Selling your plasma... Is it healthy or not?

I'm considering selling my plasma for some extra cash, but I would like to know if doing this can be detrimental to your health? I just read some unpleasant stories about vein scarring and collapse, as well as how big the needle is (16g), but nothing about the impact on general health (pro or con).

The plastic they run your blood through will give you a nice dose of xenoestrogens. OTOH, it could be a good way to detoxify some persistent pollutants

I definitely don't like the idea of xenoestrogens, but I was doing a little research on it and found out they administer Ringer's Solution. These are the ingredients:

Ringer's solution typically contains sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate, with the latter used to balance the pH. Other additions can include chemical fuel sources for cells, including ATP and dextrose, as well as antibiotics and antifungals.


The antibiotics definitely caught my attention.

So it would still be detoxifying even though it's only the plasma they are removing?

My understanding is that normal saline is used to send blood cells back to you. I haven't heard of Ringer's lactate being used.

Different pollutants partition into different body compartments - for example, a lot of pesticides partition into fat. There are some pollutants that seem to partition into plasma, bound to proteins.

So is there any con, or anything unhealthy about removing the plasma itself?...Aside from these other factors? Any idea how to prevent vein scarring?

Thanks

I don't know much about vein scarring, it seems to be a problem for lots of donors.

In the first few months, protein levels will fall. You're basically sucking antibodies out of the blood, so you could have some immunosuppression. There are some anecdotes of people becoming sick after a few weeks/months of donation, but this seems to be pretty rare. Your immune system should return to normal once you stop, but I guess some of those infections could persist subclinically, and if you've been on this forum for a while you know what that means.

In poorly run plasma donation centers (ie in China), there have been cases where technicians were regularly giving people Hep C or HIV. There have been similar cases in Europe, but it's probably extremely rare in the US these days.

I don't know how well studied the long term effects are. Protein levels should return to near normal once the body adapts. One study showed an increase in B cells, which makes sense since B cells produce antibodies; it also showed a drop in suppressor T cells, which may be needed to suppress autoimmunity (so you can see how that could be a problem). There's really no definitive data out there.