Ironjustic
Sun, Aug-12-07, 17:17
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Your Health: Donate blood and save your life By Rajen M.
13 August, 2007
Donating blood does save your life. This is new science that
supports the advice of religions: the good you do comes back
to you! The sad thing is that only two per cent of Malaysians
are blood donors. Yes, only two out of every 100 donate blood,
including members of the police and armed forces, this is
below the five per cent required by the World Health
Organisation.
Clearly, all the messages about donating blood to save lives
is not making any impact. If the message of selflessness is
not working, maybe a more selfish message might work: Donating
blood not only saves other lives, it will also save yours.
The new thinking is that too much iron in the system could be
the prelude to heart disease. The more iron you accumulate in
the system, the more likely you are to have a heart attack.
There is a theory that women do not accumulate excess iron in
their tissues until after menopause, at around age 49, because
they regularly lose iron-rich haemoglobin in menstrual blood,
ridding their bodies of excess iron. Men, on the other hand,
begin accumulating excess iron from late adolescence onwards,
and male heart disease rates rise sharply from age 20 onwards.
There are normally about 1,000mg of iron "stored" in the
average adult man's body but only about 300mg in a
premenopausal woman's. Once women stop menstruating, however,
their iron levels and their heart disease risk begin to climb.
If Dr Jerome Sullivan, the proponent of this theory is right,
medical science could be mistaken by merely focusing on
cholesterol as a key risk factor in cardiovascular disease. Dr
Sullivan, Director of Pathology at the Veterans Affairs
Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, first proposed in 1981
that iron is a major risk factor in cardiovascular disease.
Dr Sullivan asked the simple question: why don't younger women
get heart disease? Even women with hypercholesterolaemia (very
high blood cholesterol), a hereditary condition that causes
extremely high serum cholesterol levels, seem virtually immune
to heart attack until after menopause - even though their
brothers, with similarly high cholesterol levels, die in their
early 20s or 30s.
For this reason, says Dr Sullivan, age and sex have long been
regarded as major risk factors in heart disease. He says these
differences in heart disease patterns between the sexes, and
the increased risk of heart attack with aging in both sexes,
are more easily explained by his "toxic iron" hypothesis.
Any iron that the body is not using to make haemoglobin for
red blood cells, or for other purposes, is stored in the
form of a protein called ferritin. Ferritin is found in all
the tissues of the body, and circulating in the blood,
which is useful for estimating the amount of iron stored in
the tissues.
Dr Sullivan's hypothesis includes cholesterol as a significant
player in cardiovascular disease. It proposes that cholesterol
and lipoproteins are not the real culprits, but victims of
biochemical reactions that are speeded up by the presence of
iron - the real villain.
While the precise mechanism remains unclear, Dr Sullivan has
accumulated impressive evidence from laboratory, clinical and
epidemiological studies to support his idea that unused iron
is toxic to the body, more so to heart muscle.
He notes that iron deficiency is widespread, especially among
the poor in Third World countries, which also have some of the
lowest rates of premature death from heart disease in the
world. These populations typically have high fibre diets that
impede iron absorption, and many individuals carry a heavy
load of gastrointestinal parasites that cause chronic blood
loss, often resulting in anaemia (low blood iron).
In contrast, industrialised nations have experienced an
epidemic of cardiovascular disease this century, coinciding
with the transition from difficult to easy acquisition of
stored iron - the typical Western diet is high in iron-rich
red meat, and low in dietary fibre.
Desferroxamine, a drug that captures and removes excess iron
from the body, has been shown to provide significant
protection against heart- muscle damage in patients who have
suffered an heart attack.
The first solid evidence that regular blood donors -
especially males
- have a longer life expectancy than non-donors, emerged in
1984, only three years after Dr Sullivan published his ideas
in The Lancet in 1981. A major study of 1,931 men by Dr
Jukka Salonen, of the University of Kuopio in Finland, found
that men who regularly donate blood reduced their risk of
cardiovascular disease.
A Swedish study in 1999 that was reported in the journal,
Circulation, found that men with a genetic condition that
caused slightly higher blood-iron levels were more than twice
as likely to suffer heart attacks than those who did not have
the abnormal gene. A second study published in the same
journal found that women with the abnormal genes were also at
greater risk of cardiovascular disease.
A study of 2,682 men in Finland reported in the September 1998
issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology that men who
donated blood at least once a year had an 88 per cent lower
risk of heart attacks than non-donors.
A 1995 study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine
found that "bleeding" to lower iron levels in a group of 14
patients did reduce cholesterol oxidation. It's another small
piece of evidence in support of the benefits of donating
blood. By now, Sullivan insisted that, "there is abundant
evidence that favours a public health recommendation to lower
iron stores". What more, there is no risk to a healthy person
donating blood, and there are significant benefits.
This is quite consistent with what our forefathers may have
done. Cavemen must have bled a lot. Injuring themselves and
losing blood may have been a daily event. In medieval times,
they used leaches to suck away blood (and therefore iron) from
individuals.
Forget about donating blood to save other lives. Donate
blood to save your life. Donate frequently - two to three
times a year.
* Datuk Dr Rajen M. is a pharmacist with a doctorate in
Holistic Medicine.
--------------------------------------------------------------
--------------=
-----
=A9 Copyright 2007 The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad. All
rights reserved.
Who loves ya. Tom
Jesus Was A Vegetarian! http://jesuswasavegetarian.7h.com
Man Is A Herbivore! http://tinyurl.com/a3cc3
DEAD PEOPLE WALKING http://tinyurl.com/zk9fk
--------------=
-----
Your Health: Donate blood and save your life By Rajen M.
13 August, 2007
Donating blood does save your life. This is new science that
supports the advice of religions: the good you do comes back
to you! The sad thing is that only two per cent of Malaysians
are blood donors. Yes, only two out of every 100 donate blood,
including members of the police and armed forces, this is
below the five per cent required by the World Health
Organisation.
Clearly, all the messages about donating blood to save lives
is not making any impact. If the message of selflessness is
not working, maybe a more selfish message might work: Donating
blood not only saves other lives, it will also save yours.
The new thinking is that too much iron in the system could be
the prelude to heart disease. The more iron you accumulate in
the system, the more likely you are to have a heart attack.
There is a theory that women do not accumulate excess iron in
their tissues until after menopause, at around age 49, because
they regularly lose iron-rich haemoglobin in menstrual blood,
ridding their bodies of excess iron. Men, on the other hand,
begin accumulating excess iron from late adolescence onwards,
and male heart disease rates rise sharply from age 20 onwards.
There are normally about 1,000mg of iron "stored" in the
average adult man's body but only about 300mg in a
premenopausal woman's. Once women stop menstruating, however,
their iron levels and their heart disease risk begin to climb.
If Dr Jerome Sullivan, the proponent of this theory is right,
medical science could be mistaken by merely focusing on
cholesterol as a key risk factor in cardiovascular disease. Dr
Sullivan, Director of Pathology at the Veterans Affairs
Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, first proposed in 1981
that iron is a major risk factor in cardiovascular disease.
Dr Sullivan asked the simple question: why don't younger women
get heart disease? Even women with hypercholesterolaemia (very
high blood cholesterol), a hereditary condition that causes
extremely high serum cholesterol levels, seem virtually immune
to heart attack until after menopause - even though their
brothers, with similarly high cholesterol levels, die in their
early 20s or 30s.
For this reason, says Dr Sullivan, age and sex have long been
regarded as major risk factors in heart disease. He says these
differences in heart disease patterns between the sexes, and
the increased risk of heart attack with aging in both sexes,
are more easily explained by his "toxic iron" hypothesis.
Any iron that the body is not using to make haemoglobin for
red blood cells, or for other purposes, is stored in the
form of a protein called ferritin. Ferritin is found in all
the tissues of the body, and circulating in the blood,
which is useful for estimating the amount of iron stored in
the tissues.
Dr Sullivan's hypothesis includes cholesterol as a significant
player in cardiovascular disease. It proposes that cholesterol
and lipoproteins are not the real culprits, but victims of
biochemical reactions that are speeded up by the presence of
iron - the real villain.
While the precise mechanism remains unclear, Dr Sullivan has
accumulated impressive evidence from laboratory, clinical and
epidemiological studies to support his idea that unused iron
is toxic to the body, more so to heart muscle.
He notes that iron deficiency is widespread, especially among
the poor in Third World countries, which also have some of the
lowest rates of premature death from heart disease in the
world. These populations typically have high fibre diets that
impede iron absorption, and many individuals carry a heavy
load of gastrointestinal parasites that cause chronic blood
loss, often resulting in anaemia (low blood iron).
In contrast, industrialised nations have experienced an
epidemic of cardiovascular disease this century, coinciding
with the transition from difficult to easy acquisition of
stored iron - the typical Western diet is high in iron-rich
red meat, and low in dietary fibre.
Desferroxamine, a drug that captures and removes excess iron
from the body, has been shown to provide significant
protection against heart- muscle damage in patients who have
suffered an heart attack.
The first solid evidence that regular blood donors -
especially males
- have a longer life expectancy than non-donors, emerged in
1984, only three years after Dr Sullivan published his ideas
in The Lancet in 1981. A major study of 1,931 men by Dr
Jukka Salonen, of the University of Kuopio in Finland, found
that men who regularly donate blood reduced their risk of
cardiovascular disease.
A Swedish study in 1999 that was reported in the journal,
Circulation, found that men with a genetic condition that
caused slightly higher blood-iron levels were more than twice
as likely to suffer heart attacks than those who did not have
the abnormal gene. A second study published in the same
journal found that women with the abnormal genes were also at
greater risk of cardiovascular disease.
A study of 2,682 men in Finland reported in the September 1998
issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology that men who
donated blood at least once a year had an 88 per cent lower
risk of heart attacks than non-donors.
A 1995 study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine
found that "bleeding" to lower iron levels in a group of 14
patients did reduce cholesterol oxidation. It's another small
piece of evidence in support of the benefits of donating
blood. By now, Sullivan insisted that, "there is abundant
evidence that favours a public health recommendation to lower
iron stores". What more, there is no risk to a healthy person
donating blood, and there are significant benefits.
This is quite consistent with what our forefathers may have
done. Cavemen must have bled a lot. Injuring themselves and
losing blood may have been a daily event. In medieval times,
they used leaches to suck away blood (and therefore iron) from
individuals.
Forget about donating blood to save other lives. Donate
blood to save your life. Donate frequently - two to three
times a year.
* Datuk Dr Rajen M. is a pharmacist with a doctorate in
Holistic Medicine.
--------------------------------------------------------------
--------------=
-----
=A9 Copyright 2007 The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad. All
rights reserved.
Who loves ya. Tom
Jesus Was A Vegetarian! http://jesuswasavegetarian.7h.com
Man Is A Herbivore! http://tinyurl.com/a3cc3
DEAD PEOPLE WALKING http://tinyurl.com/zk9fk