Well this is interesting!

[Throid]

Blood letting - really? let me at it!

dailymail.co.uk/health/arti...

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK]

This is well known for haemochromatosis - and quite a proportion of UK population has this - especially those with a Scottish background. (Something like one in 200 springs to mind.)

And there used to be a person who posted anywhere that 'iron' was mentioned - and go on and on about iron overload being the root cause of everything bad that can happen. (I think he had iron on the brain!)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_...

When I gave blood I used to feel very well for a few weeks/months after - but have always put that down to psychological effects.

Can always go get some leeches...

Rod

[Throid in reply to helvella]

Uew - I suppose leeches would be a final resort!

Not donated before, do they accept people with all the medical issues associated with thyroid?

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to Throid]

In general, I believe they do. But I urge you to ring them up before going - to make sure.

Have a look here:

blood.co.uk/

Rod

[Throid in reply to helvella]

Thanks - just been having a look, if unsuccessful could you please send me those leeches?

Deb

[dragon65 in reply to helvella]

Both my daughter and myself are hypo, we both gave blood yesterday, as long as your meds have been stable for 3 months then you are able to donate.

[NaamiSue in reply to dragon65]

I was refused many years ago because I had hashimotos....don't know if the criteria have since changed..... i know they won't have diabetics for the same reason auto immune

[marram]

How weird. After my appointment with my doc yesterday (He kept saying 'you can't argue with science' when I challenged the TSH test for athyreotic patients) my husband and I were talking about the things doctors have done to people in the name of 'science'. Bloodletting and leeches came up in the conversation. I must look at this!

[marram]

Wow, that is truly amazing. It just shows you that drugs and pills are not always the answer.

[poing]

Looks like the Daily Mail reads Chris Kresser

I gave up blood donation ages ago because it took me twice as long as anyone else to fill the bag and that's a long time to be hooked up - left me wanting to tear out the needle. Also I felt pretty rubbish afterwards. It's only in the last few years that I discovered that I don't have much iron to spare.

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to poing]

Blood letting certainly isn't right for everyone!

And I wonder what happens to the poor person who gets given the cholesterol-laden blood (and anything else that can be less than wonderful about it)?

[fennel in reply to helvella]

cholesterol is not a bad thing, it has a lot of functions in the body and we can't survive without it. People with low cholesterol will be more likely to get cancer than normal. Read the book 'the cholesterol myth' where it says cholesterol is irrelevant in heart disease but that the blockbuster drugs are so profitable that they ignore the evidence.

I hope the blood will go to people who really need it to save their lives. When I had a hysterectomy I agreed with the surgeon that I would not have any blood unless my life was in danger. I did have a bleed and it took a longer time to recover, but I personally think there are things in blood that pass on without being identified. Prem babies used to be given blood and it gave them hepatitis C, which is silent for decades and emerges later.

[Throid in reply to fennel]

I wonder whether I will be allowed to give blood as I have high cholesterol, blood pressure and type 2 diabetes (so they say!)

I have refused medication as we all know what statins etc do to people with thyroid problems.

Interestingly, I was so wound up by doctors basically telling me that I would drop dead at any moment that I paid out for a heart scan about 10 years ago (yes, it's been going on for years!) - the result of this very expensive state of the art scan at the time told me that my heart was really healthy, so - am I at the great risk the doctors say I am?

Also - if I had genuinely high blood pressure would I be able to lower it when relaxed?

As far as I am aware I am not anaemic.

[fennel in reply to Throid]

We see a chinese doctor, and he says the genuine blood pressure reading is taken when you first wake up in the morning, before you get up or do anything at all. He said he had to get up very early to take patients blood pressure in a chinese hospital where he worked.

[fennel]

Please make sure that you are not anaemic before going to donate your blood, you need ferritin around 90 ng/mL to make your T4 convert to the active T3, and lots of hypothyroid patients are lower than this. I was in range, around 40ng/mL, and suffered with 'air hunger' which is gasping and feelings of suffocation, which improved on supplementing with iron. Lots of us have digestive problems such as celiac and don't realise it and it affects absorption of nutrients.

[Hidden]

I have high ferritin, quite a way over the upper limit and high levels of eosinophils. This apparently indicates that I have some level of inflammation in my body, although my esr is normal. In an old medical textbook I read on hypo it said that eosinophils are often raised.

[snowstorm]

When you get your cholesterol results most are told the overall figure. Very rarely (though I was) are we told what our GOOD cholesterol is : this is very important because it is the ratio that is the key.