4 Unexpected Advantages of Donating Blood

As donating blood should be all about helping those in trouble and need, there are a couple of things in it for you. Here are four health perks when you become a regular blood donor. When was the last time you stopped to appreciate all the best stuff your blood does for you in return? Without it, oxygen would never be able to reach your blood cells and carbon dioxide would be filling your blood vessels as much as they can, causing a damage. Every single second, someone on this planet needs blood and ample of blood donations are needed to save precious lives on a daily basis. So, while you may never worry about having enough blood to function, plenty of others are not as much fortunate as you are. There must be a certain reason to get out and donate blood.

Your Blood Flow Will Get Better

If your blood has a high viscosity or shows resistance to flow, it will flow like molasses. Repeated blood donations may help the blood flow in a way that is less damaging and disturbing to the lining of our blood vessels and could eventually result in lesser arterial blockages. Recent research in American Journal of Epidemiology has discovered that blood donors are 88 percent less likely to suffer a heart stroke or even a heart attack. It is not clear yet that if there are lasting health benefits associated directly with the better blood flow. But, what is clear is that the blood donors seem to not be hospitalized more often and if they are, they have shorter lengths of stay at a hospital for battling certain diseases. They are less likely to get cancers, strokes and heart attacks as well.

You'll get a mini check-up for Free

Before you are donating blood to someone, you will first have to complete a physical test that measures your blood pressure, hemoglobin levels, pulse rate and temperature. After your blood sample is collected in a lab, it is sent to the donor lab where it will undergo 13 different tests for infectious diseases such as HIV and West Nile virus. If anything shows back positive in your blood, you will eventually be notified. Is year after year your tests come back negative, then you will be able to know for sure that there is nothing you have been exposed to. The blood tests and physical tests are no reasons to skip your annual doctor checkup, but they are surely a great peace of mind. Keep that in mind, that you should never donate blood if you have a suspect that you may be sick or been exposed to HIV or other harmful viruses.

Your iron level will remain balanced

Healthy adults normally have about 5 grams of iron in their human bodies, mostly in red blood cells but they are also found in the bone marrow. When you donate blood, you lose almost a quarter of a gram of iron from your body, which ultimately gets replenished from the food you intake in the weeks after donation. This regulation of iron levels is a good thing to be, as having too much of iron cause the harm to your blood vessels. The decrease in the amount of iron in the body of healthy people over the long run is a great benefit to the blood vessels, and it controls the diseases that are related to abnormalities in our blood vessels, such as heart attack and heart stroke.

You could Stay healthier and live longer

Doing good for others is one way to live a long and healthy life. A recent study in the Health Psychology discovered that the people who tend to volunteer for altruistic reasons had a great reduction in the risk of mortality four years later than those who volunteered for themselves alone. As the health benefits of blood donation are nice in fact, do not forget that you are helping and saving someone