The painful experience of a paintball bruise can ruin your whole day. It is not just painful, it’s embarrassing when you have paintball bruises and welts on your skin.
Now you do not need to suffer paintball bruises and welts when playing paintball – you can treat them at home. If you want to reduce swelling and soreness or decrease your chances of getting paintball bruises, I have put together some remedies to heal paintball bruises fast. This article also includes some tips to avoid paintball bruises.
Sometimes it can take a few days or even weeks to recover welts and paintball bruises. The simplest way is to apply ice to the affected area and use an antibody bruise product. I am going to share with you some of the tried and tested remedies and techniques to heal paintball bruises.
But before that, I just want to make one thing clear; how paintball bruises are different from paintball welts.
Paintball Welts vs. Paintball Bruises
If you are new to paintball, you might not know how to tell paintball welts and bruises apart. Paintball welt and paintball bruise are common terms in the paintball community.
Here’s how to differentiate between paintball welts and paintballs bruises:
What is a paintball welt?
A Paintball welt is a skin wound caused by a hard object, such as a paintball. The injury causes a blood vessel to break. This causes the skin to change color and swell.
Symptoms of paintball welts:
- An abrasion or scrape caused by your skin being rubbed or scraped off by rough surfaces such as the turf on a soccer field or gravel on the ground.
- A bump under your skin that feels like a small pea when touched, caused by either blunt force trauma (hitting something hard) or being struck with something very small (like hitting another person’s elbow while playing basketball).
- A lump under your skin that feels like an ice cube when touched, can happen when you’re hit hard enough to break through the Epidermis.
Note: Paintball welts usually go away without treatment, but if you have large bruises or bruises
that linger for weeks, see your doctor.
What are Paintball bruises?
Paintball bruises are usually the result of welts. The paintballs themselves are relatively soft, but they are traveling at a very high velocity and can cause some serious welts on your skin.
Paintball bruises may show up later as the blood vessels under your skin break and seep out blood. This is different from a welt in that it doesn’t have any redness to it, but rather appears purple, blue, or green.
Bruises can appear anywhere from 2 hours after being shot to several days later and may be accompanied by swelling or “oozing” of blood from the affected area.
Symptoms of Paintball Bruises:
- Bruises often appear as dark red or purple areas on your skin that are tender to touch.
- These spots may also feel warm when you put pressure on them or press against them with your fingers due to blood leakage under the skin.
So if you’ve just been hit by a paintball and you notice redness around the area, it’s probably a welt. If after a couple of days it turns into a dark blue or purple bruise, then it’s the “real thing”.
How to Heal paintball bruises and welts
I have decided to state some proven remedies and ways to treat paintball bruises. And I’m sure these will help you ease the injuries and heal at a faster rate.
Top 9 ways to heal bruises and welts:
🔴 Rest
Resting the injured area and avoiding further injury can help bruises resolve more quickly.
🔴 Ice Packs
Ice alone can be used to treat minor bruising in the first day or two after injury. Ice packs or cold compresses are useful to treat paintball bruises at home.
🔴 Compression
Wrapping a bruise can help reduce swelling and make it look better.
🔴 Elevation
Elevating the bruised area above heart level helps reduce blood flow, which lessens swelling and discoloration.
🔴 Painkillers
You can use some painkillers to lessen the discomfort in your wounded areas. This will help with the swelling and bruising, but won’t help if you have an open wound or infection.
🔴 Use anti-inflammatory or pain-relieving gel/creams
You can find at any pharmacy. I use an anti-inflammatory Gel, which has been proven to reduce inflammation and bruising.
🔴 Heating
Apply heat to the bruised area after the swelling has gone down. This will improve blood flow to the area and encourage the healing process of the welts and bruises.
🔴 Use Organic/Raw Aloe Vera
If you have an aloe vera plant, break off a leaf and squeeze out the gel inside the leaf. Apply the gel immediately to your bruise for 20-30 minutes at a time, many times every day.
🔴Hydrate yourself
Drink plenty of water every day to keep your body hydrated, which may help reduce bruising.
Note That:
It is important not to use these remedies without consulting a doctor if you have bleeding disorders or low platelet count.
Avoid paintball bruises at First Place
The first time you play paintball, you will probably get a few bruises. After all, your first time playing is not going to be much fun if you don’t have some battle wounds to show off to your friends.
But that doesn’t imply that you necessarily need to go home with a lot of bruises on your body. If you want to minimize the number of bruises you get on your first time playing paintball, here are a few tips:
🔵 Wear long sleeves and pants
Paintball guns can cause painful welts when the ball hits bare skin. Wearing full sleeves and pants will help keep your vulnerable skin areas safe from getting hit directly by paintballs.
🔵 Keep moving Around the Field
The shorter time spent in one place, the less plausible you are to get hit by an approaching paintball. By constantly moving around and ducking behind cover, it is more difficult for other players to hit you as often with their shots.
🔵 Play at close range
If you are playing in smaller indoor fields, there isn’t much room for strategic play. But if you choose this type of field, use it to your advantage by getting up close and personal with your targets. You’ll have a better chance of hitting other players without getting hit yourself if they cannot see where your shots are coming from.
FAQs
👉 Are paintball bruises dangerous?
As I testified before, paintballs are filled with water-soluble paint and over time the liquid inside will absorb into your skin and dissipate, leaving less of a mark than when you were initially shot.
So paintball bruises are not dangerous generally.
👉 What are the differences between paintball bruises and paintball welts?
Paintball welts are the small bumps on your skin that appear when a paintball hits you from close range. A bruise, on the other hand, is a dark-colored mark on your skin that results from the breakage of blood vessels and bleeding beneath the skin.
Everything considered, it’s clear that getting paintball bruises during play is a common experience. And paintball bruises are not usually dangerous. But there are several remedies to treat them at home. And if you don’t feel the healing, then consulting a physician can help you treat the bruises and welts.
How to heal
How to avoid
