>I've heard before of the idea of donating blood to reduce iron. Are there
>any studies that show it's successful? The blood centers usually remind
>you that you replace the whole blood fairly quickly.
Your *blood* levels of iron should return pretty quickly, but it's your
ferritin level (the measure of *stored* iron) that gets depleted like you
want. *Stored* iron doesn't serve much of a purpose except for back-up, and
it does a lot of damage. It's your ferritin level (and not nessecarily
plasma level) you want to test when you are working to lower iron levels.
Some life-extensionists have ferritin levels as low as 12, with no observed
negative effects. (Normal men sometimes have ferritin levels as high as
300--very pro-aging!)
GM
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:34 MDT