For some background, I’m an overweight, redheaded, very fair-skinned woman.
I have always been very hard to stick with a needle. So bad that the local plasma place got tired of trying to stick me and told me not to show up anymore.
Anyhow, today I warned the friendly phlebotomist that I was hard to stick, and she replied “Most redheads and fair-skinned people are. That’s one of the first things I noticed when I started doing this.”
Is there any truth to this? If it’s true, is there any reason?
And are overweight patients harder or easier to stick as a rule? Because aren’t redheads more likely to be fat too?
I draw mostly arterial blood for lung functions and have found that size doesn’t matter at all, and I don’t want you to take on that burden, okay?
In my case, I have to feel for the pulse either brachially (in the crook of the elbow) or radially (at the wrist) to find my source, but whether a person is over or underweight has never been a problem for me.
A tough stick is a tough stick no matter what size the person is. Don’t give yourself a stigma you don’t need, but do let 'em know where they are more apt to be successful to save yourself some pain.
overweight people’s veins are simply harder to find because relative to their depth of their skin, their veins are deeper and harder to reach.Havethem hold your arm in a dependent position fo r5 minutes while pumping your fist. time consumig but sometimes helps.
Yes it’s true that redheads tend to be fair skined. It’s not perfect but it’s a reasonsbale correlation, at least amongst Caucasians. Hair is often red because of the reduced ability of melanocytes to manufacture eumelanin, which is brown. When eumelnain is present it tends to mask the reddish pheomelanin. With no eumelnain you get red hair. Melanocytes are also responsible for skin colour, and so there is little eumelanin in the skin either.
REALLY easy to stick. My veins bulge. Every time I donate blood or get blood work done I spray.
Every time I warn them, every time I spray. I once sprayed a Canadian Blood Services nurse clean accross her uniform, arms and face - good thing I’m healthy. I didn’t feel too bad, as I had warned her and she didn’t believe me. Also, my blood donation ususally takes about 1/2 the time of the average woman.
What exactly do you mean by “hard to stick with a needle”? They can’t find your veins, or your vein walls are hard to puncture? I’m fairly fair skinned and I also have trouble giving blood. Of the last four times they tried, blood only came out once. It probably doesn’t have to do with your being overweight, as I am pretty thin and it happens to me. After searching around, I can’t find anything that answers your question.
Someone once told me that fair-skinned people tend to have “rolly” veins. (By this we mean veins that aren’t well-anchored in the subcutaneous tissue, so they tend to slide away from the needle.) Whether this is really true or not, I don’t know. I’ve never drawn blood on humans. I do know that rolly veins can be a real pain in the ass to get a good stick on.
Body fat (up to a certain point) shouldn’t make much of a difference in the peripheral veins. I mean, really, how much fat does the average overweight person have in the crook of the elbow? For the central veins, however, body fat can make it much harder to find the vein. (In dogs and cats, anyway, I’d assume the same for humans.)
Some people just have bigger veins, which makes them easier sticks than those of us with little crappy veins. Low blood pressure or lots of sclerosis on the veins (from repeated sticks) can also make someone a much harder stick.
When I said “hard to stick” I mean that it’s hard to actually find my veins, and it’s hard to hit them once they stick me, and it’s hard to keep the blood going once they’re in there. I think my veins must move around a lot or something.
I’m definitely an exception to this “rule”, if it is one. I’m fair-skinned and red-haired, and I get “stuck” on a fairly regular basis, for medical reasons (I also used to give blood regularly, before medical complications interfered). I’ve always had nurses and phlebotomists comment on how I have “good veins”, which I take to mean that it is easy to find them and poke the needle into them.
The only factor I see a difference in is weight. I’m average weight, though at times in my life I’ve been thinner and at one time I was a bit heavier. I think (not meaning to be cruel here) that it should be fairly obvious why a heavier person’s veins might be harder to get to.
And I don’t agree with your belief that most redheads are fat, either. Not long ago, I was in a room with four other redheads, only 2 of whom were blood relatives (consider the odds), and none of us would be considered overweight. Relative to the number of fellow redheads I’ve met in my entire life (which includes my dad’s family), the majority were not fat.
I used to work as a phlebotomist at a hospital and performed thousands of sticks, and in my experience overweight people were generally harder to draw blood samples from. In many people the veins are too deep to see easily, and if you have to locate them primarily by touch any extra amount of fat will make it tougher. Also, it seemed like overweight people tended to have smaller veins on average, which makes them harder to find and a smaller target for the needle. I have heard that exercise tends to make an individual’s veins larger than they would be otherwise. OTOH, I found weight to be irrelevant when it came to arterial sticks. Of course there is enormous variation between people in every possible characteristic so I hate to generalize, and everything I’ve said is purely anectodal anyway.
I never noticed anything different about redheads, though. I’d think the generally paler skin would make a nice contrast for the greenish veins, making it easier to aim. Most people’s veins roll to some degree, regardless of hair color. And I’m not even going to begin to speculate on a correlation between weight and red hair.
(Resurrect)
My wife is red-headed and pale-skinned, not particularly overweight. Even back when she was really slender, is was hard to find her veins … She has really low blood pressure, though, so that might be part of it. It’s pretty hard to get a vein to ‘pop’ to see & stick. (I don’t think low blood pressure can be correlated with red hair/fair skin, can it? With the famous ‘red-head temper’ stereotype floating around? Although come to think of it, she has that, too. I wonder what her blood pressure is when she’s really mad? I wonder what would happen to me if I tried to take her blood pressure or stick her with a needle when she was really mad? And how long my hospital stay would be? )
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