Blood Draw: Self-performed at home

[kelkel]

Guys,

Thought you may find this of interest. A friend of mine and well respected veteran TRT-er has done several of his own "blood draws" as he's been unable to use the normal routes to donate. This time he took a video of the effort and allowed me to post it here for all to see. Have a look. It's an impressive endeavor IMHO:

http://forums.steroid.com/showthread...78#post6114778

kel

[Bonaparte]

Here's a tip:
You're much better off using a manual BP cuff. Adjust the pressure to just below your systolic pressure, so that blood is allowed to enter the extremity (because it is below your systolic threshold), but not able to return to the body (since venous pressure is lower than arterial pressure). I suspect that your phlebotomy stopped at 3/4 of a pint because you clamped the hose off above your systolic pressure, so you could only collect the blood already trapped in that arm.

As an interesting and potentially useful side note: this situation is what you want to avoid most when tourniqueting a wound, since it will actually speed the loss of blood (but this is our purpose with flebotomy). When using a tourniquet, make sure that it is on there more than tight enough to close off arterial flow, because if it isn't, you're doing more harm than good. When BP cuffs are used in the ER or surgery for bleeding control (much better than a makeshift field TK...and no, belts don't work), they are generally inflated to 240+ mmHg.