Giving blood to improve athletic performance?

deadlybuzzman

I was talking to a coach on a GAA team today and he told me they're planning on getting the entire squad to give blood. Not for altruistic reasons but as the title says, to improve performance. He said the thinking is that it forces the body to produce new red blood cells that are able to carry more oxygen than older cells.
I was very tempted to shout bullsh1t on the spot but due to my own ignorance on the subject I didnt say anything. Is there any actual science behind it or did someone just half think up a theory and go silly with it?

calfmuscle

deadlybuzzman wrote: »

I was talking to a coach on a GAA team today and he told me they're planning on getting the entire squad to give blood. Not for altruistic reasons but as the title says, to improve performance. He said the thinking is that it forces the body to produce new red blood cells that are able to carry more oxygen than older cells.
I was very tempted to shout bullsh1t on the spot but due to my own ignorance on the subject I didnt say anything. Is there any actual science behind it or did someone just half think up a theory and go silly with it?

Its years since i did biology but I think red blood cells have a 4 week life span?? so dont see how this could help. The pro dopers take out blood when they are not in competition and then transfuse it back when they need to recover quickly (as in the tour de france).

Hanley

calfmuscle wrote: »

Its years since i did biology but I think red blood cells have a 4 week life span?? so dont see how this could help. The pro dopers take out blood when they are not in competition and then transfuse it back when they need to recover quickly (as in the tour de france).

Yeah I think he may be getting confused with at blood doping. Interested to see where this goes tho.

deadlybuzzman

calfmuscle wrote: »

Its years since i did biology but I think red blood cells have a 4 week life span?? so dont see how this could help. The pro dopers take out blood when they are not in competition and then transfuse it back when they need to recover quickly (as in the tour de france).

Yeah even as he said it I was thinking they only lasted 30 days plus as its only 1 of 8 pints thats being removed how much difference could it make? especially as its club level GAA not olympic sprinting.

Crasp

unless he plans on giving all the blood back to ye before match day then he's talking ****e.


Donating blood loses you (a variable amount of) red blood cells, among other things. Your body goes without those cells until they are replaced. The replacements will do the exact same job s the old ones did. So all you've done is go with a lower number of red cells for a few days.

Anyway, you have to realise that red blood cells typically have a life span of 120 days. There are 4-5 million of them in a single mililitre of blood and they're not all 120 days old, some of those might be a day old, some a week old etc etc. Taking off a unit of blood will remove cells of all ages, you can't select just the old ones, because they are continually being released.

deadlybuzzman

Crasp wrote: »

unless he plans on giving all the blood back to ye before match day then he's talking ****e.


Donating blood loses you (a variable amount of) red blood cells, among other things. Your body goes without those cells until they are replaced. The replacements will do the exact same job s the old ones did. So all you've done is go with a lower number of red cells for a few days.

Anyway, you have to realise that red blood cells typically have a life span of 120 days. There are 4-5 million of them in a single mililitre of blood and they're not all 120 days old, some of those might be a day old, some a week old etc etc. Taking off a unit of blood will remove cells of all ages, you can't select just the old ones, because they are continually being released.

That was the other thing that made it sound even less plausible, the removal of red cells of random ages. It was all these holes that made me think did someone half hear the tour de france stories of riders storing their own blood, blood spinning etc and then just run with an idea.

Mellor

I would say he is getting confused with blood doping. As high red cell count blood (from numerous means), ready to go, givien to athletes not removed.
Removing red blood cells causes an drop in performance. Especially in a relation to aerobic exercise (ie playing a match).

In 1995 a study looked at the effects of blood donation in 10 competitive cyclists before and after donating one pint of blood. They measured performance at two hours, two days and seven days post-donation and found that sub-maximal performance was unaffected but maximal performance was decreased for at least one week after blood donation.

Note: 1 week was the max length they tested. It's very likely that it was decreased at 2 and even 4 weeks also.


It's likely that after 4-6weeks, when you red blood cell count has fully recovered, that you have a slightly higher percent of younger RBCs that are 4-6 weeks old. But I've no idea is younger cells carry more oxygen.
A performance increase maybe caused by your body not shutting off the RBC production increase immediately, its a hormonal response so the effects may linger slightly and you overshoot the pre-donation levels. This would cause a brief increase around a narrow window at 5-7 weeks. Which wouldn't appear to me that it is useful for a GAA team who play fixtures over a logn period..

jive

Hahah, well unless they're getting that blood put back in they'll be goosed fairly quickly. I remember reading Tyler Hamilton's book and he said he was on the US Postal team roster a couple of days after they took blood from him - they took blood from Armstrong and a few others too I believe. Himself and another lad (Armstrong was rested, as were the others) who had blood taken out went to race and basically embarrassed themselves they were so bad.

Even if there is a performance boost a few weeks later, I'd imagine the positive effects are negated if not outweighed by the lack of performance for the weeks leading up to that period, even if there's no games during that time (if there are games then LOL). Anyway, I'm assuming they're giving the usual dose of blood so it probably won't be anything like them guys were doing... I'm also sure there'll be little to no effect regardless.

I'll tell ya what though, it's nice for ignorance to have good results for a change. I hope the team do go through with it!

aFlabbyPanda

Tim Ferriss (author of the four hour body) was a fan of this (donating blood to increase performance/health),

http://www.4hourlife.com/2011/04/24/the-four-hour-body-living-forever-and-the-lost-art-of-bleeding-a-story-of-iron-hemochromatosis-and-the-bubonic-plague/

token

I saw it briefly mentioned in this article also that I was reading earlier in the week.

http://danjohn.net/2012/05/training-for-middle-age-and-beyond/

Mellor

BrianjG wrote: »

Tim Ferriss (author of the four hour body) was a fan of this (donating blood to increase performance/health),

http://www.4hourlife.com/2011/04/24/the-four-hour-body-living-forever-and-the-lost-art-of-bleeding-a-story-of-iron-hemochromatosis-and-the-bubonic-plague/

He's talking about health. Lowering iron levels to starve bacteria/disease. Not athletic performance.