When you give blood, you’re a superhero

WORLD Blood Donor Day was Monday. That has me thinking about how underrated the red bodily fluid is.

Squeezed along by the pumping power of the heart, blood moves through your body delivering nutrients and removing waste products. It carries oxygen, vitamins and electrolytes. Blood even carries tiny amounts of gold.

Don’t get excited, though. If you scraped together every bit of gold in the human body, the amount would be smaller than a single grain of sand.

If you get a cut, blood will swarm to the injury. Then that blood will begin to thicken into a clot that stops the bleeding, almost as if by magic.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the red stuff is that the human body is always making new blood to replace the old. You can thank your bones for that. Marrow, or the spongy tissue inside the body’s biggest bones, is like a blood-building factory.

“The average person has 3.7 litres to 4.7 litres of blood in their body, depending on how big they are,” said Rodney Wilson, a communications specialist with the American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington.

That applies to kids, too. Even though children are much smaller than adults, by the time you are 5 or 6 years old, you’ve got basically as much blood as you’ll ever have.

Best of all, since your veins are full of the stuff, and because the body keeps making more, one person can give their blood to someone else in need.

The process usually takes 10 minutes, said Wilson, and other than a small pinch of a needle at the beginning, it’s almost painless.

Donated blood can help people with many types of medical issues, including victims of car accidents, women who have just had a baby and those who are undergoing treatment for cancer.

“Statistics show 97% of us know someone who has received a blood transfusion, even if we don’t realise it,” said Wilson.

In South Africa, you have to be at least 16 years-old to donate blood.

Becoming a blood donor can also help you find out your own blood type. Humans have four general types – A, B, AB and O – each of which corresponds to the structure of the red blood cells you inherited from your parents. In addition, each of those types can be “positive” or “negative,” depending on the presence (+) or absence (-) of a protein called the Rhesus, or Rh, factor.

If that’s starting to get confusing, don’t worry. There’s really only one thing you need to remember about becoming a blood donor.

“Blood donation helps save lives,” said Wilson. “It’s an easy way that you can be a hero.”

In honour of World Blood Donor Day, ask the adults in your life if they've ever donated blood. Maybe when you’re old enough, you might consider becoming a superhero blood donor, too.