Polycythemia and Donating Blood
First: I'm months away from starting my first cycle. This one of several questions (and a possible solution I want to run by y'all) I have after not seeing it directly addressed in the forum.....
Testosterone and other androgens (for our purposes I'll lump them together as test) have a stimulating effect that can cause polycythemia. Polycythemia is the thickening of the blood (an increase in hemoglobin, hematocrit, or red blood cell count). Thicker blood increases the risk of stroke (among other not-so-fun things).
There are higher instances of polycythemia among patients who inject test, and the likelihood of developing polycythemia appears to be connected to the amount of test injected.
A common way to manage this is to donate blood. Donating pint of blood will apparently lower hematocrit by ~3%.
Now a lot of the articles I've read are about developing polycythemia during TRT. I didn't find any scholarly articles about likelihood during an 8 week cycle. All things being equal, I'm ok with my body being a little stressed during the process especially if I'm on top of it.
I'm gay, and can't donate blood without staying celibate for 2 years (not gonna happen), and I doubt very highly my doc will prescribe a therapeutic phlebotomy for blood tests she didn't order.
I have no desire to bloodlet myself at home.
So I'm thinking of adding a baby aspirin (~81mg/day) and 2,000 to 4,000mg of omega-3 fatty acids to my cycle and the first few weeks of PCT to help lower blood viscosity. Has anyone tried this?
Has anyone else on this board had to deal with being unable to give blood and having test-induced polycythemia?