Iron Levels

This is a short and simple post to try and raise awareness on ourselves and our intake of iron. So a year and a half ago I was quite poorly and like tired, pale, had some odd tastes with food and I had heart palpitations and my G.P. ran some tests and eventually 2 blood tests and when they came back they told me I was dangerously close to becoming anaemic, basically I had low levels of iron in my system.

Iron is a mineral which the body needs for growth and development. Your body uses iron to make haemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells which carries oxygen around the body and needs some for some hormones. You can become anaemic if you don't get enough into your body. Iron deficiency anaemia is caused by lack of iron, often because of blood loss or pregnancy. I am a blood donor and because of the issues and low iron levels I was not allowed to donate blood until my issue was fixed. I was prescribed Iron tablets for 3 months and told to just up my iron intake with certain foods and after 6 months, I had new tests done and my levels were fine again.

The amount of iron you need is different depending on your age and gender. The recommended levels are: 8.7mg a day for men over 18, 14.8mg a day for women aged 19 to 50 & 8.7mg a day for women over 50.

How can you tell if your iron levels are low?

There are lots of symptoms for iron deficiency and the following are the four most common signs: tiredness and lack of energy, pale skin, noticeable heartbeats (heart palpitations) & shortness of breath. Other symptoms include: headaches, hearing ringing, buzzing or hissing noises inside your head, food tasting strange, feeling itchy, a sore tongue, hair loss, wanting to eat non-food items, such as paper or ice, finding it hard to swallow, painful open sores in the corners of your mouth, spoon-shaped nails & restless legs syndrome.

The NHS recommends that you eat more greens or meat or cereal high in iron and drink more orange juice and of course if you are struggling your GP may refer you to a specialist dietitian and prescribe you iron tablets.

That's all we got time for this week Basil, stay shiny and keep an eye on your Iron :)

Thanks for reading. Share to make others aware. 

First Dose Covid 19 Vaccine Side Effects

So it's 6th March a day after my first dose and 4am I was awake I could not sleep my arm was aching. I woke up when I eventually fell asleep to severe body aches, head ache and I felt sick and I coughed up phlegm earlier in the day. Later on through the day I felt really cold despite being told the house is warm and despite me being wrapped up in bed. Honestly this feels like a hangover crossed with flu. Temp fluctuations are so annoying. I also feel like my body is slow like as if I'm moving in water?

7th March I woke up with a headache, I also had hot flush with dead arm still but by the night time most of these subsided and instead I only had a slight tender arm and cold flushes. Overall I feel more myself today. Sneezing a lot not sure if related to these side effects or not.

See how I feel tomorrow now really, I think I will be all better by the morn! 8th March and I feel a whole lot better but I do feel like I got a cold today just sneezing, coughing and sniffling a lot other than that still a dead arm. 

9th March no other symptoms all fine, feel great just bit tired and still got dead arm but its easing. I think I'm out of the woods and may do a video update on youtube to follow up this week. 

Thanks for following and reading my documentation of my side effects and getting the covid vaccine!

First Time Blood Donation Experience

Tuesday 3 June 2020

Today I donated blood for the first time, it was a unique, interesting process and experience. Given the covid situation everyone was in ppe and constantly washing hands and at safe distances from each-other. 

The donation took place on my old secondary school grounds in the sports hall which madly enough has not changed at all and its been almost a decade since i last stepped foot inside that place. There was old footballs and basketballs still stuck on the ceiling inside the hall from when i was there the last time pretty much haha. 

The nurses, dr's and all staff there were lovely and made me feel comfortable and relaxed throughout my donation process. 

The process in total took an hour to do, most of it was just filling out paper work. 

The finger prick hurt more than the needle and my nurse was very impressed with my veins and blood so that's good stuff and also as of writing it has been days since the donation and i have no bruise from the process so that is also great stuff. 

Feels amazing to have done this and to know I'll be saving people's lives in donating.

So hey i stuck out and went in and faced my fears of needle and it was a fairly quick, comfortable, good experience. 

Shout-out and thank you to NHS Welsh Blood Service!

NHS appreciation post!

So the NHS has turned 70 it's crazy to think it's so young.

It's also crazy the amount of abuse the service gets and it's staff and that some government officials want to bring an end to the NHS.

If it wasn't for the NHS giving us free healthcare here in the UK our country would be so bad. We don't want to get into having to pay for hospital visits or stays, sorry but this might sound selfish of me to say but I don't think it's right to have to pay to get medical attention. I think it's a human right to get it for no payment options or taking out insurance to make sure we'll be ok if we do get hurt or ill. If we had to pay for our health services I think we in the UK would be in so much debt it's scary and let's hope it never happens.

In case you didn't know, I was born with a broken leg and for years up until I was 12, I was in and out of the hospital getting my leg re-broken and surgically repaired to go straight instead of inwards and I had physio to walk and I had to get specially made to fit shoes for my feet.

Top it off as a kid I also suffered from epilepsy so yeah how fun is it to black out, shake and lose consciousness and all my bodily functions while trying to breath and what have you, super fun am I right? Nope but you know that it's no fun or no laughing matter.

I once worked for the NHS as apart of the clerical team in Aberdare for a few months, it was apart of an apprenticeship scheme I did for TTC. Great team to work with I hope they are all doing well. I have family who also work in the NHS so they do some tremendous work also. Just felt like adding this in.

Anyway, the point is that without the love and support from my perants and the NHS and all the South Wales specialists I have seen and had help from for all of these years it would not have been possible for me to walk or to even live without the NHS.

I can't thank all the past and present staff of the NHS enough for their amazing work. To think 24/7 for over 70 years they've been hard at it saving so many lives it's amazing just phenomenal.

Thank You NHS!