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delectiyesterday at 5:30 PM5 repliesview on HN

That was my thought as well. At least naively, it seems to follow that regularly donating blood might have health benefits. A typical donation is half a liter, and a person has about 5 liters of blood, so donating should in theory remove about 10% of the crap you've got circulating, right?

Edit: You can donate every 2 months, so donating as often as possible would roughly halve the crud every year (0.9^6 ~= 0.53, ignoring the natural increase over time).


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u1hcw9nxyesterday at 7:04 PM

I don't think it's very effective.

It's your metabolism that produces that junk with increasing ratio of stuff that you need. If you just remove blood, the ratio of good stuff to bad stuff does not change. Same with kidney filtering if they can't recognize the difference.

Blood transfusion from younger person gives you blood with better ratio.

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toast0yesterday at 7:44 PM

> it seems to follow that regularly donating blood might have health benefits

It's pretty effective if you have excess iron (hemochromatosis) and your local vampires accept your donation; some don't because a donation where you get a significant benefit isn't a donation for the sole reason of helping others (and a free cookie). In that case, traditional bloodletting may be required.

robocatyesterday at 7:54 PM

In New Zealand, you are stopped at 75 (or 81 if given an exemption) assuming you started donating before 71.

You can't start donating blood after 71.

From age section: https://www.nzblood.co.nz/become-a-donor/am-i-eligible/detai...

RajT88yesterday at 7:09 PM

2 months for whole blood IIRC. You can do every 2 weeks for platelets, but I am not sure if that removes the crud or not. There's other donations with varying frequency (red, plasma, etc.).

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johnisgoodyesterday at 5:38 PM

Yeah, that is donating, now I wonder donating AND receiving (from a healthy individual). :D

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