Donating blood?

[damon]

Hi,
Are there any precautions people on a macrobiotic diet should be aware of if donating blood? Have others had complications with donating because of their diet?

I ask because I didn't have a great experience donating for the first time this weekend. After the procedure was done, I blacked out for apparently a long while and had a real difficult time recovering.

Now, I'm not very massive of a guy (5'8" 135lbs) and was told that some systems just can't take that amount of blood loss. I was also told by the nurses that tea dehydrates and that I should have had a large breakfast, including lots of water.

Not knowing any better, I had a small breakfast involving a cup of kukicha tea and some brown rice cereal (w/ ground flax seed). I rarely drink straight water unless thirsty and instead drink a number of cups of bancha or twig teas throughout the day.

When the nurses were working on reviving me, they had me down 2 cups of Coke (I wasn't in any condition to object) and a couple sugar cookies. They also feed me a number of fruit juices and crackers, trying to increase my blood sugar levels quickly.

Sugar is something else absent from my diet, except for the very occasional piece of fruit.

So while I was told I wouldn't be donating again, I'm still left curious for the perspective of someone familiar with macrobiotics. What do you think about this?

Thanks!
Damon

[Bruce Paine]

Damon,

There are a lot of issues involved in blood donation and I can't tell anyone what's right or wrong concerning them but I can say what I believe and what basis I've operated on since becoming macrobiotic more than 30 years ago.

I believe that modern medicine is based almost solely on science especially microbiology, and though I think science is great for many things like creating these computers we write on, and other seemly miracles, I believe that nature (especially yin and yang) contributes mostly to human beings healing from sickness and disease, and diet does much to contribute to that.

People with a good understanding of macrobiotics should be able to in most cases avoid circumstances where they would need blood transfusions and since most macrobiotic people eat just enough food to live then they usually have just enough blood to function, unlike so many other people in the Western world who eat too much and often have more than enough blood for themselves.

It's like people who fast on prescribed days, go on walks for the hungry, or donate S.A.D. food to food drives, donating blood just may be the thing to do for many concerned people but maybe not so many who are macrobiotic.

I feel that most macrobiotic people are making a contribution to the planet by living simply and not taking up to much of the earth's resources, and by sharing their knowledge, good quality food, and understanding with other people.

And just like most macrobiotic people avoid vaccinations, medicines, vitamin pills and supplements, I imagine that most don't see contributing to the blood drives as an important thing to do (other people here can say if they think I am wrong or right).

Now if you are still eating beef, lamb, pork, chicken, dairy plus lots of simple carbohydrates and you feel that your body has an abundance of blood and you feel that it's important to you to give blood to your local blood drive, then more power to you!

Does what I am saying make any sense to you?

Thank you, very much.

Be well and recover your health!

Bruce Paine

[Beamer]

I am 21 years old, a vegetarian often attempting macrobiotics, but not fully converted. I have given a total of 2 gallons of blood (16 donations) thus far in my life. I appreciate the conversation on blood donation. Damon, I have a similar circumstance to yours. First of all, typically due to my diet absent from meat and high in tea (which has antioxidants that do not promote the uptake of iron into the hemoglobin) I am often deferred from blood donation due to iron deficiency. I also am a smaller person, and my body does not react well to rapid loss of fluid, as happens in blood donation, so I lay down while I give and move up slowly following donation.
Donating blood is one way that I can feel that I truly help others in need. I have extreme feelings of accomplishment when I make a successful blood donation, and I know that my blood is important because of where science has brought us. I am almost as on-the-fence about blood donation as Bruce is. Often times though, my understanding of our society's functioning draws me back into the blood bank. You see, science has made blood donation available, so we can't go back to not having it. My blood is universally used since I am O-negative. In trauma situations, when blood is needed quickly without typing, they use O-negative blood to sustain life. And they use a lot of it (at least 4 or 5 pints).
I am often frustrated when I am deferred from the blood bank, having used precious time to attempt this act of volunteering. I often want to give up on blood donation all together. But then I think about the small amount of pain and suffering that it puts me through to try, and compare that to the pain and suffering of the people that receive my blood... or the pain and suffering of the family of someone who died because of lack of blood supply... and I continue to attend blood banks every 56 days, when my blood supply is replenished.
I think that we all have to weigh our own personal values, though. I am not saying that blood donation is the right thing for everyone to do, and I certainly agree with Bruce that there are huge contributions that you, Damon, and other macros are making to the world by your choice of lifestyle. Can't we all always do more though, judging by the state of the world?

[Bruce Paine]

Beamer,

30 some odd years ago, I was in my mid-twenties and also pre-macro vegetarian and not vegan, which means I ate eggs. dairy and on rare occasions some kind of meat (living on a farm in central Maine, where a commune of young hippies had started out helping a farmer and his family do everything including grow, and raise organic vegetables that was supposed to be harvested by the time I arrived in the fall, but the farmer who had served as the crew chief, broke his back and was laid up in a body cast, so the hippies stopped working and were playing hooky [including smoking dope and having affairs] and when Thanksgiving approached, more than 15 of the hippie crew members took off to be with their families in other parts of the country.

As the frost set in and the hippies having not done their chores including gathering and cutting firewood, not harvesting vegetables still in the ground earmarked for health food stores in Boston, us three hippies were running around cutting and burning green wood in the wood burning stoves [think creosote city!} and trying to pull freezing carrots out of the hardening earth in the fields, and there was no earned income coming in from the the hippie crew to support the remaining hippies that were on the farm consuming the remaining miso, brown rice, vegetables and granola.

So, the farmer's wife sold handmade potholders to local stores to make money to buy eggs and potatoes from local farms and then the two organic [farmer's] pigs got loose and hit by passing vehicles and were put down and rendered for lard amd pork products, so the vegetarian farm that had been comprised of mostly vegetarian hippies, now became a bacon, eggs, and potatoes farm.

Then I left to replace my broken eyeglasses [you see, we often need eyeglasses when we eat an extreme or unbalanced diet] and found out about macrobiotics in a local restaurant and found out that I did not need glasses after all [and never have since]), so the point is, when we call ourselves vegetarians, it's difficult to draw the line where and when we eat the more yang animal food products.

Vegans are not the same as ova lacto vegetarians, and when one calls themselves vegetarian, not vegan, then it is easy to think ova (egg), lacto [dairy] consumption, and it's important to consider this because egg consumption is very yang and many types of dairy are yang, too, so like the yang meat eating types people who identify themselves as vegetarians who might be ova-lacto vegetarians might be yang enough to give blood (which is a yin process).

So, Beamer,... what kind of vegetarian are you and have you started to consider the yin/yang ramifications of your diet and lifestyle, yet?

A lot of young adults, who are learning about life on their own, do very yin things like smoke dope, take various other drugs illegal and legal, drink a lot of beer, wine and hard liquor, have a lot of sex and do a lot of other very yin things, before many of them wake up to the fact that they are trying to live a very extremely balanced lifestyle, and then start to reel it in.
,
I, too, donated blood while being a idealistic vegetarian and I sold blood during a depressing impoverished period almost ten years later and when I was giving blood I was more yang and I rebounded quickly, and when I sold the blood I was much more yin and deteriorating quickly (and rebounded slowly), and the point being that when humans are yang (and a lot of the American population is very yang) they usually can give up their blood (notice how many have given up their lives on the battlefield, lately!) so if you can give up your blood without much negative affect, then maybe you are very yang but people who are trying to follow a life of simple and slight yin and yang, need their blood and don't need more yang (and sentimental) people coming to them and telling them to give up their much needed to live, life energy!

Maybe, we, who are practicing macrobiotics, need to stay centered and attract those who are living a wider and often unstable balance, to a simpler and more stable lifestyle.

If most of the people in the world were living a simple balancing, lifestyle, do you think there would be as much, malice, greed, crazyness, disease, and war?

I think not!

I believe that people who live an extremely balanced or unbalanced lifestyle need blood and medicine when they harm themselves and/or put themselves in harm's way.

If we continue to give blood, then we are support that solution to solving those problems.

Imagine if all the blood banks and unnatural medicines in the world were to disappear.

People could not afford to take risks doing extreme things and would have to take more responsibility for their lives.

Do you recycle your glass, plastics, paper and food wastes?

That is being responsible to the society and world in a way to better it than it was before.

Let's not give blood or take medicine but instead eat and live a more balanced way and support others to do the same by our actions and our teachings!

Don't feel bad for having given or sold blood, or taken medicine.

That is something we did and hopefully, learned from.

We are now practicing a simpler way,... macrobiotics!

Please, come join us.

Thank you, very much.

Bruce Paine