I donate whole blood all the time, I did double reds once and felt like crap for 2 1/2 weeks. I was really fatigued, and felt sluggish, like my batteries were drained. I have never felt bad after donating whole blood, in fact I feel great after donating. It may just be something with me but when I brought it up the next time I donated the lady told me a lot of people say that after double reds, but many others have no issue. I can't advise you on what to do that is just my experience. And I do my own blood draws at home now, they will trash my blood because of gh use anyways and my iron is usually to high for the bllod bank to take with out an order from my doctor.

I donate regularly (every 12 weeks) this is a new option in the UK.

When I asked the nurse about it she told me by doing this your robbing people of a more regularly needed blood supply ,as the double red/platelet donations only go to a select few and increases the donors times inbetween donations

Where as a normal blood donation can be used up and down the country and on a more regularly basis

So you can do double platelets, double red cells, whole blood... etc. I did double reds for a while and thought I was being smart. The benefit for them is that if you do double reds or double platelets they don’t need to scrub the blood as much since it’s already separated. Which means less turnaround and more useable blood faster. But the thing about double reds is that they make you wait twice as long between donations, so at the end of the day it’s the same. Also, when I checked my blood after doing double reds for a while everything else was in range but my platelets were high. I bet if you do double platelets for a while something else would be elevated.
In conclusion I think it’s best to just hit whole blood donations more often than these concentrated donations less often. I hope we’ve got a phlebotomist or two on here who can weigh in but that’s my understanding.

What's that a 14 gage needle vs 18 like they normally use