# Cholesterol and Blood Donation **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 20, 2008, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cholesterol-and-blood-donation/438445 "2008-02-20T22:27:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![drankin21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/278dde/32.png) [@drankin21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drankin21)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cholesterol-and-blood-donation/438445/1 "2008-02-20T22:27:24Z")
If I donate blood, wouldn’t my cholesterol numbers improve? How much would they improve? ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cholesterol-and-blood-donation/438445/2 "2008-02-20T22:42:11Z")
I don’t have a cite, and IANAD, but I doubt it would be very much, or for very long. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cholesterol-and-blood-donation/438445/3 "2008-02-20T22:45:14Z")
[QUOTE=drankin21] If I donate blood, wouldn’t my cholesterol numbers improve? How much would they improve? [/QUOTE] IANAD but I don’t see what the mechanism would be - anything bad that is dissolved in your bloodstream would still be present in the same concentrations after donating (you’d just be down a pint) and anything bad that’s gumming up your veins will still be there. High cholesterol runs in my family and I was a regular blood donor for many years. My cholesterol levels didn’t go down during that time. When I changed my eating habits, started getting a lot more exercise and dropped 40 pounds, my cholesterol levels went way down. I had stopped donating blood before then (since they changed the cutoff dates for the last time you lived in the UK; I was there for a year in 1979-80). ---
**Author:** ![drankin21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/278dde/32.png) [@drankin21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drankin21)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cholesterol-and-blood-donation/438445/4 "2008-02-21T13:34:59Z")
My thoughts on the mechanism that if you had X amount of cholesterol in your blood and a portion of that cholesterol (whatever blood is donated divided by the total amount that is in your body) then the amount of cholesterol would be reduced by that percentage as well. Our bodies then backfill the donated blood with plasma and fresh blood cells. I’m no doctor but it seems to make sense to me. I am assuming that the only problem with it is if there is a larger concentration of cholesterol in some gland/organ that just gets dumped into the bloodstream and brings things back to the way they were pre-donation. I am in no way thinking of using this to help myself as I have normal levels but it’s always intrigued me. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cholesterol-and-blood-donation/438445/5 "2008-02-21T14:27:14Z")
Every time I give blood, they point out that it does help clean out one’s blood a little bit since the “replacement” blood one generates is pure. However, one’s lifestyle probably reduces that purity to the pre-donation state rather quickly.