By the way, doctor: Will quitting aspirin help get rid of these splotches on my arms?
As we get older, the capillaries near the surface of the skin become increasingly fragile, so blood tends to leak out of them. The splotches you're seeing are small amounts of pooled blood trapped outside the capillaries and under the skin. For reasons that aren't 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.
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