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musicmad-123 t1_jdz6kuh wrote

Wow! I'm the UK women have to wait 4 months between donations. I wonder how they determined it was safe after only 56 days

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DumbbellDiva92 t1_je00yyx wrote

This lady might also just be an outlier. I’m not convinced having the same limit for men and women like we do in the US is actually a good idea. I know I got anemic when I tried to donate as often as allowed. At minimum, periodic ferritin testing should be implemented if they are going to keep the recovery time that low.

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musicmad-123 t1_je03hsi wrote

In the UK they test our iron right before the donation every single time. I think they did trial having women be able to donate more frequently but they concluded it was safer to keep it as is.

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DumbbellDiva92 t1_je03wlc wrote

They test our hemoglobin before as well but that’s different from ferritin. Think you need more blood for that (can’t just use a finger prick), but you can sometimes have iron deficiency that doesn’t show up by that (but would show up as low ferritin).

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