Gold and Anemia...

This easter I spent some time with some friends, two of whom are MD’s. Neither of them could explain this strange phenomena that another friend showed us.

He said that he heard that if you rub gold (from a ring or whatever) over a person’s face that has anemia it will leave a mark on their face. We all called bullshit. Then one girl took off her engagement ring and we rubbed it on all of our faces. Sure enough, two of the women faces were left with extremely dark purple lines in the path that the ring traveled.

The line went away in a few mintues but all of us were amazed at how dark it was on the girls faces.

Can anyone explain this? If not, at least try it, it’s pretty cool.

The engagement ring was cheep?

Maybe it had too much copper or other metals mixed in?

[quote]christine wrote:
The engagement ring was cheep?

Maybe it had too much copper or other metals mixed in?[/quote]

No, it wasn’t like that. The color faded in minutes. It could not be wiped off or anything. It was a doctor’s fiance, there is no way it was fake. Anyway, we tried it with multiple rings with the same result.

Give it a try. It only worked on women, but I assume it would work on a man.

Do you hang out with cancer patients? As far as I can tell you’ve got four people hanging out, two of whom have anemia and don’t know it. As broad as the term anemia is, fifty percent of people don’t have it and of those fifty percent a good number who have it, know it.

On top of that, between you and the two mind-numbingly brilliant MD’s, did anyone think to try anything other than a gold ring? As bushidobadboy said anemia is a deficiency of blood, and blood controls the response, but then the results could be achieved using a q-tip or a thumbnail.

Not to be overly critical, but your “experiment” was pretty uncontrolled and vague. I’m pretty sure I could leave marks on your face with my gold ring whether you had anemia or not.

[quote]lucasa wrote:
Do you hang out with cancer patients? As far as I can tell you’ve got four people hanging out, two of whom have anemia and don’t know it. As broad as the term anemia is, fifty percent of people don’t have it and of those fifty percent a good number who have it, know it.

On top of that, between you and the two mind-numbingly brilliant MD’s, did anyone think to try anything other than a gold ring? As bushidobadboy said anemia is a deficiency of blood, and blood controls the response, but then the results could be achieved using a q-tip or a thumbnail.

Not to be overly critical, but your “experiment” was pretty uncontrolled and vague. I’m pretty sure I could leave marks on your face with my gold ring whether you had anemia or not.[/quote]

Your post is boring. Go try it and get back to us when you have something interesting to say.

[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
I’m clutching at straws here but… Any mild mechanical trauma (such as drawing the ring across skin) causes what is known as “Harris’s Triple Response”, or ‘flush, flare, weal’. Redness, heat and mild swelling, basically. In a ‘normal’ person, the response is so mild and over so quickly (dependant on the level of the initial trauma), that you barely notice it.

However it sounds as though in these women (are you sure they were anemic and not just menstruating), the response was somehow altered. People who suffer from sickle cell anemia have sluggish blood flow, due to the odd shape of their RBCs. If these women had sickle cell then since the flow of blood (which is what causes the flush and the flare and facilitates the weal) is slowed, then the triple response would be slowed down also, with noticeable delay in resolution of symptoms… [/quote]

I doubt they had sickle cell and I have no idea if they were menstruating LOL.

I’ll describe it better. We rubbed the ring about as hard as you would scratch an itch, i.e. not that hard. The mark it left looked like it was left by a permanent marker, it was very dark purplish, almost black. The mark was not, to the best of my knowledge, left by something that rubbed off from the gold. Gold is relatively inert and it doesn’t do that.

Also, I should reiterate that the guy who showed us this had no idea if it was really a result of anemia. As far as we know he is completely clueless. He did mention anemia but he isn’t exactly in a position to speak with any authority.

I found this and the author concludes that it is not a result of anemia, but does not offer a satisfactory answer.

http://www.prevention.com/article/0,5778,s1-1-74-112-548-1,00.html

[quote]beebuddy wrote:

I’ll describe it better.[/quote]

Funny, I said your post was vague and the association is poor and you reply that I need to attempt to make my point again. You then go on to make a second attempt to explain your originally vague post more clearly as well as providing a link that says the link is poor demonstrating that you got my point without restatement.

Maybe you were offended I called your two MD friends ‘mind-numbingly brilliant’ or took the jest of marking up your face seriously? You must have the skin of an onion. Don’t let anyone fool you with the ‘If your hand is bigger than your face, you probably have cancer’ trick. You’ll probably need counseling.

[quote]lucasa wrote:
beebuddy wrote:

I’ll describe it better.

Funny, I said your post was vague and the association is poor and you reply that I need to attempt to make my point again. You then go on to make a second attempt to explain your originally vague post more clearly as well as providing a link that says the link is poor demonstrating that you got my point without restatement.

Maybe you were offended I called your two MD friends ‘mind-numbingly brilliant’ or took the jest of marking up your face seriously? You must have the skin of an onion. Don’t let anyone fool you with the ‘If your hand is bigger than your face, you probably have cancer’ trick. You’ll probably need counseling.
[/quote]

Actually, I skimmed your post, didn’t enjoy the tone and so found it boring and not worth responding to in a serious manner. You are nothing.

[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
beebuddy wrote:
I doubt they had sickle cell and I have no idea if they were menstruating LOL.

.

No idea if they were menstruating? What kind of host are you???!!!

Seriously though, a good host should have an intimate connection with all the bodily functions and rhythms of his/her guests whether they be animal, vegetable or mineral…

Seriously

[/quote]

I know, I know. I can usually smell it too… :slight_smile:

Seriously though, one of the sites posted above had a group of people that tried it and then had the women who reacted to it tested for anemia. Most were not anemic so…

Who the hell knows! Very strange phenomena.