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Asked by nessy123 to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 19 Nov 2012.
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Louise Walkin answered on 19 Nov 2012:
As our eyes have a blood supply they can bleed, but not really in the traditional sense. When you rub your eyes too much they go a bit blood shot and this is when tiny blood vessels release blood. The choroid layer which on the inside of the eye has a very rich blood supply and a haemorrahge here would cause bleeding in the eye. Another word for it is hyphema. They can be quite serious and need to be treated quickly. I’ve had operations on my eyes which have been pretty gruesome, no blood actually came out of my eye but my eyes stayed very red for about two weeks afterwards. I hope I don’t have to have any more!
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Adam Paige answered on 19 Nov 2012:
Scurvy – a disease caused by not eating fruit and vegetables and therefore lacking vitamin C in your body – can cause bleeding in the eye. The lack of vitamin C means that we do not make collagen properly, which is a protein that forms important parts of the structures of many of our tissues (eg skin, bones, and the walls of blood vessels. Scurvy patients are prone to their blood vessels breaking and blood escaping into the body’s tissues causing a bruise (haematoma). This can happen in the eye creating a red bruised eye.
As a bruise gets older the red/purple haemoglobin in the bruise from the broken red blood cells is broken down to biliverdin (green coloured pigment) and then bilirubin (yellow coloured pigment). This is why bruises fade from red/purple to green to yellow as they get older.
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