Today, there’s blood donoring event at my university. I’ve never tried donoring before. Because i was 16 when i was diagnosed as type 1 and the minimum age for donoring is 17.
I didn’t donor today. I just sat and watched.
So i’m googling now, and still in dilemma about donoring.
With medication of apidra and lantus, can i donor my blood?
I will tell you in the US as someone with diabetes who is well controlled (whether you use orals or insulin) you should be able to donate blood. The only real thing that would preclude you from giving blood is if you have since 1980 used beef (bovine) insulin, but for most of us that is not an issue.
I am a T1 for 10 years. I’ve been giving blood for 30+ years. The American Red Cross accepts my donation. They only ask that my BG be under control - they don’t want a donor passing out :-/ I was on Lantus and Apidra when first diagnosed; pumping Apidra now. I gave whole blood every 56 days for most of that time, but for the past 3 years have been giving platelets every 2 weeks. Donating whole blood is a stressor - after a donation my BG went up about 50 points. Donating platelets seems to have less of an effect.
i am in spain and they dont let anyone on insulin donate blood.
they wont let me donate stem cells either because i am IgA deficient.
i got gamma globulin for about 18 years and i went a couple of years ago to try, thinking i should give back all the plasma i got. big fat no.
and then, when i was back in USA and they had a blood drive at a shopping center and i tried there, but they said no because id been living out of the country!
I have never donated due to not weighing enough for a long period. Now I don’t think it would be a good idea. If you do donate, don’t do it more than once per year because it can affect your bone marrow production.
I don’t think donating blood affects your blood production unless you have some sort of other medical condition. In the US, the Red Cross allows you to donate every eight weeks. I believe this guideline is based on our ability to totally restore blood levels back to normal within that time. If you have anemia problems then you may not be able to donate as often (or at all), but the Red Cross will test your hemoglobin before you donate. I try to donate every eight weeks and find that my hemoglobin is totally restored every eight weeks.
My uncle who was a pulmonologist in Canada told us he believed this and thought it was not a good idea to donate more than once per year.
Huh. Never heard that. I was dx’d in 1983 and I know I was on animal insulin to begin with. I’ve donated a couple of times, but if it’s specifically bovine that’s verboten I think I’m ok as I’m pretty sure it was porcine that I was on. I remember joking about it, and I think it predominated back then as being molecularly closer to human than is the bovine stuff.
After thinking for most of my 32 years with D that I couldn’t donate blood, I attempted to in this last year. I was rejected since I had a vague memory of using bovine insulin in the middle 80’s. I mostly used pork but seemed to remember a vial or two of the bovine. The Red Cross considered me ineligible to donate due to “mad cow” risk.
Here is what the Red Cross says:
Insulin (Bovine)
Donors with diabetes who since 1980, ever used bovine (beef) insulin made from cattle from the United Kingdom are not eligible to donate. This requirement is related to concerns about variant CJD, or ‘mad cow’ disease. Learn more about variant CJD and blood donation.
I am really not sure how you would know that your bovine insulin didn’t come from UK cattle. And @Terry4 is right, the concern is CJD.
The entity that handles blood and blood by-products in Seattle, Bloodworks, has no problem asking for and taking my blood. You know the A1C test and how it measures your BG over three months? That’s about how long it takes to completely replace your blood–eight weeks.
The only things they’ve ever been worried about is what they ask everyone. I’ve been well-controlled as well for my own peace of mind.
So does that mean I could be living with mad cow disease for 35 years and not know it???
2 Likes
That certainly would explain a lot of things… 
Here in Switzerland they don’t take your blood if you are on insulin. I know though that in the states rules are different. The reason they don’t take it here is, as a woman once explained to me, that if you lose so much blood (they take 450ml here) your overall blood volume changes, and hence also insulin requirements change. so the main reason for not being able to donate is to protect the donor, not the receiver.
yes, thats how it is here in spain too. they didnt want me hypoing, they said.
1 Like
I think that explanation is suspect. Because I eat the cookies and drink the juice afterwards like everyone else. I don’t bolus as heavily for them, but I take something. And aside from my normal cognitive impairment, I’m just fine after donating my pint. We donate about the same amount, maybe in the States we donate a little bit more. 1pint = 473ml. It probably has more to do with the past, when we took bovine insulin.
I hope that I shall never take
The insulin that livestock make
Moo!
That exactly describes my (hazy) memory of those days. It was mostly porcine, but I have vague memories of it sometimes saying bovine on the label. I was trying to see if the Google machine had anything to say about it but the most I get is that porcine was closer by a couple of factors to human and thus preferred. But I didn’t come across anything saying specifically when Bovine came into use or was phased out.
The FDA provides the information that bovine was phased out in 1998, but is silent on the question of whether or when it might have fallen out of common use during the period before recombinant human stuff came online.
Dunno if the manufacturers or pharmacies just swapped in whichever kind happened to be cheaper or whatever. But hey, wouldn’t I have CJD by now if I’d been using tainted insulin?
From Fringe:
PETER: Genetically, humans and cows are separated by only a couple lines of DNA. So, what’s an ethical test subject?
OLIVIA: Where’d you learn that? MIT?
PETER: No actually, I picked that up reading books. You should try it sometime. It’s fun.
OLIVIA: (to Astrid) Get him the cow.
WALTER: Fantastic, thank you. Only thing better than a cow is a human. Unless you need milk. Then you really need a cow.
I loved that show up until the final season. I thought the ending was a bit of a flop. But whatever, the rest of it was good enough to make up for it. 