Calcium and Clotting
People with my condition are very prone to bleeds. Many of them get lung bleeds and/or nose bleeds.
I don't think I have ever had a lung bleed but I spent years and years having constant blood seepage in my sinuses. Anytime I blew my nose, there was some blood.
A friend of mine had a child who was getting lung bleeds and I did some looking around in hopes of being helpful to them. I went down the rabbit hole on exactly how clotting happens and to my surprise I found something I had never heard before: Calcium plays a critical role in the clotting process.
Calcium is essential to the ability of the body to begin the cascade of events that leads to clotting. If you don't have enough calcium, you will have trouble clotting.
So I discussed it with my son and he was like "Easy. Eat cheese, milk or ice cream. Lots of stuff contains calcium."
Ice cream seemed like an especially good suggestion since lung bleeds are commonly treated with ice packs on the chest to constrict the blood vessels in the lungs.
At some point, I was having a lot of serious nosebleeds and I began taking between 600 and 1000 units (probably milligrams) of calcium citrate anytime I had a nosebleed. I think there is some other form of calcium that is supposed to be more bioavailable but I couldn't find it and calcium citrate was readily available and supposedly bioavailable, so I went with that.
Taking a large amount of calcium like that in one go would stop my nosebleeds cold within minutes with no other intervention. After a few months of using calcium citrate to stop my nosebleeds, I stopped having them and I also stopped having blood seepage every single time I blew my nose.
I rarely get nosebleeds anymore. I appear to have resolved a longstanding calcium deficiency that was the root cause of my bleeds and that issue has never returned in a big way, though I have had nosebleeds occasionally in reaction to fasting, but it's more like bad seepage, not gushing blood that won't stop.
If you are getting bleeds, you are likely calcium deficient. If you are calcium deficient, you likely also need magnesium, Vitamin D and Vitamin K. These things need to be taken together normally to be properly absorbed because they work together in the body.
Do not ever take calcium with iron, either in supplement form or in a meal. Separate them by a minimum of thirty minutes and preferably an hour or more. They interact in the stomach and your body will not get much of either of them if you take them together.
Anyway, high acidity promotes bleeds. Eating a healthier diet that lowers your acidity can reduce bleeds.
Salt deficiency probably also promotes bleeds and CF is a salt-wasting condition, so people with CF are routinely salt deficient. We sweat out salt at very high rates.
And calcium deficiency promotes bleeds and can be directly caused by high acidity because the body uses it to buffer the bloodstream.
I don't think I have ever had a lung bleed but I spent years and years having constant blood seepage in my sinuses. Anytime I blew my nose, there was some blood.
A friend of mine had a child who was getting lung bleeds and I did some looking around in hopes of being helpful to them. I went down the rabbit hole on exactly how clotting happens and to my surprise I found something I had never heard before: Calcium plays a critical role in the clotting process.
Calcium is essential to the ability of the body to begin the cascade of events that leads to clotting. If you don't have enough calcium, you will have trouble clotting.
So I discussed it with my son and he was like "Easy. Eat cheese, milk or ice cream. Lots of stuff contains calcium."
Ice cream seemed like an especially good suggestion since lung bleeds are commonly treated with ice packs on the chest to constrict the blood vessels in the lungs.
At some point, I was having a lot of serious nosebleeds and I began taking between 600 and 1000 units (probably milligrams) of calcium citrate anytime I had a nosebleed. I think there is some other form of calcium that is supposed to be more bioavailable but I couldn't find it and calcium citrate was readily available and supposedly bioavailable, so I went with that.
Taking a large amount of calcium like that in one go would stop my nosebleeds cold within minutes with no other intervention. After a few months of using calcium citrate to stop my nosebleeds, I stopped having them and I also stopped having blood seepage every single time I blew my nose.
I rarely get nosebleeds anymore. I appear to have resolved a longstanding calcium deficiency that was the root cause of my bleeds and that issue has never returned in a big way, though I have had nosebleeds occasionally in reaction to fasting, but it's more like bad seepage, not gushing blood that won't stop.
If you are getting bleeds, you are likely calcium deficient. If you are calcium deficient, you likely also need magnesium, Vitamin D and Vitamin K. These things need to be taken together normally to be properly absorbed because they work together in the body.
Do not ever take calcium with iron, either in supplement form or in a meal. Separate them by a minimum of thirty minutes and preferably an hour or more. They interact in the stomach and your body will not get much of either of them if you take them together.
Anyway, high acidity promotes bleeds. Eating a healthier diet that lowers your acidity can reduce bleeds.
Salt deficiency probably also promotes bleeds and CF is a salt-wasting condition, so people with CF are routinely salt deficient. We sweat out salt at very high rates.
And calcium deficiency promotes bleeds and can be directly caused by high acidity because the body uses it to buffer the bloodstream.
