Word: blood
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...wasn't lack of water that felled her. It was too much water. A study in last week's New England Journal of Medicine found that an alarming number of runners and other athletes are risking a similar fate. The problem is that drinking too much water dilutes the blood's normal salt content...
...study looked at the blood of 488 runners in the 2002 Boston Marathon. An astonishing 13% of them showed clear signs of hyponatremia, and three were at the danger level. The condition is most likely to strike novice runners, as élite athletes don't want to lose seconds by slowing down at the water stations that line race routes--and they know from experience that they don't have...
...Blood transfusions alone may not be directly responsible for these health hazards, but data from other recent studies have been enough to convince physicians to change their so-called transfusion trigger. Doctors have traditionally waited until the patient's hematocrit - the proportion of the blood made up of red blood cells - drops below the normal range of 45% to 55% before transfusing. Now, doctors prefer to wait longer, until it falls below 30%. "There is still a lot of controversy about the trigger," says Dr. Lynne Uhl, a transfusion specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, "but the growing data...
Wouldn't it be more effective if banked blood could simply be improved? Stamler's study suggests it can: by replacing nitric oxide in stored blood, Stamler showed that the risk of heart attack and death from transfusion dropped dramatically, at least in mice. And there's reason to believe such replenishment could work in human patients as well; already, premature babies born with lung and respiratory problems are placed in NO-rich environments to ensure that their still developing tissues get the oxygen they need to grow properly. For now, the American Red Cross, which oversees 14 million units...
...stop there? Stamler argues that it might be possible to supercharge the NO content in blood and use it as a treatment for everything from heart disease to angina to diabetes. "We all want to open up blood vessels, and blood knows how to do that," he says. "The opportunities to manipulate the system to do even better are now available." And that would truly make giving blood the gift of life...