This one is for the men in the audience. While I will admit that I made the subject slightly attention-getting on purposes by framing it in terms of gender, the reason why will make sense in a moment.
At some point some crafty health researchers asked the question, why is it that pre-menopausal women have lower mortality rates from heart disease as compared to men of the same age? Further to that, why is it that in post-menopausal women the rates start to get closer to men’s and further to that, why is it that in cases of hysterectomy (relevant part here is no more menstruation) the rates in those women rise towards those of similar-age men?
Which is to say, does losing blood through menstruation have something to do with rate of heart disease?
Why jump to this theory when there are certainly myriad other differences between men and women, pre and post-menopause?
Well, you see, while iron is absolutely a crucial element for good health and proper metabolic function, as with any element the hormetic zone is a curve – too little is bad, and too much is bad.
Now to speak in absolute generalities that are not at all useful on an individual level but can be useful to see which bucket you might fit in generally women tend to have more issues with not getting or keeping enough iron, and men generally tend to have the opposite issue. Anemia is bad, but so his hemochromatosis. I am not a doctor, this isn’t medical advice, and you should get your blood levels checked.
Without getting into a graduate level systems biology lecture the likes of which I’m unqualified to give and you don’t want to listen to so suffice to say having too much iron in the blood is Real Bad™. Getting enough iron from dietary sources is pretty easy: use a cast iron pan for some of your cooking, eat some red meat (especially offal), some beans, dark leafy greens and you’re probably good. Getting rid of iron is a real problem for men, given that the body has no mechanism for doing so – except blood loss.
(One thing to note, they will check your ferritin level the day you give blood, so you’re basically getting a free iron check and it should prevent you from donating if you’re low.)
Which is where giving blood comes in. Hopefully I don’t have to convince you of the benefits to others of giving blood. If someone ends up in a hospital and needs blood, they will die if they can’t get a transfusion. There’s no substitute, no synthetic alternative, and you can’t pump someone full of Hawaiian Punch. Blood transfusions are definitely one medical procedure that indisputably saves lives.
But what most people don’t consider is the benefit to themselves. So check this out:
In a Finnish study following almost 3000 men for a decade literally one man in the group had a heart attack – he was a blood donor. The rest of the cohort? 316 non-donors had heart attacks. In a statistical model probably no one understands blood donors had an 88% reduction in risk of acute heart attack compared to non-donors.
In another well powered study of people with peripheral arterial disease the group that participated in iron reduction (basically, they gave blood) saw significant differences in new cancer, and an overall 37% reduction in cancer incidence.
But, David, don’t you usually heavily criticize and virtually dismiss this type of long-view epidemiological science?
Yes, I do when there’s an attempt to ascribe a level of risk to a single factor. Like let’s say the studies that purport to draw a connection between cured meats and cancer. When you’re trying to tease out a single factor for a risk in the negative are basically saying “Give up this thing for this potential benefit.”
What you have here is essentially the opposite though. What most of the studies show is that there seems to be significant benefit to donating blood, and there are some potential mechanisms for why that might be. So there’s no discernible downside, and a lot of potential upside. In finance terms this is an option you take every single time.
It may very well be that actually removing a pint of blood isn’t the factor that renders the benefits, but we can’t ignore that they’re highly associated and you can reap those rewards just by giving blood.
For example, it’s entirely possible that the benefits of blood donation have nothing to do with iron and instead are related to the ramping up of erythropoietin production.
One more thing. Phlebotomy is a practice that spans cultures and several thousand years. Lots of dumb things that have no benefit or are harmful could be described in the same way, but I always pay a little more attention when something shows up almost universally and has stood the test of time. If nothing else those give us good starting points of things to examine more rigorously and removing a pint of blood once a quarter or so seems to pass that examination – so far anyway.
So make that appointment today gents.
Leave a Reply