effects of blood donation on breath-hold

[Den]

I gave blood for the first time a few days ago. The person who filled the forms thought freediving was jumping off cliffs! After explaining to her that it was breath hold diving she said I wouldn't be effected as long as I didn't dive or train that night.
The man who took my blood said it would take 12-14 weeks for my body to reproduce the red blood cells lost and I shouldn't dive for at least 4-6 weeks. The next day at my underwater hockey club I found my usual warm ups seemed harder but my my game seemed mostly unaffected. One of our club is a GP so I asked him. He reckoned haemoglobin levels recovered to normal after three days. I had a pool training session on the fourth day and didn't feel I was quite 100%.
This seems to be the place for specialist knowledge so I wondered what opinions people here had on the effects of loosing a pint (I think it's actually 500ml) of blood.

 

[Drejcha]

It's not just haemoglobin, other components of blood affects too (plasma, density...). If everything is OK, blood on average completely renews in a bit less than 3 months (for men and 4 for women), your medic was right about that. Haemoglobin gets back to normal in 3 days? Check this out:
http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/re/msse/fulltext.00005768-200805001-01838.htm;jsessionid=JrTB082ny9RBJ5wGhMySycpZS4d61nngXT65GL2Hkx7XN0qGSt6L!289474761!181195629!8091!-1


I'm small and skinny they take 340ml (0,7pt) from me. Day after that I get contractions like 50m sooner doing my DYN. It affects considerable on diving, hiking and running... for a week or so. Later I don't feel it any more, but I never tried to do something crazy like go for a marathon 2 weeks after donation.

In my oppinion you can go back to whatever you were doing before a donation after a day or two. Just take it easy. "Stretch your legs" and don't push it too hard.

 

[Bill]

Sorry I didn't save the references but my notes say that at the start of a dive, you have 30-40% of the useable O2 stored in the blood. If you remove 10% of the blood, I'll take a WAG at less than a 5% decrease in performance if all else is equal (of course it never is).

 

[Drejcha]

Sorry I didn't save the references but my notes say that at the start of a dive, you have 30-40% of the useable O2 stored in the blood. If you remove 10% of the blood, I'll take a WAG at less than a 5% decrease in performance if all else is equal (of course it never is).

Body must as well compensate sudden drop of pressure and volume of blood. You can not cover that 100% with good hydration. Include also baroreceptor reflex, several endocrine responses and different activity af a heart muscle for stress realxation. And other things. People respond to that in different ways.
It sure takes away more than just 5% for me.

 

[cdavis]

I suspect there is quite a bit of individual variation in this type of thing. At 19, I could give blood then immediately do a very strenuous cardio workout (swim practice) with no apparent effect. Today giving blood makes me lazy for 24 hours + and I'd expect it to have considerable effect on my breathhold.

If splenic contraction extends breathold, extracting a roughly equivalent amount of red blood cells seems likely to reduce breathhold.

Connor

 

[chrismar]

I'm small and skinny they take 340ml (0,7pt) from me. Day after that I get contractions like 50m sooner doing my DYN. It affects considerable on diving, hiking and running... for a week or so. Later I don't feel it any more, but I never tried to do something crazy like go for a marathon 2 weeks after donation.

Contractions 50m sooner on dynamic? That would be while I'm still packing...

Has anyone tried a genuine max attempt or experienced a BO or samba soon after giving blood? It would be interesting to quantify this a little.

 

[Den]

thanks drechja, interesting link, I thought there would be a lot more to it. 1 week following my donation and last night's training still didn't feel quite right. Even though the effects obviously trail off it seems that if you gave blood every 3 months you'd actually be almost permanantly working at a reduced performance. We can only give twice a year, I think next time I'll try some statics and set tests in the pool before and after to try and quantify how I'm affected. Just for curiosity's sake.

 

[Drejcha]

Contractions 50m sooner on dynamic? That would be while I'm still packing...

Has anyone tried a genuine max attempt or experienced a BO or samba soon after giving blood? It would be interesting to quantify this a little.

whoops :blackeye I wrote that to fast. I meant at 25 instead of 50m.
otherwsie, no.

thanks drechja, interesting link, I thought there would be a lot more to it. 1 week following my donation and last night's training still didn't feel quite right. Even though the effects obviously trail off it seems that if you gave blood every 3 months you'd actually be almost permanantly working at a reduced performance. We can only give twice a year, I think next time I'll try some statics and set tests in the pool before and after to try and quantify how I'm affected. Just for curiosity's sake.

Only twice a year, why?
Let us know the results, I wonder how that works out for others.

 

[Den]

Ha, only twice a year has nothing to do with physiology, they just don't have the staff or the funding, If ther's a shortage of blood in your group you get an extra call!

 

[abusingelves]

I worked with a sports physiologist as part of a college rowing crew. He warned us all not to give blood,:rcard if we were ''in any way serious about being competitive''.

Makes a lot of sense really. Red cells live about 120 days, so if you remove a unit of them that means that you have decreased your Oxygen carrying capacity, and cannot expect to perform at the same levels (under maximal exertion) until your body has replenished the levels back to normal. You can 't expect to train as effectively until the levels are restored either, so this is a double blow. You set back your maximal effort, and you set back your ability to increase your maximal effort.


Haemoglobin in red blood cells is measured in g/dL .
By giving a person 1 unit of blood we could expect their Haemoglobin concentration to rise by about 1g/dL. the normal level is 13-18 for men and 11.5 to 16 for women.

This makes it easy to see that if we remove a unit of blood, we can expect to decrease the Haemoglobin level by the same amount as if we had added a unit of blood (1g/dL). So you would expect that after giving one unit of blood, a person would have about 8% less oxygen carrying capacity.:crutch

So what about it? 8% is fine if you're just walking around, going to work, going home, eating well and not pushing the engine. The body can buffer this amount easily, especially if you're young, resulting in feelings of tiredness for the first day or two only.

However, if you are an athlete, and you need to be able to(and on occasion do) push yourself to the limit, you'll find that limit coming a lot faster after giving a single unit of blood.

So, my take on it is that, as long as you're training competitively for a sport, and expect to perform to a high level (or be competitive) Giving blood should NOT feature anywhere on your calender. Including the 'off' season.

Perfectly fine however to give blood if you're in a sport or physical activity purely for enjoyment purposes and never expect to come face to face with 'the limit'. Although limits feature quite a lot in freediving, bringing you onto another can of worms called safety. :hungover

 

[Bill]

If the body normally replaces 0.83% of the red blood cells every day, I will guess that it has the capability of double that. Either way, it can recall some (all?) cells almost instantly at the price of some efficiency.

On top of that, apnea performance doesn't require anywhere near peak O2 delivery capacity and if that isn't enough, do you think that by doing this on a regular basis you might be able to 'trick' the body into storing a few extra cells here and there? I vaguely remember a discussion a long time ago about blood doping where someone thought he had detected this 'overshoot'.

Let's remember that diving is a head game to start with and as a famous author once said......."If you think that you can do something or that you can't, you're probably right" - Lee Gruenfeld 2007


note: Definition of famous author.... A friend who writes books.

 

[Drejcha]

"If you think that you can do something or that you can't, you're probably right" - Lee Gruenfeld 2007...

This assumption has been proven wrong...

@abusingelves: I agree. One headed for the top shoud consider keeping all the blood inside of the body...


I wonder how would a donation affect on overtraining...

 

[cdavis]

Fascinating discussion. This is one where attempts at logical analysis in the absence of experimental data are almost certain to fail. The body's response to breath hold is too complex and we don't understand it well enough. As an example, initial logic says it makes no sense to dive with 1/2 as much 02 in your lungs as possible. In this case, logic is flawed. Given deeper understanding of the physiology, it is pretty clear why, given the right circumstances, you can dive longer and safer FRC. Experimentation has proved it to me. If, as hypothetical example, giving blood helped kick in blood shift and aided other aspects of the DR, it might even enhance breath holds in some circumstances. No way to know for sure without testing. I'll do that soon. Testing will mean something for me, might not be applicable to anybody else.

Connor

 

[LunkerBuster]

more anecdotal evidence...
about a month ago I gave a pint of blood at work on a fridat afternoon. (I am 6'4" abd about 22), a little less than an hour after giving blood Iwas still feeling extremely weak, I hydrated a lot and drank a good amount of sugary juice and felt about 75% the next day. on Sunday I went out with my yak diving group and felt like my breath hold was not compromised in any way but Idid feel much more tired at the end of my day and my muscles felt weaker than normal.

I was thinking that maybe Iwas not as effected when doing aspetto and just ascending and descending because less of the O2 is going to my body...while I felt exhausted doing my paddle back to shore.

 

[Drejcha]

Fascinating discussion. This is one where attempts at logical analysis in the absence of experimental data are almost certain to fail. The body's response to breath hold is too complex and we don't understand it well enough. As an example, initial logic says it makes no sense to dive with 1/2 as much 02 in your lungs as possible. In this case, logic is flawed. Given deeper understanding of the physiology, it is pretty clear why, given the right circumstances, you can dive longer and safer FRC. Experimentation has proved it to me. If, as hypothetical example, giving blood helped kick in blood shift and aided other aspects of the DR, it might even enhance breath holds in some circumstances. No way to know for sure without testing. I'll do that soon. Testing will mean something for me, might not be applicable to anybody else.

Connor

Probably - but not long before blood values start reaching normal level?

Saying:

So, my take on it is that, as long as you're training competitively for a sport, and expect to perform to a high level (or be competitive) Giving blood should NOT feature anywhere on your calender. Including the 'off' season.

I think, it goes mostly for ("competitive" or) extreme hard trainig. Comparing to other sports, how many fridivers is there training as hard as top skiers or swimers? Or any other athlete that is a pro?

 

[TimoP]

I have donated blood about 30 times (it means over 12 l together...). Max 1-2 times a year. I have had little (if any) weakness for some hours after that. But I have seen some people having a black out some minutes after blood donation, even when sitting on a chair.

Once I tried apnea walking only some hours after blood donation (I know that is not a good idea, but just wanted to test :crutch). I was relaxing and sitting on a chair, then 2-3 deep breaths, a little packing, I stood up (not quickly), took only 5 steps and almost got a black out. And normally I can take max 150-195 steps without breathing, and then maybe get a little samba, but never have a feeling to be near a black out. This time the reason was, I think, that there was not enough blood pressure (because of blood loss) to get enough blood for brains, and packing made the situation worse. BTW Even in a normal situation you have a risk to get a black out in a start, if you pack much, which can lower your blood pressure quite a lot.

I would give an advice:
- Don't dive at all 1-2 days after blood donation.
- 3-6 days after blood donation dive only with special care (not long or deep dives)
- After a week you can train or dive almost normally, but you are not in your best shape yet.
- If you have a freediving competition, for your performance it is better not to give you blood away if there is less than 3 months time to the competition day.

But there is really a need for blood in hospitals, so donate blood if you can and if you don't feel it too extreme for you , but be extra careful with you dives after that for a week or two.