Blood Volume: Way To Measure?

[Foggy01]

Hey guys,

I'd like to thank you all for your responses in my other threads and I'd like to apologise for making so many but I feel like I need to make another and get a clear answer. I hope you guys won't mind.

So what's been happening with me has been pretty stressful. I've been in a noticeable decline for a few months and have gotten a lot more light headed and very weak and fatigued. Aches and pains I had for a while and now I almost feel the opposite, numb all over. Anyway none of these are really what has me so stressed. I've posted about it in another thread. It's this strange breathing issue where it's like you "forget to breath" as some have put it. The breathing sensation in the chest is gone and seems to be associated with an allround weakness and "out of body" feeling. It's very strange. Gets very disturbing sometimes and feels like you're suffocating. It can go on for hours (or days if you get a sinus infection like I just got).

Anyway I guess you can appreciate how I feel then, that I want to get out of this **** as quickly as possible!

So I hope I can leverage all your knowledge and I hope you have an answer for me.

So this state I think seems to be associated with low blood volume. I've spoken to others that have the most distressing symptom (the breathing sensation thing) and it seems to be associated with low blood volume. It goes away once one raises blood volume.

I've been exercising like crazy and drinking lots of salt water, but so far its the same. I feel like there's no discernable light at the end of the tunnel because I have no way of knowing if I'm getting close to expanding my blood volume back to what it was when I didn't feel this weird symptom.

So I'm wondering. Is there any way to gauge the blood volume? Like is there ANY way to tell how volume depleted I am? 5% of a normal person? 10%? 20%? 25%? Is there any way at all to know?

If there was some way I could also measure progress in increasing it and see how fast its going up and maybe have some idea of when I'll be out of this ****.

I have two ideas so far, I hope someone has another. I've looked for proper blood volume testing in my country but it appears to be nonexistent. It's where they inject a known quantity of a tagged protein or red blood cell and measure how diluted it gets in your blood. Sadly there doesn't seem to be such a thing here. But if anyone actually knows a place in Ireland that does it I'd appreciate the tip!

Anyway so my ideas are absolute Vo2max and MCV.

Levine in his studies says Vo2max is proportional to blood volume in the deconditioned pots type in his studies. I think from what they say I fit this type, so maybe I could use this relationship to figure out my blood volume. I had a vo2max taken before I felt like this so if I got one now I could compare and see the difference. And it could be used to track progress too. I'm sadly at a different weight now though, which complicates comparison but if I could adjust for that it would be useful.

Another that I heard from a doctor is Mean Corpuscular Volume. It's always been low for me since I got POTS. She said it was associated with blood volume loss, so a higher one would be a good way of knowing I'm on the right track.

If anyone has any other methods to share I'd appreciate it! I'm really pissed off it's so hard to find out something so important to our condition (blood volume). If anyone knows a place it can be tested in europe I'm all ears. Thanks for listening! Any input is appreciated.