How much reduction in hematocrit would be expected with a blood donation???

[FeelingLost]

I would have expected much more donations than 3 donations.
I explain you why:
If you have, lets say, 6 liters of blood in your body and 3 pts are 1.5 liters then 1.5/6 = 0.25 or 25%. It means that you couldn't lose more than 25% of your ferritin with 3 donations. If your ferritin had crashed only with 3 donations it means it was very low before you started donations.

I do not know. No doctor has ever tested my ferritin in 64 years of going to doctors. I had no symptoms of low ferritin even when it was at 15 and now that it is 50 I feel no different. Very strange.

 

[ratbag]

I would have expected much more donations than 3 donations.
I explain you why:
If you have, lets say, 6 liters of blood in your body and 3 pts are 1.5 liters then 1.5/6 = 0.25 or 25%. It means that you couldn't lose more than 25% of your ferritin with 3 donations. If your ferritin had crashed only with 3 donations it means it was very low before you started donations.

The point was that many people on TRT have low ferritin. This is what was said. It's a TRT thing. Read it anyway you like, many here (as you can see by the posts) have crashed their ferritin by donating. You won't know until you've actually checked you own ferritin.

 

[MarkM]

I would have expected much more donations than 3 donations.
I explain you why:
If you have, lets say, 6 liters of blood in your body and 3 pts are 1.5 liters then 1.5/6 = 0.25 or 25%. It means that you couldn't lose more than 25% of your ferritin with 3 donations. If your ferritin had crashed only with 3 donations it means it was very low before you started donations.

Typically one has more iron circulating in the blood than what one has stored as ferritin in the liver and bone marrow. If your donating blood that ratio is even lower. Assume one has iron serum levels of 100 ug/dl and ferritin of 50 ng/ml. In one whole blood donation of 1 pint you could see the iron drop to 70 ug/dl or a drop of 30%. Ferritin could drop from 50 ng/ml to 20 ng/dl for a for a drop of about 60%. Being at 20 ng/dl places an individual well below the range.


How fast one depletes iron and ferritin depends of what their levels are to begin with and then how often they have donated blood. Many people on TRT have low iron and low ferritin. Low ferritin impacts the thyroid function, cortisol, hair loss, and a host of other concerns. I've read that a ferritin level below 80 starts impacting the thyroid. It inhibits T4 from converting to T3 and increase Reverse T3. Ferritin at a level of 50 or less one can experience hair loss and from what I have read it will not start to regrow until the ferritin level hits 80 (this is if low ferritin is the reason for the hair loss). One last thought......you can have normal iron levels and have low ferritin because you lose your stored iron (ferritin) before you see the circulating iron start falling.

 

[FeelingLost]

Typically one has more iron circulating in the blood than what one has stored as ferritin in the liver and bone marrow. If your donating blood that ratio is even lower. Assume one has iron serum levels of 100 ug/dl and ferritin of 50 ng/ml. In one whole blood donation of 1 pint you could see the iron drop to 70 ug/dl or a drop of 30%. Ferritin could drop from 50 ng/ml to 20 ng/dl for a for a drop of about 60%. Being at 20 ng/dl places an individual well below the range.


How fast one depletes iron and ferritin depends of what their levels are to begin with and then how often they have donated blood. Many people on TRT have low iron and low ferritin. Low ferritin impacts the thyroid function, cortisol, hair loss, and a host of other concerns. I've read that a ferritin level below 80 starts impacting the thyroid. It inhibits T4 from converting to T3 and increase Reverse T3. Ferritin at a level of 50 or less one can experience hair loss and from what I have read it will not start to regrow until the ferritin level hits 80 (this is if low ferritin is the reason for the hair loss). One last thought......you can have normal iron levels and have low ferritin because you lose your stored iron (ferritin) before you see the circulating iron start falling.

Hi Mark,
When my ferritin was 15 range 30-400 I also had a thyroid panel done using LabCorp.
I was given the nothing to do there speech what do you think about my tests
I don't think my low ferritin hurt my thyroid numbers very much. The reverse T3 is high but I have no hypothyroidism symptoms.
But I am open to others opinion.

 

[Gman86]

God I am so jealous of people’s free testosterone! Lol. My total testosterone would have to be literally 2000+ to get close to that free testosterone level. Your numbers look amazing btw. Total, free and E2 all look amazing. Do you feel great at these numbers?

 

[FeelingLost]

God I am so jealous of people's free testosterone! Lol. My total testosterone would have to be literally 2000+ to get close to that free testosterone level. Your numbers look amazing btw. Total, free and E2 all look amazing. Do you feel great at these numbers?

I don't want to derail the OP original topic too much but to answer your question ((( NO ))) I was chasing my wife around the house like a 13 year old who just figured out how to jack off. I did not feel stronger I was just horny all the time. I could have an hour of sex and 3 hours later I was horny again. I hated it. I could not stop looking at breast cracks at the grocery store or thinking about sex 24/7. I literally stopped all injections for a whole week I could not wait to come down. YMMV

 

[Tron]

Typically one has more iron circulating in the blood than what one has stored as ferritin in the liver and bone marrow. If your donating blood that ratio is even lower. Assume one has iron serum levels of 100 ug/dl and ferritin of 50 ng/ml. In one whole blood donation of 1 pint you could see the iron drop to 70 ug/dl or a drop of 30%. Ferritin could drop from 50 ng/ml to 20 ng/dl for a for a drop of about 60%. Being at 20 ng/dl places an individual well below the range.


How fast one depletes iron and ferritin depends of what their levels are to begin with and then how often they have donated blood. Many people on TRT have low iron and low ferritin. Low ferritin impacts the thyroid function, cortisol, hair loss, and a host of other concerns. I've read that a ferritin level below 80 starts impacting the thyroid. It inhibits T4 from converting to T3 and increase Reverse T3. Ferritin at a level of 50 or less one can experience hair loss and from what I have read it will not start to regrow until the ferritin level hits 80 (this is if low ferritin is the reason for the hair loss). One last thought......you can have normal iron levels and have low ferritin because you lose your stored iron (ferritin) before you see the circulating iron start falling.

Ok, thank you. I'm not an expert on this topic but I don't found any reason why the ferritin would be reduced of about 60% with only a 1 pint donation. It's like you would lose the 60% of something when 1 pint is only 14% of the total blood in the body. It has no sense but, I repeat, I'm not an expert.

 

[MarkM]

Hi Mark,
When my ferritin was 15 range 30-400 I also had a thyroid panel done using LabCorp.
I was given the nothing to do there speech what do you think about my tests
I don't think my low ferritin hurt my thyroid numbers very much. The reverse T3 is high but I have no hypothyroidism symptoms.
But I am open to others opinion.

Low ferritin will make your RT3 increase and you were probably seeing signs of that with your level of RT3 being at the upper end of the range. Your Free T3 to Reverse T3 is/was out of whack. It's likely that if your ferritin was not low for an extended period of time you would probably not feel affects of it on your thyroid. Looks like you last donation is what brought your ferritin down to 15 and you happen to catch it and started supplementing and eating the liver each day. Because you caught it early you might have headed off any symptoms. If I recall you have already brought it from the 15 range up to over 50. Had you not caught it your Reverse T3 might have continued to climb and created some issues for you. Like I said, the good thing is you caught it and took steps to bring your ferritin back up. This is just an opinion and I surely do not have any medical experience to back it up.

 

[MarkM]

Ok, thank you. I'm not an expert on this topic but I don't found any reason why the ferritin would be reduced of about 60% with only a 1 pint donation. It's like you would lose the 60% of something when 1 pint is only 14% of the total blood in the body. It has no sense but, I repeat, I'm not an expert.

Lots of things I don't understand when it comes to how our bodies react to different things. As far as the 60% figure from above, that was using a ferritin level of 50 ng/ml when the drop took place. if one had a ferritin level of 150 ng/ml and saw the same 30 ng/ml drop in ferritin after a donation it would only amount to a 20% reduction in ferritin levels. So, the amount of ferritin one has prior to the donation makes a difference in the ratio or percentage of reduced ferritin. I have read that ferritin will drop from 30 to 50 ng/ml for each 1 pint of whole blood donated and this was regardless of what the ferritin level was prior to the donation. Of course, I am not a doctor and everyone is different.

 

[Gman86]

Not sure about low ferritin increasing reverse T3. My reverse T3 has always been on the low end of normal, and crashing ferritin had zero impact on my reverse T3, verified by multiple blood tests. For example, when my ferritin was 21, my reverse T3 was 12 (8-25)

I'm not saying you're wrong, just in my personal experience, low ferritin has had zero effect on my reverse T3. Like I said, this could just be my personal experience though. Everyone is different.

 

[Gman86]

Also, idk if we can figure out how much lower our ferritin will get based off of math equations. It would make sense that it should work that way, but the body is so complicated and complex. For instance I’ve never donated blood in my entire life. I crashed my ferritin literally just off of getting blood drawn for labwork too often. So sometimes it doesn’t take much

 

[Gman86]

Ya sorry to OP as well, but I just had to ask that considering your lab work looked so amazing! Do you have a thread going about your progress and current protocol? I'd love to check it out. Curious on how ur doing and what protocol changes u made after stopping injections. And that's hilarious about the whole libido thing. I'd like my libido to improve a bit, but ya that does seem a bit much lol.

Found your post about that labwork and protocol btw. Gonna go check it out now.

 

[FeelingLost]

Ok, thank you. I'm not an expert on this topic but I don't found any reason why the ferritin would be reduced of about 60% with only a 1 pint donation. It's like you would lose the 60% of something when 1 pint is only 14% of the total blood in the body. It has no sense but, I repeat, I'm not an expert.

Tron do you use LabCorp? the ferritin test is not expensive. 30 bucks
https://www.discountedlabs.com/ferritin

 

[Tron]

Tron do you use LabCorp? the ferritin test is not expensive. 30 bucks
https://www.discountedlabs.com/ferritin

hahaha, I'm in Spain, my friend. The blood test normally are paid by our national state service (very useful). My endo only prescribes me 1 blood test per year and only hemogram, liver enzymes, total testosterone. Never controled my ferritin because he never prescribed me a blood donation although my HCT is between 50-52% (sometimes 54%). He doesn't paid too much attention of it. Never looked free testosterone, never SHBG, never E2. Definitely, he only prescribes me cypionate 250 mg eag 15 days. It's true that only with it I feel very good and it seems I don't need much more controles. If I want a more close controle I need to pay the blood test by my own.

It has been in this forum where I have learned how to distribute 250 mg cypionate in 3.5EO. It works much better and it avoids roller-coaster effect.

Now, I'm studying by my account (mainly in this forum) about how to controle HCT and its problems with ferritin. My endo doesn't know anything about angiotensin receptor blockers and its influence on erythropoiesis. I suspect that he doesn't know how to use AI's to controle estrogens and in fact this is not used in our national health service for men.

I'm also learning by my account how to distribute injections frequency according SHBG values. Or how to use DHEA.

Definitively, if you want a more exhaustive control you need to pay a private endocrinologist to tell him about all of these little and very useful things we talk about in this forum.

Endocrinology is a difficult and expensive topic if someone wants to tune all the parameters in its optimal range. That's why I love this forum.

 

[Gianluca]

No relation between ferritin and Iron serum. Many like me, have high Iron serum but very low ferritin. Ferritin is the stored iron in your body available for whatever needs it so it has to be there at a normal level. Even the lab ranges for ferritin are lower than they should be reflecting the masses who simply have too low of ferritin. My ferritin was low but in range and I had all sorts of issues. My PCP said it's in range it's not the problem. Yet My hormone MD said it's too low and to supp some iron which I did and the problems disappeared

Did supplementing with Iron lower your iron serum?

 

[Gianluca]

Ferritin is very important for all hormones and your body tissue cellular structure and organs. You can't be low on ferritin without it compromising something or many things in your body. It's something we need. I never had ferritin issues until I started TRT. This is a common theme here because TRT generally reduces your ferritin. Some are not affected but I believe most are. It would be interesting to do a poll on this.

My ferritin doesn't want to increase more than 75/80, and I haven't donated in 3 years

 

[MikeXL]

1 pt on Hg and 3 pts for HCT approximate