Free blood?
Dec. 4th, 2018 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilzolendeToday, I received an email with the subject line "Give a gift that costs you nothing - and stay to party!" The gift that "costs me nothing" is, apparently, donating blood. I'm not sure what the sender's model of blood is here.
In my personal case I have gone to some lengths to not have a red blood cell deficit and am still not sure I've succeeded. If I wanted to donate blood and still didn't have enough red blood cells, I'd need to research optimal iron supplement use and then try that, increase my vegetable intake and try combining it with more things, and possibly reintroduce more animal products to my diet. (I eat iron-rich vegetables several days a week, often with a bit of kimchi, but I'm not sure the kimchi provides enough vitamin C to properly enhance non-heme iron digestion.)
I've heard that the typical man benefits from occasional blood donations due to it preventing excessive iron buildup. I model the typical woman as having iron issues because I remember interacting with women with iron issues in the past, the normal female hemoglobin range includes areas with low enough hemoglobin to prohibit blood donation, many of the women who are eligible to donate blood menstruate, and globally anemia is a notable women's health issue. However, I hang around with an unusual number of vegetarians and people with health problems, so my model may be flawed.
In my personal case I have gone to some lengths to not have a red blood cell deficit and am still not sure I've succeeded. If I wanted to donate blood and still didn't have enough red blood cells, I'd need to research optimal iron supplement use and then try that, increase my vegetable intake and try combining it with more things, and possibly reintroduce more animal products to my diet. (I eat iron-rich vegetables several days a week, often with a bit of kimchi, but I'm not sure the kimchi provides enough vitamin C to properly enhance non-heme iron digestion.)
I've heard that the typical man benefits from occasional blood donations due to it preventing excessive iron buildup. I model the typical woman as having iron issues because I remember interacting with women with iron issues in the past, the normal female hemoglobin range includes areas with low enough hemoglobin to prohibit blood donation, many of the women who are eligible to donate blood menstruate, and globally anemia is a notable women's health issue. However, I hang around with an unusual number of vegetarians and people with health problems, so my model may be flawed.
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