Diagnosed with Hemochromatosis Homozygous

If you go to the Face book page of The Haemochromatosis Society theres lots of topics about this subject

If your blood is thick just drink more water ,and take blood thinners like aspirin a day or baby aspirin even helps your heart and blood pressure . If your viens are thin do some arobiec exercise light ones like power walking. And move your arms use elastic band's for resistance for weight training.. this will get your viens pumped up a little more dilated naturally it will help...

A few hints:

Dress warmly - being chilly causes your veins to get smaller, whereas being really warm makes your veins relax and get bigger.  Since you have to have bare arms for phlebotomy, concentrate on wearing nice warm socks, warm pants with maybe long underwear, and the warmest vest you can find – or even two vests.  (If you can’t get warm no matter what you do, ask your doctor about your thyroid function.)

Make sure you have taken in enough fluids beforehand and, if like me you have a low salt diet, also increase your salt intake.  I take along a drinking bottle containing a cup of my favourite fruit juice mixed with a cup of water and ¼ tsp of sea salt and drink it while the blood is draining; I’m not sure if it makes any difference to how fast my blood drains, but it does stop me from getting woozy. 

You could also try encouraging your blood to flow more easily by taking or eating things like baby aspirin, fish oil, garlic, ginger, and/or mushrooms, if you can tolerate them.  (These things will also make those of us who are prone to bruising bruise more easily, so if you try any of these it might be a good idea after your phlebotomy is over to keep pressure on the needle site a little longer than usual.)

Other tricks to make veins stand out more include wrapping the arm in cozy warm compresses for at least 10-15 minutes before needle puncture, and hanging the arm down so that gravity fills the arm veins with blood.  You definitely want your arm to be held low enough that the needle puncture site is well below heart level.  If the needle puncture site isn’t low enough, there will be a lot less blood in the veins and the veins will be a much smaller target.

Keep the blood pressure cuff on above the needle site on your phlebotomy arm somewhere between 40-60 mm of mercury.  My phlebotomy nurse always gives me the job of keeping my blood pressure cuff at the right pressure, because I’m sitting right there!  

Wiggle your fingers on your phlebotomy arm to encourage blood flow to your lower arm.

Finally, think of your phlebotomy arm as being really, really warm – for example, every time you breathe out, imagine that as you send warmed air out of your lungs, you are also sending a wave of warm blood into your phlebotomy arm.  (It does sound a bit silly, but there has been medical research showing that imagining warm hands actually results in more blood flow to the hands and relieves migraine headaches . . . )

I hope some of this is helpful; it must be terribly frustrating to go through being poked with needles and then not getting hardly any blood out!

YES - although not always.  I started off well, but eventually (and I have been 'deironed' for about 12 years now and am on 3 monthly venes) I would have trouble because my blood was so thick and black.  It would take about 2 hrs because I would insist they keep trying and get that 'stuff' out of me.  It would take up to 4 incisions.

So, without getting anything positive out of my gp and haemotogist, I decided to try 'baby' aspirin on my own bat.  Can't get 'baby' aspirin in the country where I live but pharmacist gave me the 100mg lot which is given to people with heart problems instead of warfarin.

The effect was amazing - in less than a week I felt lighter, walked faster (I did not feel I was dragging that damned ships chain and anchor around with me all the time).  The chronic body pain lifted.

My next and subsequent venesections were so easy and quick.  But even more astounding, my Iron Studies/Panels levels all dropped to normal.  No one can understand it, as although my ferritin levels were long since kept low, all the the other levels were always high.

I really believe that my finer capilliaries were so clogged up with the thick iron, that when I took the aspirin, it loosened it up and let it flow out of those fine capilliaries.

Of course, you do have to make sure you are well hydrated and have something to eat before venesection but I always did all that so it was not an answer for me.