Do you want to know how to speed up plasma donation? There are so many ways that you can try, and these things you will know as you further delve into this article.
Before everything else, let’s understand what plasma is. It’s the liquid substance that is found in our blood is called plasma. It is pale and yellowish and in color. When talking about what is it made of? It is ten percent proteins and ninety percent water. These proteins that it is made of are known as albumin and fibrinogen. Moreover, it also contains enzymes, salts, and antibodies that help in fighting infections. Oh, and also, did you know? Plasma is in charge of keeping your blood pressure in a healthy range.
Furthermore, it helps in transporting many nutrients, hormones, proteins, and minerals to your cells. These growth hormones; help bones and muscles to grow. Also, nutrients like sodium and potassium help your cells to function. So we can confidently say that plasma is a very useful component of our body.
My friends, we will explain to you why plasma donation is done, how does it help, and most importantly, we will answer the question you have asked. We know that it’s not easy to make time out of our busy schedules to read such long articles. That is why we have tried our best to make this article to the point and easy to read. Well, no worries, you’ve found just the right article for yourself.
Speeding Up Plasma Donation
There will be no lie if we say that modern medicine has evolved immensely. And now we have access to many procedures and treatments that we could have never thought of a few years before. However, there still are many aspects of the human body that the field of medicine can’t just make in a lab with some high technology. That is precisely why plasma donations are necessary. The patients whose treatments, therapies, or recovery process depends on plasma. They are entirely dependent on the generosity of the plasma donors. You’d be surprised to hear this, but it takes one hundred and thirty plasma donors per year to treat a patient suffering from primary immunodeficiency.
Types of plasma donation
Well, our whole blood contains fifty-five percent plasma. Thus, making plasma the most abundant component in our whole blood. Well, there are two types of plasma donations. Initially, there is the plasma-only donation, also known as the source plasma donation. And, secondly, there is the recovered plasma donation. The recovered plasma donation cannot exactly be considered a specific plasma donation, but plasma is still obtained. Well, it does sound a little complicated but trust us, it’s not. We will explain this to you in a while but first, let’s discuss the source of plasma donation, also referred to as plasma-only donation.
Source plasma donation/plasma-only donation
In this, a healthy and potential person decides to donate plasma. Once they are found eligible to donate, they go through the process of plasmapheresis. In the process of plasmapheresis, blood is drawn from the donor’s arm, and it then goes through a high-tech machine that separates the plasma and cells from the blood. The separated plasma is then collected, and the remaining cells are transfused into the donor’s bloodstream. Recovered plasma donation: Now, we said that we couldn’t consider this a plasma donation because, in this, the donor donates whole blood. Then the plasma is separated from the whole blood and obtained.
How does this donated plasma help?
There are so many reasons why is blood donation important. It helps treat people with chronic diseases and disorders like primary immunodeficiency, genetic lung disease, and hemophilia. There are actually so many more, but we will be discussing that in other articles. My friends, it may be helpful to read about donating plasma: what are the side effects.
Enhancing plasma donation
In this paragraph, we will answer your question; how to speed up a plasma donation. If we are talking about the donating procedure itself, then the answer is no, you can’t speed that up. However, what you can do is; try helping your body to regenerate plasma faster. Now, if you didn’t know, your body can regenerate plasma. Hence, by eating a healthy and balanced diet, you can speed up the regenerating process. And this can help you in donating more often.
Ways To Speed Up Plasma Donation
So, how to speed up plasma donation? To regenerate your plasma faster, you need to eat a diet rich in protein and iron. You also need to make sure you are incredibly hydrated. To follow all this, here’s a simple guideline:
- Try drinking about eight to ten glasses of water on the day you need to donate and after donating.
- Eat a diet loaded with protein; the foods that you can include are chicken, chickpeas, milk, cheese, and eggs!
- Eat a diet filled with iron. Foods that contain iron are broccoli, raisins, turkey, and watermelon.
- Some other measures that you can take to stay healthy are:
- Take a good amount of sleep, preferably 8 hours of sleep.
- Avoid alcohol and tobacco on the day you need to donate and until thirty minutes after donating.
- Third, avoid junk food you need to donate as this might make your plasma milky. Hence, preventing you from donating.
- Don’t do any strenuous activities or weightlifting for at least twenty-four hours after donating. Give your body some rest.
It’s A Wrap!
Hopefully, you got your answer on how to speed up plasma donation. Now, you may be needing to read about what to eat before blood donation and what to eat after blood donation. Happy time donating!