a vitamin that is used by a lot of the proteins that aPTT tests for - vitamin K. We replaced his vitamin K and fairly soon his bleeding stopped.

Guess where you get your vitamin K? Yup, broccoli, brussel sprouts, spinach, kale i.e. all your dark green vegetables. That lettuce on your burger isn't going to cut it. This boy was sent home with advice to start eating more vegetables or to at least take a multivitamin daily to replace all the vitamins that a balanced diet provides.

Now just wonder if he had gotten hit in the head rather than picking his nose - brain bleed and possible death due to a lack of vegetables. So, please listen to your mom and eat those veggies!