Will HCT Be Lowest Immediately After Blood Donation or Next Day?

as new blood is produced? I need my HCT to be as low as possible before next blood work.

Yes, I can donate blood in early morning and then drive to the blood work clinic right afterwards. But should I wait a day for new blood to come into my system?

Uro wants this down or I lose my 120mg a week script and go back to 100mg:

|HCT|0.533 L/L|0.380 - 0.500 L/L|H|
|HGB|178 g/L|125 - 170 g/L|H|

Wow… I’m really surprised nobody had an answer within seconds. LOL I thought it was a no brainer for educated folk. Oh well… good night everybody and hopefully get an answer.

I don’t think you want to do that. Hematocrit is measured as a percentage of RBC volume in your blood and determined by the number and size of your RBCs. After donation, the number of RBCs is reduced, but so is overall blood volume. Same for hemoglobin, immediately after donation your hemoglobin concentration has not gone down, though the total in the body has.

Yes, give your body time to adjust and increase blood volume by retaining fluid. Of course, drink plenty of water prior to your blood test. Eating grapefruit has been reported to help decrease hematocrit. Probably take at least a week before you start building RBCs back up.

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Thank you for replying highpull!

FYI I did do exactly that, 2 BW’s ago when Uro was getting anal and threatened to pull my 120mg back to 100mg. I did the donation then BW immediately afterwards. Time for drive and waiting until BW, about one hour. ALL my BW labs ended up within range. :slight_smile:

Thing is, I’m upping my dose without Uro knowing. So I need to know the MOST EFFECTIVE method to show lowest HTC results and to time the donation and BW accordingly. All right, I will wait a week+ after the donation before BW is drawn so other levels don’t look wonky. Thanks again HP!

No. I meant “yes, go the next day” to answer your question and then I was not clear with my explanation. I apologize for the confusion. By the end of a week, your RBCs/hematocrit/hemoglobin will be recovering and your levels will be higher. Go the next day. Your total fluid volume will be back, but RBCs will not have had time to increase and will still be lower.

By the way, any chance of getting another urologist?

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Thank you sir, will doI I guess I could but I think I got lucky getting one who would allow 120mg a week. I’m in Canada. I hear of horror stories about our TRT regimens.