Donating plasma and recovery?

[HockeyBjj]

So I've done some searching on this, got a bit of mixed opinions but with the majority on the side of it's not bad, just don't donate and then go straight to the gym and squat. Granted most of the people discussing this were talking about bodybuilding and their gains, so I'd defiintely like the opinions of people here.

So at Biolife you can make $240 a month donating twice a week and it takes about an hour each time. If I donated once, that'd be $120, which conveniently would pay for my gym fees.

How much would this affect someone doing a decent amount of training? In terms of recovering and having energy on the mats?

My schedule looks like this, I'm thinking that donating wednesdays after lifting as thursday is a low key day due to church stuff in the evening.

Mon- 4:15-5:15 lift
Tues- 5-8:30 gym (boxing, bjj, then judo/wrestling. this day is tiring)
Wed- 4:15-5:15 lift- donation center open til 7:30 so get there by 6 would be the plan
Thurs- 5-6:15 gym (Muay Thai)
Fri- 4:15-5:15 lift, 6:15-9:00 gym (Bjj NoGi and Muay Thai)
Sat- 11-1 gym (Bjj and then open mat)
I also try to get another lift in at some point Saturday or Sunday whenever opportunity presents itself

And my lifts are pretty low intensity. 4 days a week, but alternating upper/lower days and just the crucial compound lifts with some shoudler isolation (basically contiuing the rehab work from my shoulder surgery to strength both as they've always been weak at odd angles and injury prone) cable or dumbell work at the end. And my gym time doesn't feel near as intense as a lot of people make it out to be reading online about other gyms. Technique is very relaxed, and we only roll or very lightly spar the last 20 minutes of each class, and even that doesn't come close to tiring me. Tuesdays its just how dang long it is after a day of work.


Also apparently they're open for donations Saturdays, so maybe I could go after open mat then have the rest of that day to recover and lift Sunday afternoon if I can? I don't mind lifts sliding back if I can only make it 3 days that week due to a busy weekend.

 

[Badger67]

They say with adequate intake of water and electrolytes you can replenish what was taken within 12 hours. You may bruise if you train too soon but bruising is meh for most people. With that level of frequency though i am unsure.

I'd probably try to do it monday or the wednesday after your session after you ate, or on a sunday if you could. Seems it would interefere less with the rest of your training this way if its possible. that being said i will reiterate, i have no idea how that level of frequency of donating will impact you. Just try to get 12 hours between the donation and your next WO and plenty of food/water/rest that night.

Edit: missed the saturday part, that could work ideally also for the reasons listed above.

 

[HockeyBjj]

They say with adequate intake of water and electrolytes you can replenish what was taken within 12 hours.

Edit: missed the saturday part, that could work ideally also for the reasons listed above.

Thanks for the info. I'd read that somewhere, and then also saw some people saying other stuff so not sure what was true. And the official stuff is just the super bland and utterly useless "Do not engage in physical exertion too soon after donating," with no clear timeframe given. Is too soon 1 hour? 24 hours? couple days? useless.

Wednesday would give me about 24 hours, and then the workout when I get back is just a single class. Saturdays I'd try to stay away from as a scheduled thing just so that I have more freedom to enjoy my weekend. But maybe if I went directly after the open mat and just added on an hour and a half to that chunk of my day taken up it'd work. Of course, I think I've missed about half or more of the Saturday sections anyway.

 

[Seriously-Dead]

The literature is not in your favor, at all. If you are just donating plasma, and not whole blood, it's a bit better. But even so, anaerobic performance and time to exhaustion will be impaired for 1-3 weeks (there is admittedly less literature on plasma donations). If it's whole blood, you'll have a significant decrease in vo2max, aerobic activities, and hormonal response to exercise for about the same time period. Moderate and low intensity submax work won't get hit too hard though. Overall I think it's a pretty terrible idea to make extra money though given your situation.

Maybe with some high iron intake and EPO you might not get affected. But I would definitely expect this to impact the progress of your training.

 

[HockeyBjj]

The literature is not in your favor, at all. If you are just donating plasma, and not whole blood, it's a bit better. But even so, anaerobic performance and time to exhaustion will be impaired for 1-3 weeks (there is admittedly less literature on plasma donations). If it's whole blood, you'll have a significant decrease in vo2max, aerobic activities, and hormonal response to exercise for about the same time period. Moderate and low intensity submax work won't get hit too hard though. Overall I think it's a pretty terrible idea to make extra money though given your situation.

Maybe with some high iron intake and EPO you might not get affected. But I would definitely expect this to impact the progress of your training.

Yes, it is just the plasma and not the blood. I did see some pretty negative things about actually donating blood, but then as you mentioned less stuff about plasma and it was basically reduced to people talking about how training while donating affected them.

Yours is definitely an opinion I value. Any chance you could shoot a link my way about the extent of hindrance it would cause?

About the only useful study related thing I can find was this
http://www.runnersworld.com/health/blood-v-plasma-donation-runners
stating that a 4 minute, high resistance on a bike, endurance test resulted in blood donors almost back to normal vo2max in a week, but plasma only donors were back to their pre-donation baseline at the 2 day test and only suffered when tested 2 hours later

 

[Seriously-Dead]

Yes, it is just the plasma and not the blood. I did see some pretty negative things about actually donating blood, but then as you mentioned less stuff about plasma and it was basically reduced to people talking about how training while donating affected them.

Yours is definitely an opinion I value. Any chance you could shoot a link my way about the extent of hindrance it would cause?

About the only useful study related thing I can find was this
http://www.runnersworld.com/health/blood-v-plasma-donation-runners
stating that a 4 minute, high resistance on a bike, endurance test resulted in blood donors almost back to normal vo2max in a week, but plasma only donors were back to their pre-donation baseline at the 2 day test and only suffered when tested 2 hours later

Yeah, the study I read was the same one as the one in that article (only one I could find on plasma donation). I interpreted things a bit differently, mainly based on the non-significant statistical differences. Not paying attention to p-values, most parameters they tested didn't return to pre-plasma donation until 7 days, except time to exhaustion which was back at baseline on day 2. After two days there were non-statistically significant decreases compared to seven days after (with only 19 people it's hard to detect small differences like that, but the trend and absolute differences were definitely there). The full blood donation studies are way worse... some of them were pushing the three week boundary.

So you may not be in that much of a bad spot if you get the plasma donation on Saturday, after a training/lifting session (could you lift before or after BJJ and still have time to donate?). Then focus on rehydration and refeeding Saturday night through Sunday, get back to training on Monday, and hopefully you'll be alright. I think that's probably your best bet. Physiologically it sounds like a bitch though... water uptake into cells is an essential part of hypertrophy, so I'd imagine draining your plasma might impair post-workout recovery if done that way -- maybe some really good rehydration immediately after the plasma donation would attenuate that though. With that training schedule I think you may have to either risk compromising a workout, or compromising recovery from a workout. Pretty speculative though.

 

[gspieler]

Not sure how other plasma donation centers work, but calculating how much you can make per session isn't as simple as dividing by the number of donations. For example, where I donate, they give you $20 on your first donation of the week, and $40-50 for the second one. If you only give once per week, don't expect to receive much compensation. Just thought you might like to know.

In regards to its effect on performance, I haven't read any scientific literature on it, byut I have tons of anecdotal experience with it. A few things I've noticed: my cardio suffers a bit within the first 6hrs or so, I sometimes get dizzy after sets of squats or other heavy compounds, and my rate of perceived exertion goes up, even on warm-ups. But I've felt absolutely no different training the day after donating, and the effects are minimal even the day of if it's been at least 6hrs and your'e well-nourished. The best advice I can give you is to donate a couple of hours after training, or on low-intensity days several hours before you train.