Curiosity brought you here and you are welcomed and I'll try not to bore you with Medical jargons as usual, hehehe.
Generally health is defined according to who as the general physical, psychological, Social and mental well-being of an individual and not merely in the absence of diseases and infirmities.
Now, Disease could be defined as an alteration or impairment of the normal body function either in a particular body part or system or that of the whole body manifesting with many symptoms in relation to the subnormality present.
Generally, when we get sick, we look out for drugs most times to help correct whatever that was going on and get us back in health 💯 but then for this particular illness, what it does is that when you get sick, you don't need drugs but rather needs to lose blood.....
The sickness is called Hereditary haemochromatosis.
Designed using Canva
Hereditary haemochromatosis is a genetic disorder that causes the body to absorb too much iron from the diet, leading to an accumulation of iron in various organs and tissues.
These irons are necessary for erythropoiesis and so the body's bone marrow (you know it's incharge of erythropoiesis right? I just told you, hehe) keeps on producing red blood cells without a cut off point which leads to excess red blood cells in the body.
Now you might think it's a good thing but that's really depending on the angle you're seeing it from....
It might be good if you are seeing it from the angle that the person will now have great source of income, hehe.
You know they sell blood right... Infact, here in UNTH (University Of Nigeria Teaching Hospital) a pint of blood is sold at 15,000naira equivalent of 15$, so if you were seeing it from the angle of *a natural or God's given way of solving Your financial problems, I won't say you are wrong but then....
Too much of everything is bad and this is where it becomes a health problem needing urgent intervention.
When the fluid balance in the body is altered, it could lead to a lot of problems which includes but not limited to:
Throbbing headache
Raised intracranial pressure
Cerebral oedema
Confusion
Seizure
And sometimes loss of consciousness too.
These set of persons don't have any other illness, their only problem is that they have excess red blood cells whereas some are anaemic and are looking for blood, hehe.
So what do you think will be the management or treatment for this set of people as patients?
Hehe, yes you got it.... You just did a doctor's thing.
It's basically looking for a way to reduce the blood in the body without making the person hypovolemic also.... I mean without reducing too much such that the person will be needing blood too.
So the treatment is basically regular phlebotomy.
It's actually a rare disease but then it exists and over here in the hospital, we had a patient like that and that was what made me write this post because he was rushed into the hospital yesterday but thank God, the doctor knew he was a known hereditary haemochromatosis patient, so he quickly started his series of phlebotomy pouring out the blood and by the night when I went back, the guy already went home.... It's really a funny sickness.
The world is really not balanced.... Some needs blood while others pour away blood .... Such a world filled with dilemma, hehe.
Hope you learnt something new and I didn't bore you with Medical terms 🥺
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Thanks for reading and have a nice day 👍