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Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

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Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#181

Post by arcticbull »

solveit wrote: post #166
tedunangst wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole point of establishing a baseline.

I don't know why this comment is downvoted. Let me elaborate a little on what I think they meant. All the risks associated with false positives (other than the side effects of actually drawing blood once a year, which I think is negligible) can be removed by simply not overreacting. Find a cancer? Well, consider not subjecting yourself to chemo just to get rid of it. Some cancers will kill you by winter, some will ju…

The parents premise is wrong. You can't just "establish a better baseline" and "if the test says you might have cancer don't worry about it maybe?" The former is hampered by base rate fallacy [1] (specifically the part about disease in a low-incidence population) and the in the latter, if you're going to disregard the outcome why are you testing?

A concrete example is the NHS recommends against the PSA prostate cancer antigen screening test completely for everyone of any age because this test does more harm than good. They have a good write-up on why. [2]

Generally I agree this data should be collected, but aggregated and not used for individual treatments.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/psa-testing/

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#182

Post by arcticbull »

spockz wrote: post #145
arcticbull wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not, honestly. For most tests, the risks associated with a false positive outweigh the benefits of marginally earlier detection. Humans aren't precise machines, each person has different values and different value ranges for standard measurements - and asymptomatic deviations frequently mean nothing whatsoever. On the other hand investigations can be invasive, painful, risky and expensive. There's a reason m…

I think the value in regular blood tests is to get an idea of what normal values are for you specifically. For some diseases/conditions the blood levels have such a big range that it is more useful to know the delta. We hardly ever measure the “good” or stable cases so when we start testing stuff when we are ill there is very little data on what is normal or even normal for you. Ive heard of cars where due to family…

Here's a good explanation of why it's not a good idea from Medlife Crisis. [1] h/t wirelesspotat.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW3DGnHO2iY

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#183

Post by mensetmanusman »

specialist wrote: post #156
mensetmanusman wrote: post #74

“Forever chemicals” is kind of a scary marketing term that helps sell ad views. PFAS materials (teflon, high temperature o-rings, refrigeration fluids, fire-fighting foams, anti-cancer drugs and other medicines, etc.) encompass such a broad range of chemistries (anything with the fluorine atom attached to carbon) that have many many orders of magnitude differences in half-life. It’s analogous to labeling anything rad…

What would you call that category?

I would classify them by how long they take to breakdown naturally… this could be a way to rally efforts around the biggest problems.

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#184

Post by iJohnDoe »

codyb wrote: post #171

As a regular donator, it's really important to watch your iron levels. After donating double red blood cells every time I could for two years my iron levels dropped significantly and had a very negative impact on my quality of life until I figured out what was wrong. Now I eat more spinach and chicken to give myself a boost but I'm taking a little break to recoup before going back again. Either way, donating's great,…

Other than the iron deficiency issue, did you feel like your body was more healthy? More energy? Overall feel better?

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#185

Post by chii »

KarlKemp wrote: post #168
nfriedly wrote: post #159

I know some people are jumping on the idea that these "forever chemicals" just get passed onto the blood recipient, but that misses the "Regular" part. Sure, the first few donations have the higher concentrations of those chemicals, but subsequent donations have fewer forever chemicals. The more you do it, the better quality it becomes.

There are quite a few regular recipients of blood products, however. It's processed quite a bit (read: separated into its constituent parts and reassembled for what is needed, much like orange juice) which may already filter the stuff.

so why don't someone who is merely looking to reduce their own forever chemicals just extract their own blood, and purify using this same method, and inject it back in?

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#186

Post by chii »

elil17 wrote: post #73

There’s a theory (see slimemoldtimemold.com) that PFAS cause obesity (or, rather, cause increased hunger which in turn causes obesity). This seems like a great way to actually test that hypothesis.

how would you test for it? I'd imagine there's too many confounding factors to obesity and isolating PFAS reduction via donation is difficult.

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#187

Post by hda2 »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #4

I shall have my servant bring me my leeches at once!

This, but unironically.

Science is, and has always been, about adjusting our flawed, incomplete models as new evidence emerge. We shouldn't let our ill-informed preconceptions prevent humanity from moving forward.

If removing blood from the body takes forever chemicals with it and we have no practical way of filtering those chemicals out, then discarding the blood (yes, bloodletting) is the moral way to do it. Irrational and uneducated biases need not apply.

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#188

Post by londgine »

I get really anxious when it come to needles being put in me. The article only mentions blood donations (presumably because they are trying to advocate for some behavior, not just provide science) but I assume any blood letting would work the same. IIRC fishers would check their bodies afterwards due to leaches sucking blood without them noticing. I wonder how beneficial and pain free it would be to receive leach treatment?

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#189

Post by mleonhard »

American Red Cross keeps donor DNA for "medical research" [0].

Eventually, DNA sequencing will become extremely cheap and Red Cross will sequence all of their samples. Then the DNA data will get stolen, as happened to the Red Cross's refugee database recently [1].

Therefore, people who value their privacy and the privacy of their relatives may wish to use blood-letting instead of blood donation.

[0] https://www.redcrossblood.org/content/dam/redcrossblood/cont...

[1] https://www.icrc.org/en/document/sophisticated-cyber-attack-...

Re: Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study

#190

Post by mynameisnoone »

codyb wrote: post #171

As a regular donator, it's really important to watch your iron levels. After donating double red blood cells every time I could for two years my iron levels dropped significantly and had a very negative impact on my quality of life until I figured out what was wrong. Now I eat more spinach and chicken to give myself a boost but I'm taking a little break to recoup before going back again. Either way, donating's great,…

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