The Benefits of Blood-Letting

Yes, you read that correctly

Believe it or not, one of the things my patients find most valuable is blood-letting.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Before you write me off as an antediluvian quack, read the rest of this post and consider the references I’ve included.

This post is a follow-up to another recent post of mine:

The Dangers of Playing Doctor

That post is an excerpt from my book, Dying to Be Free. Pick up a copy and find out how the public health establishment is killing you.

If you want my protocol that I use in my clinic to evaluate and guide blood donation schedules, you can read it in this post:

How to Dump Iron

If you would like to become a patient, apply for consultation today at StillmanMD.com.

What is blood? Can you have too much of it? If the answer is yes, then it follows that you could benefit from bloodletting. Blood contains plasma and red blood cells. Plasma contains proteins and red blood cells contain hemoglobin. The blood carries protein around the body, where it is used to nourish your organs and tissues. The hemoglobin in the red blood cells contains iron, and this carries oxygen to your cells to be burned to create energy, and carries carbon dioxide away to be exhaled.

Could you have too much protein or too many red blood cells? The answer is yes. Patients who have a type of arthritis known as gout have a tendency to have too much protein in their blood. A study in 2003 found that, “During a 28-month follow-up, maintenance of NID was found to be safe and beneficial in all patients, with effects ranging from a complete remission to a marked reduction of incidence and severity of gouty attacks.” What this study means is that donating blood might relieve gout patients of their severe, crippling pain - regardless of other medication or lifestyle factors. Patients with a disease known as polycythemia vera have too many blood cells, and patients with hemochromatosis, which results in iron-overload, need to give blood in order to keep their iron levels down. Blood donation is necessary for good health in these cases. The idea that blood-letting is quackery is an over-simplification. Bloodletting has a place.

This is confirmed in clinical practice. Many patients who fit this profile do feel better after giving blood. This is also not just my opinion based on anecdotal evidence—major clinical studies have found this benefit. The Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study found that, “blood donors had a 88% reduced risk (relative hazard = 0.12, 95% confidence interval 0.02–0.86, p = 0.035) of acute myocardial infarction, compared with non-blood donors.” In the Copenhagen City Heart Study, "The death rate increased from 10 to 15% (depending on cause of death) for every 100-point increase in ferritin."

Dr. Dennis Mangan wrote an entire book on the health benefits of blood donation, called, “Dumping Iron.” Toxicologist, Jym Moon, PhD wrote a similar book, “Iron: The Most Toxic Element.” These books document the literature supporting the use of phlebotomy in iron-overloaded patients.

Why might donating blood confer a therapeutic benefit?

Iron is not only a nutrient, it is a potential toxin. Patients who have mutations in a gene known as the HFE gene tend to accumulate too much iron. They develop diabetes, arthritis, dementia, heart disease, liver failure, and low sex hormone levels (for starters) at a very early age as a result.

Sound familiar? These diseases account for a substantial amount of the healthcare spending in the modern world today. Yes, iron is a nutrient, but you truly can have too much of a good thing.

When does iron become toxic? When it has accumulated to levels that the body cannot control. Your body needs copper, vitamin A, and multiple B vitamins to control iron,,,. When it lacks these micronutrients, iron accumulates in cells and cannot get out into the bloodstream. When this happens, patients may look like they have iron deficiency anemia. In fact, they may just have low vitamin A or low copper levels. This is not due to a total-body iron deficit, but an inability of the body to move iron out of cells. Hormonal imbalances can cause the same issue.

Why might people today have too much iron?

We are losing less and less of it, and eating more and more of it. Our bodies have no way to excrete iron. We lose very little each day. We easily exceed our losses with common foods, even with moderate intake. Flours are now fortified with iron, which now constitutes a substantial proportion of our iron intake. This is frankly dangerous to members of the public who have HFE gene mutations that predispose to iron overload. This mutation is so common in individuals of Northern European ancestry that Sweden stopped fortifying its food with iron in 1995, citing the public health risks.

Women can control their menstrual cycles with hormonal birth control. Every cycle they miss is extra iron they are accumulating. Dr. Jerome Sullivan proposed that it is menstruation that explains why women have a lower rate of heart attacks than men until menopause. After menopause, they catch up rapidly. Women also formerly lost enormous amounts of iron in childbirth. Thanks to emergency medical services, we now stop bleeding very quickly and efficiently. We may presume that not long ago, when our ancestors engaged in incessant tribal warfare, men must have lost blood in battle. Last, but not least, parasites love to feed on blood. Hookworms, mosquitoes, and ticks are just a few of the parasites that feed on human blood. Malaria was once common as far north as Denmark, and hookworms were so prevalent in the American south after the Civil War that they represented a public health crisis.

We used to lose a lot more blood than we do now, and we used to consume a lot less iron. There can be no doubt that we are, as a society, accumulating more and more iron. This is having untold negative health consequences.

And yet, if you know anything about iron and health, it is probably this.

Iron is a nutrient, without which you would die. Bleeding is bad for you, and silly doctors in times past who didn’t know any better, thought it was a good idea to drain the body of “extra” or “bad” blood.

“Foolish the doctor who despises the knowledge acquired by the ancients.”

-Hippocrates

We are conceited enough to think that we know better than our ancestors did, without pausing to reflect upon why they may have thought what they thought. Despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, we like to think that we know just what to do, and that our approach to life needs little correction. One of the great physicians of American history, Sir William Osler, said to a graduating medical school class, “Gentlemen, half of what we have taught you is in error. The problem is that we do not know which half.”

Bloodletting has therapeutic value. It can also be dangerous. The devil is in how much, how often, and under what circumstances one should recommend it.

Bloodletting is just one of many examples I could share with you from the pages of medical history of a therapy that has value, but that has fallen by the wayside and is now denigrated as a quaint and unscientific practice.

It is remarkable to see how modern people ignore wisdom of prior generations, to abandon potentially valuable therapeutics. We like to think of progress, in medicine and science in general, as inevitable. But if we are capable of forgetting what works and embracing what does not, then how do we ensure continued medical and scientific progress? The answer, of course, is freedom. To deceive people into embracing bad medicine and rejecting good medicine, the first thing you have to do is control the narrative by corrupting those who author it. In this case, that means doctors.