Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I started donating blood plasma again. It's 1650€/year if I donate once per week, it's a nice way to do something good (a lot of lives depend on plasma donations) and I can read books in peace while I am connected to the machine.

Flurry wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 24, 2020 5:14 am

I started donating blood plasma again. It's 1650€/year if I donate once per week, it's a nice way to do something good (a lot of lives depend on plasma donations) and I can read books in peace while I am connected to the machine.

I'm not sure if this is right, but I'm under the impression that donating your plasma is also donating some of your stem cells. I don't know about these in all that much detail, so perhaps someone else can chime in, or you may want to research this if you aren't already familiar.

I had believed that you basically lose your stem cells over time, and it is a big reason why bodies of older people cannot heal nearly as well. I was also under the impression that you cannot make more, but I did see just now that some stem cells (perhaps just the ones in bone marrow?) can replicate, though I don't know if there is any degradation that eventually happens, or how the rate of replication would compare to weekly plasma donation.

C40 wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 24, 2020 5:49 am

I'm not sure if this is right, but I'm under the impression that donating your plasma is also donating some of your stem cells. I don't know about these in all that much detail, so perhaps someone else can chime in, or you may want to research this if you aren't already familiar.

I never heard about that before and I could not find any evidence that I could lose stem cells when donating plasma. The concentration of stem cells in the blood is pretty low (stem cell donators need to take medication to increase the amount of stem cells in the blood) and the centrifuge should separate the plasma from the cells pretty cleanly. There should be mainly protein loss which I offset by drinking a few more protein shakes per week.
Blood donation, plasma donation and stem cell donation should be completely separated processes.

Do you have sources claiming something different? I am very interested if there's something harmful about donating plasma.

Well, like I said, I don't know for sure and don't know the details.

You already seem to know as much as you could learn from the things I saw googling it just now. (like this https://www.uwhealth.org/healthfacts/cancer/4940.pdf and others talking about harvesting stem cells by apheresis). I suppose relating to blood/plasma donation, two main questions I'd have are
1 - how many stem cells are normally in the blood (yes, they give a drug to increase the amount before apheresis harvesting, but I haven't seen indications of how much impact that has, and it doesn't mean that there are only insignificant amounts normally)... Edit - this does say "The blood usually only contains very few stem cells, so four to five days before the procedure is carried out a drug is injected under the skin".. if that 'very few' means an amount that doesn't matter, then, sounds like there's no problem.
2 - Details of their centrifuge use - whether stem cells are separated, and whether they go with the plasma or are put back in your blood. For me personally, "should" is not good enough. Edit - this still doesn't clarify, but that same link above also says it the process of separating stem cells from blood requires a "special centrifuge"

I don't know enough about it to tell you one way or the other, or to show you where to research. Just wanted to make sure you're aware of the possibility.

Well. per definition blood plasma is the cell-free part of the blood containing mainly water, proteins, salts and minerals.
I have done a little bit more research and apheresis really separates the blood into layers which can easily be separated then. There is almost no chance of cells being in the plasma and even if there were some, the loss would be orders of magnitudes lower than what a woman might lose due to menstruation.