PROFITABLE LOSS 

Bloodletting can have its 
positive effects too, writes Biplab Das 

Most of us are these days familiar with the reversal of medicine norms. It seems doctors are out to disprove all their predecessors' dictums, which we had been adhering to so earnestly so long. This is not to raise once again the debate over the beneficial effects of alcohol or cholesterol - the two items that have so far been branded as harmful for human health. Medical science now is replete with such reevaluations. 

Loss of blood may be the latest one to join this list of items for image overhaul. Who among us is not alarmed by this? Profuse bleeding, which is often fatal, is not being discussed here. That is certainly dangerous. But the idea that loss of blood is always harmful may be in for change. 

Controlled bleeding, as witnessed in menstruation of women, is regarded to be good for them. It protects them from heart attacks. Men, too, can reap benefits from controlled bleeding, as in blood donation. Medical experts have revealed that menopausal women are exposed to a risk: heart attacks. Reduced level of estrogen coupled with cessation of blood loss is believed to be the cause for such a risk. 

According to David Meyers, a cardiologist at Kansas University Medical Centre, men with high levels of iron in their blood are more than twice at risk of heart attacks than those with low levels of metal in their blood. He thinks that depleted iron reserves through blood loss reduce the risk. He is now busy unearthing the mechanism of this correlation. 

Ten years ago, Meyers studied a group of Nebraskan men and women. A recent study of the same group (all of them now above 40) reveals that those men who had donated blood at least once in the last three years were 30 per cent less prone to heart diseases. For women, no difference was noticed between donors and non-donors. 

Researchers believe that iron atoms' catalytic role in oxidation of cholesterol molecules may be an important factor for this difference. Iron helps cholesterol converted to a deadlier molecule. "Cholesterol is a kind of mild irritant, but oxidised cholesterol is just a really nasty irritant," Meyers says, "it causes lots of scar formation in the arteries, hardening them." 

If the correlation of blood loss and minimised risk of heart attacks is established, doctors will definitely try to use this as a therapy for different purposes. But, before that, lots of studies have to be undertaken to prove the correlation beyond all doubts.