I gave blood yesterday. While I’d like to call myself a hero and wear that little “I gave blood” heart sticker with pride, I can’t. I have to admit that my reasons for giving blood were completely selfish.
I gave blood to knock down my iron levels. I wanted to knock down my iron levels to ward off hemochromatosis — a condition where your body has a toxic amount of iron which knocks out your pituitary gland and clogs the arteries. Sexual function is irrevocably tied to hormones and heart health, so overloading these systems has a pernicious impact on your sex parts … and may eventually lead to hypogonadism … i.e. shrunken, useless, out of order testicles.
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“Hemochromatosis is a disease in which too much iron builds up in your body. Your body needs iron but too much of it is toxic. If you have hemochromatosis, you absorb more iron than you need. Your body has no natural way to get rid of the extra iron. It stores it in body tissues, especially the liver, heart, and pancreas. The extra iron can damage your organs. Without treatment, it can cause your organs to fail.”
While it’s only a hypothesis at this point, it is now being thought in some medical circles that the reason why women have heart attacks at half the rate of men is because they store half the amount of iron … and they store half the amount of iron because they menstruate.
It was also demonstrated that you can reduce the risk of heart disease by 30% and drop the risk of heart attacks by 88% by giving blood.
You now see where I’m going here …
There was a study done in the 80s where a group of men with low T, erection issues, and shrunken balls underwent iron depletion (they gave blood) and guess what happened?
Read it for yourself:
“Gonadal function was evaluated in 64 persons homozygous for the HLA-linked hemochromatosis allele. Of 41 men, 10 had reduced libido or impotence and 6 had testicular atrophy. Before treatment, 5 men had below normal testosterone concentrations, 4 of whom also had low gonadotrophin levels. Four hypogonadal men were reevaluated after iron depletion treatment. In 2, 1 with primary and another with secondary hypogonadism, testosterone levels returned to normal after phlebotomy and were accompanied by a return of normal sexual function. None of 23 women with hemochromatosis had loss of libido or had a natural menopause before age 45. Our findings indicate that in some men with hereditary hemochromatosis and hypogonadism of either testicular or central origin, sexual function and sex hormone concentrations can be restored to normal after iron depletion therapy.”
Yes, they went back to normal.
I eat an enormous amount if high iron foods: liver, shellfish, red meat, leafy greens, pumpkin seeds (every morning), quinoa, broccoli, salmon and sardines. You may as well call what I eat the high iron diet. So a while back I began wondering if I should start off-loading some of this iron?
So I gave blood yesterday. I went into the clinic, answered a whole bunch of survey questions (apparently, they will kick you out if you answer them wrong), and went in to see a nurse. She did some vital sign tests, among which was a finger poke to test my iron levels. This was what I was interested in, so I drilled her on it. She told me I was in the normal range, and explained what was considered low and what was considered high.
I then wondered to myself if I was wasting my time …
I concluded that I wasn’t. First of all, I don’t trust dominant medical opinion when it comes to things related to sexual function. They’d much rather prescribe a pill … Secondly, maybe it could still have a positive effect? Thirdly, if nothing else, my blood could be used to potentially save a life — the normal reason people give blood.
I’ve now hardwired giving blood as a normal part of my health cultivation routine, and plan on going two to three times per year. Why not?
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