Echo71Niner t1_jdyski4 wrote on March 28, 2023 at 4:22 AM

Reply to comment by DumbbellDiva92 in TIL about Lillan Bloodworth, who donated blood every 56 days for nearly 50 years. By the time she stopped at age 85, she had donated 23 gallons. (The average person's body contains about 1.5 gallons.) by WouldbeWanderer

That is surprising, not sure why I assumed this was a North American standard for donating blood since it was based on a scientific study.

DumbbellDiva92 t1_jdzd7m1 wrote on March 28, 2023 at 8:49 AM

IMO the American standard probably isn’t the best, feel like a lot of women would quickly become anemic by these standards. I know I did.

OTOH guess this lady did fine every 56 days? Maybe with really regular donors like that we should just be investing in periodic ferritin testing rather than focusing on setting an arbitrary timeline.

Jaggedmallard26 t1_jdzuiqf wrote on March 28, 2023 at 12:19 PM

Just look through the thread of regular donators saying they have extremely iron rich diets and still barely scrape by.