I was told by my doctor to start donating blood as often as possible because of my TRT.. Issue is, to donate blood its a 6 hour round trip for me.
I tried a few times to do it at home first. First road block I found was not using a big needle. You truly need a thick needle with a big opening. When I finally went to donate, I was shocked at the harpoon they used lol.
The second diffculty was applying pressure around the arm to do the whole process. I used my wife's elctronic blood pressure testor to accomploish this. Worked well. But again, I just didn't have the right needle.
third roadblock was my wife freaking out while I was trying to do the whole thing.. I put the wife in the bedroom and told her to stay there unless she heard my body hit the floor or I told her its ok to come out.
It's not a easy process from my perspective. If you have a place to donate, just donate.. The blood will go to good use. Don't assume you can't donate until you have gone and tried and they give you the reason you can't donate. My doctor said they LOVE big guys on hormone replacement because the blood is rich in what a donor (from blood loss) would need. So just go try first, its a LOT easier then doing it at home.
If your hellbent on doing it at home, you REALLY need to educate yourself first. You have no clue when your iron, RBC's etc are at.. If you take blood out, you could drop one of those levels too much and you will feel like dog shit and it will take 4-6 weeks to build your levels back up, but you might not even know and you'll do the process again and fuck yourself up again.. Read read read.. and go get blood work before at the very least.. before and after if you can.
And I think the max you should ever drain is like 1.5 cups.. I think thats the amount, but either way I read lots of ppl drain more thinking "if I drain more than what they do at the donor clinic, I won't have to do it as ofter".. well your right in terms of it will take a LOT longer to get high levels of somethig you don't want, but you will feel like shit beause you dropped your levels too much...
For someone whose tried both and had a doctor tell me its in my best interest to donate as much as possible, try the legit way first..
lasty, if you insist on doing it at home, buy th buttefly needles which are the appropriate needles for giving blood.