Healers from ancient Greece, medieval Spain or ancient India would all answer one question in the same way: Of course, it is healthy to draw blood from people.
For centuries, phlebotomy, the removal of blood, has been a commonly used procedure in medicine - not to reuse the blood, but only to "relieve" the patient's circulation. Whether the sick of the past benefited from it is another question.
In today's blood donation, volunteers take half a liter of the fluid. This briefly lowers the blood pressure because it has become a little emptier in the veins. Less fluid, less pressure.
There is even evidence that in people with high blood pressure through regular donations, the pressure permanently lessened. Clearly doctors have not yet confirmed that. Blood donation not only removes fluid but also a lot of blood cells. So it also sinks the iron levels in the blood.
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Felix Schröder, Nina Weber
What your heart desires: How to keep our most important organ happy
Publishing company:
Edel Books - A publisher of Edel Germany GmbH
Pages:
240
Price:
EUR 16,95
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The blood consists only roughly half of the fluid, the blood plasma. In this drive the different blood cells. In just one milliliter, there are around five billion red blood cells, 200 million platelets and five to ten million white blood cells.
If one lined up all the red blood cells that a person has in the body in a line, how far would they reach?
- From Hamburg to Rome
- Once around the earth
- About halfway to the moon
(Answer at the end of the text)
Although iron is vital as the center of the oxygen transporter hemoglobin in the red blood cells, too much iron is also harmful because it can attack the walls of the vessel and promote arteriosclerosis. However, it has not been registered that blood donors would be better immune to heart disease. The protective effect is therefore well within limits.
Women lose iron through the menstrual period every few weeks. They are therefore more likely to suffer from iron deficiency than men. If you want to donate despite low level, should take an iron supplement.
Donating blood can have unpleasant side effects. Dizziness or even fainting is possible if the circulation collapses due to blood loss. Donors therefore get something to eat and drink after taking blood and relax a bit.
After donating blood, the following happens in the body:
- 20 minutes: The circulation has completely stabilized.
- 24 hours: The body has balanced the fluid loss in the blood.
- 48 hours: The proteins in the blood are replenished.
- Two weeks: The removed blood cells are replaced.
- Eight weeks: Iron loss is completely balanced in men. In women, this can take up to twelve weeks; Vegetarians and vegans are even longer.
Because the regeneration of iron reserves has to wait, men can usually donate blood six times a year, women only four times a year. This serves both the health of the donor and the recipient - he can do nothing with low-iron, so red blood cells that are low in hemoglobin.
Today, doctors rarely recommend phlebotomy - but with some illnesses it is the right therapy. This includes polycythemia vera: Affected form too many blood cells. Your blood becomes thick and tough. The blood flow stops so that the organs no longer receive enough oxygen. In addition, blood clots threaten. Because the body balances the fluid loss during blood collection much faster than the cell loss, regular bloodletting prevents the thickening of the blood. At the beginning of therapy, patients are actually left to the vein; So you reduce the amount of your blood. Over time, the number of red blood cells normalizes so that the distances between the blood vessels can become larger.
Even people with a disturbed iron metabolism and a subsequent iron overload help regular bloodletting.
But even though donating blood donations is neither healthy nor unhealthy for the donor, the recipient can even save his life.
The correct answer to the question is: All red blood cells - an average person has about 25 trillion of them - in a row would form a good 180,000 kilometers long line. That's about halfway to the moon, which is about 384,000 kilometers from Earth.
The text is an edited excerpt from the book "What the heart desires" by Felix Schröder and Nina Weber.
