I am O-. I’m young and healthy. I have great veins and am not in any way squeamish about needles. However, my iron levels were never high enough. I tried eating red meat before. I tried vitamins. I tried varying the time of day-- and the time of the month. I tried a dozen times.
I’m considering eating some nails.
It annoys me. I really want to. Hell, my mom would have died without a blood transfusion. Kharma-wise, I owe somebody 2 pints.
Any of you guys figure out how to get your iron levels high enough?
They want REALLY high iron counts, so I doubt that you’re anemic, though it can’t hurt to check. My mom’s failed a few of those checks, though she’s a fairly regular donator.
I’d have to gain several pounds to donate, though, so I can’t at all. I wish I could. I owe somebody some blood, seeing as I got a unit or two during surgery when I was a kid.
I gave up trying when they kept sending me away for low blood pressure/body weight (I’m too healthy to donate?!). I’d rebalance karma some other way like volunteering at your mom’s favorite charity or something.
Well, I always take pre-natal vitamins for a few days beforehand. They have about 3x as much iron as any normal person needs. It works great, but I don’t know if you want to try that method. Possibly something only girls would want to do, and I don’t know what you are. But pre-natal vitamins are available at Costco for pretty cheap.
Prenatal vitamins are a great idea. If you take them at night before bed they won’t upset your tummy. There’s a list of iron-helpful foods on this site. If it is accurate, beets and potatoes scored higher than I thought they would.
I do apheresis every 28 days if my hemoglobin is high enough and if all goes well with the stick. For about a week before I take “women’s” vitamins (extra iron). My diet would not do it for me so I rely on the vitamin pills. For apheresis the count on the machine that measures the blood from your finger has to be at least 12.5 so that tripled it rounds up to the 38 ivylass mentioned.
Donating whole blood may have a less stringent requirement–there I think they spin or drop it to see when it separates or some business to see how ironful it is.
You may not want to overdo it with the vitamins/iron pills as too much iron is no good either, but for a few days before the donation may do the trick. And if you’re a menstruating woman, wait until a few weeks after your period ends.
It’s the hematocrit. Basically it’s the percentage of a sample of blood that is actually red blood cells. Men’s hematocrits are normally around 40-50, women’s range somewhat lower.
I heard (and this is MPSIMS not GQ, so I’m going with it) that it can take 6 months for iron pills and/or a change in diet to make any meaningful additions to your iron level.
So a few days of iron rich foods just isn’t going to cut it.
But someone here mentioned raisins, right before you donate. So far, the two times I’ve tried it, I’ve been able to donate (as opposed to raisinless, when I’ve got about a 50% chance of having levels high enough).
Anectodally, I can tell you that every time I’ve tried to donate without taking iron pills for the week before, I’ve been declined. Every time I’ve donated after taking iron pills for a week, my iron levels were OK.
No, we’re not anemic. I understood from the Red Cross staff that their standard for iron is higher because the person getting the blood needs iron-rich blood for healing. They also told me that it’s fairly common for otherwise healthy women to be under their minimum level.
There’s other things you can do that they don’t care about your iron levels for; you can get on the marrow donor list, for example, and I’m not sure but you may be able to donate platelets. I was very happy to get on the marrow list, because I don’t weigh enough to give blood.
In my experience, if you fail the first hematoocrit test, ask them to do it again. The once or twce I’ve failed the iron test I’ve passed on the second time.
The staff at the Puget Sound Blood Center tell me that it takes about four days to raise the hematocrit one point. Donating a pint causes a drop of about four points. Thus if you start out with a score of 38, you can expect to drop to 34. That level is still considered healthy. If your hematocrit is 32, they’re supposed to recommend that you see a doctor.
It makes a difference what else you take along with your iron supplement. Calcium can interfere with iron absorption, but vitamin C helps. The tannin in black tea reduces iron absorption too.
I’m a three gallon (ish) donor. I’ve only nearly been refused once and that was of course due to the iron levels. But as she was about to send me away the blood stopped floating and sunk like a rock. We were both kind of surprised and she shrugged and said, “well it was in the time limit.” Apparently they give it like 5 or 10 seconds to drop, but if it doesn’t drop immediately they assume it isn’t going to.
