Through my journey to recovery, I’ve said thanks countless times; to my doctors, my nurses, my parents and my bone marrow donors. But the other day, I realised that I must have had at least a hundred bags of blood pushed into my veins at some point in my treatment. That’s on top of the two very vital bone marrow transplants I had.
Only 1/30 people donate. These guys often donate regularly and are the reason we don’t have to import huge amounts of blood. People don’t give because they’re afraid of the procedure, because they don’t think it’s needed, or because they don’t care.
Well – all of these are true. And I hope these ideas will make you see that you can’t afford NOT to give blood.
5) It’s a great way to lose weight and you get a guilt free meal each time you do it!Here’s a video I made outlining the benefits of giving blood – and why you can’t afford NOT to do it!
ever present and ever increasing.
people will not get a second chance at life, one that I did. Despite the scary name, over 95% of people who get called up to donate marrow (a 1/400 chance of that even happening) never actually have their marrow invaded. And joining the registry, only a small blood test, or a swab of the cheek. I’ll explain how it works more in the next section.
A lot of this is due to cultural beliefs that blood is related to male virility, but a much larger part of this is due to laziness or being afraid of the actual procedure. Well, hopefully, the next point will change your mind about that.
you think and involves little risk to the giver.
minutes?
from the needle, not from the blood leaving the arm?
pain. In fact – NEVER does someone actually take a
sample of your bone marrow!
Even then, joining the registry only involves the taking of an extra 20mL of blood, which they use to figure out your “tissue type,” which is used to match the recipient to a donor.
And
there’s only a 1/400 chance of being a match for someone in your lifetime.
anaesthetic, so it’s nowhere near as painful as it sound (in fact, that 5% of people who do give via that means, often do so because they’d prefer to not feel anything and take a while to recover than have to take the other option).
check-up for you. And it reduces your risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
But early detection isn’t the only benefit. Giving blood regularly has been shown to reduce the risk of heart attacks in men, as well as the ability to slow insulin resistance which leads to diabetes. A study of nearly 3000 men in Finland showed those who did give blood regularly had an 88% lower risk of heart attack than those who didn’t! That’s HUGE! Donating blood has been known to reduce the buildup of toxic elements in your blood, including iron, making it not only a free detox, but a good way to reduce your risk of cancer!
on a lot of benefits – including money.
much more preferable to slugging it out at work! Depending on where you live, there may be tax benefits eligible for donating. And indeed, in some countries,
they even pay you for donating blood!
The ethics and implications of a system which compensates everyone for donating is interesting. But if you can cash in AND save lives, there’s nothing wrong with doing both!
5) You miss a chance
at losing weight and have a chance at eating great food without guilt.
Dad going to TOWN on some freebies. Remember – this is only the COLD food they provide. Add to this sausage rolls, pies and milkshakes, and that’s what’s on offer every time you donate! Some centers have other meals on offer too, including lasagna, pies, and even give out additional meal vouchers for restaurants.
Try and include high iron foods and things like orange juice (which increases iron absorption) to ensure your iron and haemoglobin levels are sufficient. A tip from the nurses there – spinach and orange juice in the meal before you donate increases iron levels into the healthy range for those who find themselves turned back for being too low. Make sure you haven’t
travelled to areas with infectious diseases in the past 3 months and make sure that you can prove any recent tattoos you’ve had were done in sterile situations.
You can also volunteer at the Red Cross like I do, either by helping out and giving snacks to the donors, or by driving a car or van that picks up donors. It looks great on your CV and you’re just as vital a cog in the great machine as the donors themselves. Click here for more info.
Participating or donating to people in the World’s Greatest Shave or events like the Leukaemia Foundation’s “Light the Night Walks” also helps in a similar way.
to the Leukemia Foundation, which can be done through the links below. These organisations are trying to find a cure and save people from having to go through this pain in the
first place!
This was a blood product I used to get once a month to help with the chronic inflammatory disease process and nerve damage my#bonemarrowtransplant gave me. Though it wasn’t fun, coming in every month to be plugged into an IV pump for over 2 years, it likely did delay further damage and was one of many blood products which have kept me here.Every 200mL bottle takes 7.5 ENTIRE Plasma donations to create, if we’re strictly speaking numbers of immunoglobulins, aka antibodies, specifically IgGs (antibodies essentially confer immunity to people who can’t produce antibodies on their own, and mitigate some autoimmune disease processes by triggering suppressive pathways of your immune system) per mL, dosage wise. I used to get around 750mL of this stuff. Every month.But each of these bottles contains a mix of 1000 individuals’ IgGs. It took a literal village to keep me going for a time there! And plasma, like blood, is not only easy to donate – it can be done every 2 weeks, and, as you can clearly see, is really needed.
More info on that process, on how easy it is to donate blood, how it actually is healthy to do so (each plasma donation burns 450 calories – whole blood, 600!), and how joining the list to donate bone marrow (and even donating bone marrow itself) doesn’t require, at any point, a needle in your bones at nikhilautar.com/
#redcross #vampirecup #blooddonation #intragam#notinstagram #everydonationcounts #doit!#spoonies #spoonie #chronicillness #chronicpain#nervedamage #peripheralneuropathy
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