Warning about ALYX blood donation!

G

g8r80

0
Because I hadn't given in a year, the phlebotomists at the mobile blood bank talked me into giving an ALYX donation Wednesday. In an ALYX donation, they remove the equivalent of 2.5 units (pints) of red blood cells, which carry oxygen to muscles, but don't take the plasma and other gunk. Normally I give whole units and have donated 5 gallons over the years.

On Thanksgiving day, I was running around with my 13yo daughter and she was running circles around me. I thought, "man she has gotten fast!" Then, Friday AM, when I was doing swimming laps, I had to stop and catch my breath after every 25 meters. Previously, I would stop after 50m. And it took forever, well, about a minute for my heart rate to come down. Normally, my heart rate will drop about 1 beat / second (e.g., go from 145 to 110 in 30 seconds) which is indicative of good cardiovascular health. I was so depressed thinking that I was in crap condition when I remembered the ALYX donation. Since there are about 2 gallons of blood in an adult and they removed the red blood cells from 2.5 pints, I am down about 15% of my normal red blood cells.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not whining and these blood banks really need these ALYX donations as well as whole blood units. And this will not significantly impact my training, but, if I had done this before a planned competition or event, I would have been seriously handicapped. Fortunately for me I have nothing on the immediate horizon and hope to be at full strength in a couple of weeks to a month.
 
wow!

how did you find out you will take a couple of weeks to a month to recover? Is that how long it takes for the body to regenerate thos eblood cells? and what other effect does that have on you? Why did you do that? There are plenty of non-athletes for that aren't there?

I'm just selfish enough to let "them" die, and save my friend.
 
The 2 - 4 weeks is just a guess. When I give whole blood, I feel fine after a day or two. Maybe I'll be fine in a few days.
 
the blood generates new blood cells very fast. I'd guess tomorrow or the day after you should be fine. (I think the bone marrow produces like 2million red blood cells per second, and I can't remember how often all our red blood cells are exchanged for new ones, but it's often.)
 
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Karky said:
the blood generates new blood cells very fast. I'd guess tomorrow or the day after you should be fine. (I think the bone marrow produces like 2million red blood cells per second, and I can't remember how often all our red blood cells are exchanged for new ones, but it's often.)
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I am feeling much better, 4 days after the ALYX.

But, I did some followup research and found some interesting stuff on Wikipedia Red blood cell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1. There are 30,000,000,000,000 red blood cells in an adult
2. These red blood cells live approximately 120 days.
3. Therefore, 30,000,000,000,000 / 120 means 250,000,000,000 red blood cells must be produced each day to replace the old red blood cells
4. The body can produce 2,000,000 red blood cells / sec, which comes out to 172,800,000,000 / day.

Thus, at these rates the body cannot produce enough to replace the old red blood cells, much less the loss of 45,000,000,000 red blood cells that I donated.

Either Wikipedia's number are screwy or something else is screwy.
 
I registered to say: your math is wrong. 30,000,000,000,000 / 120 would get the number of cells your body needs to produce every 120 days, not every day. so 250,000,000,000 / 120 is 2,083,333,333 cells per day that your body must produce to survive. I realize I may be a couple years behind on this conversation, but just wanted to clear it up. Bye!
 
gorydragon said:
I registered to say: your math is wrong. 30,000,000,000,000 / 120 would get the number of cells your body needs to produce every 120 days, not every day. so 250,000,000,000 / 120 is 2,083,333,333 cells per day that your body must produce to survive. I realize I may be a couple years behind on this conversation, but just wanted to clear it up. Bye!
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Your math is incorrect. If your body has 30 trillion blood cells, and they live 120 days each, then 1/120th of those cells die every day. So 250 billion blood cells per day is correct.
 
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