The Disease That Makes Old Wounds Reopen

Scurvy does not just cause weakness; it literally unknits your body. Without vitamin C, your system loses the ability to produce collagen, causing old healed scars to break open and burst into fresh wounds.

Vitamin C acts like the biological glue holding your tissues together. When levels drop too low, your body cannot maintain its connective structures, leading to the decay of gums and skin. Even more eerily, sailors in the past noticed that long-healed fractures would spontaneously snap and previous surgical incisions would tear apart. It remains one of the few diseases that can physically erase your body’s history of healing.