Do You Know Your Blood Type?
Most of us who have not been in any medical situations where blood type is important might have no idea what their blood type is. Anyway, I was in Red Cross when I was in HighSchool, That’s where I got to know that I have O positive blood. Tell us about your story in the comment box. How you got to know your blood group. If you don’t know yours then get some time out of your life and go to the nearest hospital. Ok?
Well, We all know what is blood, But lets me brief you again. Blood is a mixture of cells suspended in a slightly yellowish liquid called plasma. Plasma is made up mostly of water, but it also contains proteins sugars hormones and salts, the three different types of cells you will find in plasma are RBC (Red blood cells or erythrocytes), WBC ( White blood cells or leukocytes) and Platelets or thrombocytes. Red blood cells give the blood its colour and makeup to 40% to 45% of your blood.
Anyway, There is a lot of mystery around blood. We know that there are eight main blood groups that make up most of the world’s population A, B, AB, O, their positive and negative combine. But it turns out that scientists still don’t know why we evolved different blood types. But for now, science can at least tell us a little bit.
| If your blood type is | You can give to | You can receive from |
|---|---|---|
| 0+ | O+, A+, B+, AB+ | GO+, O- |
| A+ | A+, AB+ | A+, A-, O+, O- |
| B+ | B+, AB+ | B+, B-, O+, O- |
| AB+ | AB+ | A+, A-,B +, B-, AB-, AB+, O+, O- |
| O- | A+, A-,B +, B-, AB-, AB+, O+, O- | O- |
| A- | A-, A+, AB-, AB+ | A-, O- |
| B- | B-, B+, AB-, AB+ | B-, O- |
| AB- | AB-, AB+ | AB-, A-, B-, O- |
What Will Happen If You Receive The Wrong Type Of Blood?
Well, some curious minds found that out the hard way. For thousands of years, nobody really understood blood. A Greek doctor from 200 CE believed that it was created from food and liver and This school of thought lived on for nearly 1500 years. It was not until the early 17th century that a British doctor named William Harvey discovered that actually circulated through the body. In 1665, an English physician, Richard Lower, successfully kept one dog alive by transfusing it with the blood of another dog.
After those things kind of kind got weird. Just two year after the Richard Lower’s success doctors began experimenting with Xenotransfusions. That is transfusing human’s blood with animal’s blood such as sheep and those human patients died.
It was not until 1900 that we finally realized people and animals actually have different types of blood that determine whose blood can mix with whose. Among the humans also you can’t take any one’s blood.
If you are type A, your immune system will perceive type B blood as an intruder and trigger an auto-immune response that can cause kidney failure, extensive blood clotting and even shock. The reverse is true of type B blood. The immune system will attack type A. AB blood, however, can accept both A and B blood without triggering that auto-immune response. Things start to get a little more complicated when you introduce the rhesus factor or the negative and positive part of your blood types. Positive can’t accept negatives, but the opposite is extremely dangerous.
To complicate things further, scientists have discovered dozens of more blood types, such as the Duffy blood group, which can determine your susceptibility to malaria and The Hh blood type, which 1 in 10,000 people in India have.
As for why human evolved this complicated system of blood type and compatibility, we don’t really know. The original mutations are thought to date back nearly 20 million years. But look, whatever the biology is behind different blood type, it’s a real, practical thing that matters and in many parts of the world, knowing your blood type is fairly common knowledge. In Japan, it’s linked to your personality. In 2011, former Japanese minister of reconstruction Ryu Matsumoto blamed his irritable and impetuous behaviour on his blood type, Type B, after he was forced to step down from his seat.
Anyway, It’s true that we don’t know a lot about the Blood. But we all should know our blood Type. In some medical emergency, it could help to speed up the process. In case of any family relative or friend need any specific blood type then you might be able to help them if you know your blood type. If you are type O- then you are an extremely useful universal donor.