Donate blood to keep your heart healthy

If you are a shift worker, donating blood could be an easy way to reduce the risk of heart disease, says a study.

The high incidence of heart disease seen in shift workers could be due to the tiredness resulting from the disruption to the body's biological clock as jetlag has a severe effect on red blood cells.

These effects can be counterbalanced by fresh, young red blood cells –making blood donations a potential therapy for shift workers, the findings showed.

"Blood donations in humans also stimulate the generation of new fresh erythrocytes. Therefore, blood donations on a regular basis might be a very simple measure to help decrease the cardiovascular risk in human shift workers," said Margit Egg from University of Innsbruck in Austria.

[collected from Prothom alo. ]