15 ms·

I believe there are good health reasons to donate. I forget the details, but it stimulates positive processes in the body. I think the effect is marginal, but i

I believe there are good health reasons to donate. I forget the details, but it stimulates positive processes in the body. I think the effect is marginal, but it's nice to know you get a small personal bonus from doing something nice for other people.

throwntoday 4y ago
I've actually been regularly donating for years for that very reason. I figured my body will just create new blood to fill in the gap and much like changing power steering fluid, after enough time it's mostly new stuff.
- allendoerfer 4y ago
  But your blood is created by cells dividing and they cannot do so unlimited. Your DNA shortens and you run out of room for mistakes proteins make while translating it.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    That doesn't seem right. Sperm and eggs are created by cell division too. In some sense you come from a line of cells that extends long before your birth. If cell division "wore out" after some number of divides you should be already worn out.
    - throwanem 4y ago
      I've seen the claim that the correlation between increasing paternal age and the incidence of various congenital disorders has exactly this etiology. I haven't been able to find a paper describing a mechanism, but my literature review tends to specialize in hymenopterological ethology, so I don't know that I would find such a paper even if it exists. The correlation is uncontroversial, though, and I suppose it might not be a surprise to see it demonstrated that the cause is in fact the accumulation of errors in the genome that's half-duplicated during spermatogenesis.
      - ALittleLight 4y ago
        Regardless - at some point "you" (or cells and genetic information that would become you) were an egg. At some point that egg was an egg, and that egg was an egg, and so on all the way up n generations to asexual and single celled organisms.
        throwanem 4y ago
        Well yeah, but if complex self-replicating organisms aren't also very good at self-repairing, they don't self-replicate very long. Individuals do get less good at it over time, though. The structures described earlier as "shortening" are called telomeres [1], and they do actually do that, as a result of DNA copying being a physically somewhat destructive process. They're purely structural rather than informatic, though, and everyone starts out with a fresh set. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere
      - WesternWind 4y ago
        Not just congenital disorders, but mental health disorders as well. It's been known for a while that paternal age is a risk factor for schizophrenia. I had an internship at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (before I moved into software development). Paternal age was used as one factor in determining if people were at risk for psychotic breaks (schizophrenic prodromes) by one of the assessment tools they developed.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    They can just ask for their blood back when it becomes an issue.
  - throwntoday 4y ago
    I only need to live long enough for one form of eternal life to transpire. Cyborg body, brain transplant to a clone, reversal of aging. I don't mind helping out others while I wait :-)

throwntoday 4y ago

I've actually been regularly donating for years for that very reason. I figured my body will just create new blood to fill in the gap and much like changing power steering fluid, after enough time it's mostly new stuff.

allendoerfer 4y ago
But your blood is created by cells dividing and they cannot do so unlimited. Your DNA shortens and you run out of room for mistakes proteins make while translating it.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  That doesn't seem right. Sperm and eggs are created by cell division too. In some sense you come from a line of cells that extends long before your birth. If cell division "wore out" after some number of divides you should be already worn out.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    I've seen the claim that the correlation between increasing paternal age and the incidence of various congenital disorders has exactly this etiology. I haven't been able to find a paper describing a mechanism, but my literature review tends to specialize in hymenopterological ethology, so I don't know that I would find such a paper even if it exists. The correlation is uncontroversial, though, and I suppose it might not be a surprise to see it demonstrated that the cause is in fact the accumulation of errors in the genome that's half-duplicated during spermatogenesis.
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      Regardless - at some point "you" (or cells and genetic information that would become you) were an egg. At some point that egg was an egg, and that egg was an egg, and so on all the way up n generations to asexual and single celled organisms.
      - throwanem 4y ago
        Well yeah, but if complex self-replicating organisms aren't also very good at self-repairing, they don't self-replicate very long. Individuals do get less good at it over time, though. The structures described earlier as "shortening" are called telomeres [1], and they do actually do that, as a result of DNA copying being a physically somewhat destructive process. They're purely structural rather than informatic, though, and everyone starts out with a fresh set. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere
    - WesternWind 4y ago
      Not just congenital disorders, but mental health disorders as well. It's been known for a while that paternal age is a risk factor for schizophrenia. I had an internship at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (before I moved into software development). Paternal age was used as one factor in determining if people were at risk for psychotic breaks (schizophrenic prodromes) by one of the assessment tools they developed.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  They can just ask for their blood back when it becomes an issue.
- throwntoday 4y ago
  I only need to live long enough for one form of eternal life to transpire. Cyborg body, brain transplant to a clone, reversal of aging. I don't mind helping out others while I wait :-)