Thalassemia minor and marathon run activites

Jacky Chua — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:33:23 GMT

Hi, I am a thalassemia minor carrier, 47. I am active in sports for many years, I played soccer at week end and run up to 23km without any health problem. I have run many event between 5km to 21km, I have no problem. But last sunday, when I trained for marathon and completed 31km non stop for the 1st time. 1 hour after finishing the 31km (run for about 3.5 hours) I experienced blood in my urine, similar to grape wine color. I continue to drink water of about 1 litre and 2 hours later my Dr. confirmed it was blood in my urine.

I would like to seek your community advice:

1. Is the urine blood caused by my thalassemia minor blood quality problem? Especially, when death blood cells is being discharge from my kidneys.

2. Am I fit to run again especially as far as 31km up to 42km marathon event?

Please advice on how I can run the marathon like a normal person.

Please email to me at jacky.chuact@gmail.com.

Thank you.

Jacky

RE: Thalassemia minor and marathon run activites

Jay aka EET — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:00:37 GMT

Jackie-

You might get a doc to respond. And if you are lucky, you might get a paradox. (I love straight lines.)

I am curious as to why you would want our opinion as compared to RDs, that would be real docs.

Nevertheless, Beta Thal Minor exists is two forms, plus and zero. Hemoglobin is composed of for protein chains, 2 alphas, and 2 betas. In view of your description of yourself and your activities, I am quite sure that you have the plus variety. This means you make some of the beta chains. One of your genes is good and the other one is not.

In reviewing BTM with my super secret source (If you want to know who or what it is, I would suggest you Google it.) I found nothing to suggest that you could develop hematuria as a result of carrying this one bad gene.

Goolge this: march hematuria . I think that you will find a plethora of website confirming that you have nothing to worry about.

As my cousin the doctor told me, urine the pink with hematuria.

JayR

RE: Thalassemia minor and marathon run activites

Rob — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:26:20 GMT

I had this symptom some years ago and it turned out to be bladder cancer. It was at a very early stage when successful removal of the cancer is high. You might want to have a urologist scope your bladder.