giving blood-affecting performance?

tozi1

Does blood donation affect performance?-the day after giving blood i was miles slower on my regular ride,and still am several days later,i gather the blood volume is restored in 48 hrs,and my nurse wife thinks i'm imagining it!-i should say i am new to training and depressingly unfit.

zammmmo

Yes it will affect performance - you are removing some of your bodies ability to move oxygen and, I suspect, will create a drop in pressure. Not sure how long the body takes to get volume back up to 'normal' - I think it might be about 1 week - google it........

cougie

Yes it does - I've donated on a Thursday and ran a 10k on the Sunday and my times were down.

Sometimes I've trained successfully after giving and sometimes i really do notice it.

Either way - its a good thing to do - so go for it.

celbianchi

Giving blood is a bad idea if you are racing, you should do it out of season.
It takes around 3 weeks for things to be completely back to normal. So even if you are just training hard it will impact.

SpinningJenny

Yep, it will certainly affect you. My mate the personal trainer gave blood and suffered with light headedness and feeling generally feeble for a while afterwards.

Alex_Simmons/RST

celbianchi wrote:

Giving blood is a bad idea if you are racing, you should do it out of season.
It takes around 3 weeks for things to be completely back to normal. So even if you are just training hard it will impact.

it can take longer than that even up to 6 weeks to replace the lost red blood cells.

good for the community, lousy for race performance

SBezza

The blood volume will be replaced within 48 hours or so, but that is with plasma, as Alex has mentioned, getting the red blood cells back to normal takes quite a few weeks.

I did see an article, about how long things took, but about 5/6 weeks is right. Remember you have to leave at least 16 weeks, between donations so that gives you some idea of how long it takes the body to fully get over giving blood.

I won't be giving blood under after October.

skavanagh.bikeradar

I gave regularly last year and did the Marmotte and finished. I blame the crazy amount of time I took to do so on blood donation too close to the event.

I don't really, but I'm using that excuse now.....

It's one of those 'cycling doesn't pay the bills' moments isn't it? It just a hobby, giving blood can save lives, especially if you can donate platelets. I vote you donate and don't worry about it too much.

Bhima

I looked into blood a long time ago, just in case I was in a serious accident or whatever...

If you want to regenerate your red blood cells quicker, you need to eat iron-rich foods.

Red meat is the best, especially Liver (Liver is where animals store iron).

The next best things are pumpkin seeds, lentils, seaweed, spinach and potatoes but the iron in these is harder for the body to absorb because it must be seperated from phytate, calcium and zinc. In red meat, the iron is not chemically bonded to anything else.

Your body can only absorb so much iron at once, any excess will simply come out the other end, but Vitamin C can increase the potential for absorption, so make sure you get enough of that. The main proteins involved with production are Ferritin and Transferrin. If you eat a lot of iron suddenly, you may need to increase the ammount of those too, to make production more efficient.

You can get a protein called Erythropoietin (EPO) which dramatically increases red blood cell production (used for anemia patients), but it's technically "doping" if you're competing in cycling events.

So increase your iron intake and you will recover quicker. If you go crazy with it, you could probably shave a week off your recovery time.

...but my doctor told me that it's not as simple as that because there are so many other factors affecting red blood cell production, such as the condition of your kidneys (do you drink?), ammount of sleep you get, how much excersise you're doing and weather or not you use other medication (like cancer drugs, which can slow production down by killing red blood cells you've just created).

tozi1

thanks for all the feedback-i guess i'll be more aware next time,no real problem unless you were near a race,certainly felt weird,same heart rate,less power,no need to stop giving blood,just be carefull of the timing,it'll be interesting to see what happens to the training progress,will performance go back to pre-donation level once the haemoglobin is at normal levels,or will there be a bigger improvement as i will still continue training?

skavanagh.bikeradar

Again, unless you are making money from your racing I shouldn't worry too much matey.

zammmmo

Just because you are not making money from cycling - and from that I assume you mean that someone is a pro, doesn't mean to say that giving blood anywhere near the time you are going to race, is a good idea. I don't think you'd catch many people, irrespective of the level to which they race at, doing anything that will compromise their performance.

What is the point of training 5, 10 maybe 15 hours a week as an amateur and then handicapping yourself? Yes it is selfish, but there are plenty of couch potatoes out there who can give blood and it won't make any difference to them. That is of course if they can be bothered to get off the sofa and down the blood bank. It is vital people come forward to donate blood - but I'm simply saying, if you do endurance sports, be very careful when you do it.

verloren

zammmmo wrote:

I don't think you'd catch many people, irrespective of the level to which they race at, doing anything that will compromise their performance.

I think you'd find almost everyone does plenty of things that will compromise their performance. Anyone who trains less than, say, 20 hours per week is doing it, as is anyone who doesn't monitor every calorie they eat, and anyone who hasn't spent several thousand pounds on their bike.

They do this because, while cycling is important to them, their priorities lie with family, work, etc. If one of your priorities is giving blood then the performance drop is easy to justify. If it isn't, don't do it (at least during the season).

zammmmo

By doing 10 hours of training and not 20, yes, you are compromising your performance but that is something you have consciously made a decision about just like not giving blood at a particular point in time. There is a subtle difference between doing something that will have a negative impact on performance and making decisions that will limit your performance.

cougie

I wouldnt donate if I was doing a race I wanted to do well in the next weekend, but other than that - I dont mind donating. Some things are more important.