I’ve been reading about what the bloodstream does after you donate blood, and most things say you regain the plasma within 24 hours, but you don’t completely replace with new red blood cells until 8 weeks later.
So I was thinking about that 8 week period…while your body is making brand new red blood cells. You’d want to keep them as pretty and pristine as possible, right?
So does that mean the first few weeks after donating blood are an optimal time to be uber-healthy and/or “detox” the system? (I don’t mean pills or nonsense spam garbage, I mean like eating like an insane health nut and drinking a wowload of water)
Taking it a step further, say for instance we’re *only* going by this concept. In two years time, that would make all the red blood cells of a person’s entire bloodstream pristine, right?
the “detox” you are talking about is scientifically nonsense (detox from drugs or alcohol is another story). And you ought to have a healthy diet anyway.
But you only give about 1/8 your blood anyway.
What you are asking is highly controversial and speculative. I have heard that iron build-up is a possible cause for some chronic degenerative disorders and that a possible strategy to improve your odds is to donate blood. I have heard further that the reason why women live longer than men is that menstruation essentially detoxifies the blood. Being a man, I make it a point to doante blood 3 times a year partly for the karmic benefit of saving lives and partly just in case this hypothesis is true. I suspect the detox aspect of donating blood is true but the evidence is sketchy at best.
No. Red cells have a lifespan of about three months, so a bit over 1% of them are being destroyed every day. The whole concept is pretty silly to begin with. If you’re a normal healthy person, your liver and kidneys do the detoxification of everything that needs it. To a great degree, your health nut diet and buckets of water are in the same category: the human body is capable of staying healthy within a wide range of diets, and lots of water past physiologic requirements results in nothing except extra urine output. Supraphysiologic health can be pushed for athletic performance with exercise and training, but past that level, it’s a pipe dream and taken to an extreme can even be paradoxically unhealthy.