Effects of giving blood?

Are their any consequences for donating blood? Does it hinder your ability to gain?

Don't lift the day you donate, and don't try for any new personal bests for a day or two after. No long term consequences.

It hinders my ability to sleep that night. Long term, no. Short term, yes. IOW, I wouldn't give blood right after or right before a workout.

I don't even think about it anymore, except for allowing myself an extra cookie that day.

-Scott Johnson 'be a man ,stop looking for handouts , eat ,lift and shut your mouth' -John Carlo

Just one? I'll sit there and eat 2 or 3 packages of their cookies before I leave. I normally give after working out, so by the time I give blood I'm HUNGRY. For some reason, the blood drives always seem to fall on my workout days.

That's probably true. Mine has read 72, 68, 84, and 76 on the times they wrote it on my card, and certainly did not reflect my resting pulse. They didn't act concerned, and I've never had any ill effects.

Nancy (my wife), OTOH, is possibly the WORST blood donor in history. She's an extremely slow donor (so they just want her out of there), and gets extremely ill/fainting/nauseated. They tell her not to come back. Six months or a year later, I mention that I'm going to give blood, and she says, 'Maybe I'll try it again.' Like a bonehead, I let her try again once, but never again. No sir-ee, she's shut off, or something.

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GREAT POST!

Sometimes I get the impression they just care if you have a pulse. One day the lady wrote it down as 55 - which I _know_ was wrong.

-Scott Johnson 'be a man ,stop looking for handouts , eat ,lift and shut your mouth' -John Carlo

The adrenaline rush from watching Grandma gore out my bicep usually kills my appetite. I just eat a cookie so they won't harass me.

It's a conspiracy. My wife always calls me with something when I'm trying to ditch work a couple minutes early to get to the gym.

-Scott Johnson 'be a man ,stop looking for handouts , eat ,lift and shut your mouth' -John Carlo

Does anyone know if CV conditioning has anything to do with the speed of blood donation? I'm a really fast donor

They ran a thread similar to this on the UK bodybuilding list last month. The concensus was that no, it was not that big of a deal as long as you took it easy for a couple of days afterwards, and ate the way you were supposed to.