Blood donation

[fabrice]

Hello all,

Does anyone knows how blood donation could possibly influence breath holding capability ?
I'm a regular giver (5 times per year), and I usually give 460 ml of blood.
All info I read is that it needs 15 days to replenish the red blood cells, however I never noticed a dramatic change in my perf...

Fabrice

 

[DeepThought]

What I heard is that the blood VOLUME comes back to normal after a few weeks, but that blood QUALITY takes about 3 months to come back. I don't know if this data is true.

My logic says that since you want to have high hemoglobin count, then blood donation might not be the best way to acheive it..

Although donating regularly might stimulate your body to create more blood cells then normal, and maybe you can even gain something from skipping a donation.
Anyway, you'll have to ask experts, or check it by yourself (test hemoglobin/hematocryt) during a period of a few months when donating, and when not donating, and compare...

If you get a solid answer, I'd like to know it as well.

 

[cdavis]

Good thread fabrice,

I don't know the answer, but hope that someone who does will chime in.

I suspect that it is a pretty individual reaction. When I was much younger, about 20, I gave blood and then did a hard swim workout just to see if I could get any reaction. I could not. These days, when I give blood, I feel lazy and tired the rest of the day. Physically, I am in almost as good condition now as then. Just to be on the safe side, I avoid giving blood for a month before a big diving trip.

Thanks

Connor

 

[M-2]

Fabrice-

You might want to check out past threads. There should be one that I started asking a similar question. I think it was titled something about hemoglobin recovery. There's some more info there.

-m