Are you that kind of person who celebrates milestones of your life with getting a tattoo? These milestones could be anything, including the things you achieved, or the things you could not achieve but taught you a lesson. If you are this person, then you must have wondered if you can donate blood with all the tattoos on your body? There are lots of rumors on how can one donate blood, or if at all they are allowed to donate blood. So let's get into its nitty gritty!

As per American Red Cross, in most states, a tattoo is acceptable if the tattoo was applied by a state-regulated entity. Which means the tattoo artist must be licensed and must practice following all the guidelines, using sterile needles and ink that is not reused. The same is the guideline for cosmetic tattoos, which includes microblading of eyebrows. If it is done by a licensed artist in a regulated state, then it is acceptable.

However, if you got your tattoo in a state that does not regulate tattoo facilities, you must wait three months after it was applied.

The states that do not regulate tattoo facilities are:

• Arizona
• District of Columbia
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Utah
• Wyoming

Body Piercing

Similar is the case with body piercings. It has to be done following the regulation, here the key is that the instrument used has to be a single-use equipment and disposable. Which means if you are getting it by a gun, or an earring cassette, they have to be disposable. In case you got your piercing with a reusable gun or a reusable instrument, you will be required to wait for three months.

Three-Month Wait Period

The reason behind the wait time is associated with the concerns of hepatitis, which could be easily transmitted from donors to patients through transfusion. All blood donations are thus tested for hepatitis B and hepatitis C, with several tests. However, not always are these tests are perfect, thus the three-month period is given.

What Dangers Loom Over?

Donating blood after getting a tattoo can be dangerous as unclean tattoo needle could carry bloodborne viruses, which are hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated its guideline, making the wait time shorter from one year to three months. This is because if you contract a bloodborne illness, it could be detectable within the period of 3 months.

What else makes you ineligible to donate blood?

There are other reasons why you may not be allowed to donate blood. As per the American Red Cross, you are not allowed to donate blood if you have

• hepatitis B or C
• HIV
• Chagas disease, which is a parasitic infection that kissing bugs cause
• leishmaniasis, a parasitic infection that sand flies cause
• Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a rare disorder that leads to mental deterioration
• Ebola virus
• hemochromatosis, which means extreme build up of iron
• hemophilia
• jaundice
• sickle cell disease

As per the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blood Bank, these conditions make you permanently ineligible from donating blood.

While there are certain conditions that makes your permanently ineligible, there are other conditions that makes you temporarily ineligible from donating blood. These include:

• If you have a bleeding condition, and have issues with your blood clotting
• If you have received transfusion from a person
• If you have cancer. Here, the eligibility depend son the type of cancer you have
• If you have recently underwent a dental or oral surgery. In such a case, you would have to wait for three days
• If you had a recent heart attack, heart surgery or angina. You must wait for 6 months
• If you are pregnant, you can only donate blood after 6 months after delivering your child

Major sporting events such as the IPL, FIFA World Cup, Olympics and Asian Games have become powerful platforms for brands to promote unhealthy products through sponsorships, endorsements and social media.

In an exclusive interview with HealthandMe, Dr. Robin Ireland, public health activist and honorary research fellow at the University of Glasgow, UK, discussed how the commercialization of sport has helped normalize junk food, sugary drinks and alcohol, and its impact on children “who may not always recognize the difference between advertising and fact”.

“It's an awful lot healthier to play sport than to watch it, because sport is now associated with junk food, sugary drinks and alcohol,” he said.

Excerpts from the interview

Q: How does unhealthy-product marketing in sport affect children? And do “zero sugar” or “alcohol-free” labels change that?

Dr. Robin: I think it has a huge impact. Worldwide, we're seeing major problems with overweight and obesity from a very early age, as well as type 2 diabetes. Many causes of cancer and heart disease are preventable through healthier lifestyles, yet we're constantly being promoted things that aren't good for us.

Alcohol companies often promote alcohol-free products. In India, I'm aware of surrogate marketing, where alcohol companies produce packaged drinking water using the same brand, colourway and distribution networks. So it's hardly surprising these brands are normalised to young people. Even where alcohol advertising is banned, alcohol can still be heavily promoted.

A lot of this comes down to what we eat, but very specifically what we drink — alcohol, sugary drinks and now energy drinks. For most of us, we're much better off drinking water.

Q: Does elite sport give sugary drinks, fast food and alcohol a “health halo”?

Dr. Robin: Sport presents glamour and excitement, and children look up to big performers and superstars who often promote products they probably don't consume themselves because they're not good for sporting performance. Yet their names and images are used to create that excitement and, as you described, a health halo.

Brands want to be associated with that healthy image. Athletes think that if they want to perform like a Sachin Tendulkar or another superstar, they need a sports drink or energy drink. And of course, they don't. But that's what the brands are trying to do.

Also read: Exclusive: GLP-1 Drugs Are The ‘New Statins’, Says University Hospital Birmingham Professor

Q: Cristiano Ronaldo famously pushed away a soft drink and asked for water. Where should athletes and sports bodies draw the line on unhealthy-product sponsorships?

Dr. Robin: It was one of those iconic moments, wasn't it, where he pushed the sponsored bottle away and said, “Agua.” The line is difficult for sportspeople. I don't necessarily want to blame them. It's the rules set by the governing bodies. I've just looked up the IPL sponsors, and you immediately find cola brands across the teams and on shirt branding. It's everywhere.

So it's hard to criticise individual athletes. Some earn huge sums of money, so perhaps it would be nice if one or two took the Ronaldo position. There are also athletes who, because of their religion, will not drink alcohol or associate themselves with alcohol products.

But I think it's the governing bodies. How have we allowed this to happen? This deluge of sugary drinks at a time when we have high levels of type 2 diabetes and children living with overweight and obesity. It's really wrong.

Q: What can sport learn from the ban on tobacco advertising when regulating alcohol, sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods?

Dr. Robin: The short answer is I believe yes, but I think we're quite a long way from that. I grew up with tobacco advertising all over the place, particularly in cricket and F1. I remember F1 saying, “We're not going to be able to survive without tobacco advertising.” They were basically mobile tobacco packet ads with Marlboro ads on the cars going past; it was completely absurd. And we've got rid of it.

That was partly through the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. We simply have to take these things much more seriously.

I get very cross with people who say we couldn't survive without this. I love sport, but I think we probably could. Across pretty much all sport, there is a lot of money coming in from other places. We don't have to be dependent on junk food and alcohol. It's completely inappropriate.

Read More: High Sugar, Salt Or Fat? India May Mandate Red Hexagon Labels On Food Packs

Q: Are food labels enough, or should sports advertising also be restricted?

Dr. Robin: Labelling helps, but it's only part of the solution. Not everybody has the time or resources to read labels, and people will still buy what they can afford and what is accessible.

In the UK, we've had some advertising controls, but as we saw with tobacco, sport does its own thing. Sport seems to be allowed a free ride.

In India and the UK, sport is huge, and politicians are in love with it. Advertising, particularly for junk food, is everywhere. Sport will find a way around restrictions unless it's specifically mentioned. In India, you're not allowed to have alcohol advertising, but sport seems to have found a way around it.

We need to take regulation more seriously and recognise that people will find ways around it. It has to be robust to work.

Q: What would effective regulation of unhealthy-product marketing in sport look like?

Dr. Robin: We could be talking about that a long time, so let's come up with one or two manageable measures. I don't think sugary drinks companies or alcohol should be named in event titles. I also don't think brands should appear on the front of shirts or uniforms.

You can also have rules around advertising when events are broadcast. In the UK, we've taken steps around gambling. In the English Premier League, gambling brands have been removed from the front of shirts, and gambling ads can't be shown during the advertising break in the middle of games. It's a limited move, but it's a start.

The IPL has a cola sponsor and a packaged drinking water sponsor that happens to be an alcohol brand. We need to get away from that. It's inappropriate. The Asian Games, interestingly, has 62 sponsors. As far as I can tell, only one is particularly unhealthy, and I'd rather they weren't there either, because it's an official hydration partner that is yet again a sugary drink. But it shows there are people willing to support sport outside these industries, and we perhaps need to look at them more.

Awareness about mental health has grown, but access to care remains a challenge. For women, stigma is only one barrier. Social and family responsibilities, financial dependence, caregiving, geographical gaps, and the tendency to dismiss symptoms as “hormonal” can also delay care, said experts on World Suicide Prevention Day 2026.

HealthandMe spoke to mental health experts about why awareness has not translated into equitable access to care.

WHO estimates that 6.9% of adult women globally have depression, compared with 4.6% of adult men — making depression about 1.5 times more common among women.

“Awareness has grown faster than access, but this isn't a gap women are failing to close on their own; it's a reflection of where women are placed in our social and family structures to begin with,” Dr Kavita, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Founding Cohort Member, India Mental Health Alliance and Co-founder, Children First, told HealthandMe.

She said the gaps extend across diagnosis, research, interventions and care pathways. “Currently, care pathways, definitions, interventions and policies do not center women,” she said.

Why Women Delay Mental Healthcare

Dr Mimansa Singh Tanwar, Senior Clinical Psychologist and Head of the Fortis School Mental Health Program, said stigma is compounded by social and cultural barriers.

“Gender roles, unequal distribution of power, financial dependence, even the caregiving responsibilities, safety concerns, all of these are some of the social and cultural factors that affect women's access to mental health care,” she said.

Women may also put family responsibilities ahead of their own health.

“Women still tend to forego care because of the added responsibility that they continue to have when it comes to taking care of family and other responsibilities,” Tanwar told HealthandMe.

Dr Priyanka Mittal, Clinical Psychologist and Lead, IMHA, said financial dependence can limit women's ability to seek care.

“When a woman doesn't control her own finances, seeking help for her mental health isn't a decision she gets to make independently,” she said.

The expert highlighted how women's distress are often minimized.

“She's called ‘sensitive,’ ‘hormonal,’ or ‘going through her problems’ — rather than recognized as someone with a mental health concern worth addressing,” Mittal told HealthandMe.

When Symptoms Are Dismissed As ‘Hormonal’

Pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and menopause can involve biological changes that affect mood. But experts caution against treating persistent distress as simply hormonal.

WHO estimates that about 10% of pregnant women and 13% of women who have recently given birth experience a mental disorder, primarily depression.

“While there are biological changes that can affect our mood and can lead to anxiety, depression, irritability, and emotional exhaustion, these biological changes should not be only connoted as being hormonal and phase-like,” Tanwar said.

Dr Jothi Neeraja, Founder, Chairwoman and MD, Maarga MindCare Hospitals, said women's distress is often attributed to life circumstances rather than recognised as a mental health concern.

“During pregnancy, after childbirth and around menopause, symptoms may also be attributed only to hormonal changes,” she said.

Dr Kavita said even well-meaning explanations can delay care.

“A lot of it comes from genuinely well-meaning explanations,” she said. “Mood changes after childbirth are common, so families, and sometimes clinicians, default to ‘it's just hormones’ or ‘every new mother feels this way.’”

“Duration, severity and functional impact matter more than the explanation someone reaches for,” she said.

Rural Women Face Another Care Gap

The experts noted that access to mental health can be even more limited outside urban centers.

“If a woman reaches a medical system at all, it's usually a PHC, and usually for an emergency or childbirth — not for mental health,” Mittal said.

Tele-services such as Tele-MANAS and other free or affordable services have started helping bridge some of the gap, particularly in tier-two and rural areas, she said.

Dr Kavita also pointed to gaps in community-level mental health infrastructure, saying services closer to women may be too limited to provide meaningful care.

Access Is Not Enough

Starting treatment does not guarantee continuity of care. “Even if, let's say, care is started, the continuity with which one is able to maintain that may not be there again because of the multiple responsibilities that they have to bear,” Tanwar said.

Neeraja said mental healthcare must extend beyond helplines. “For women, however, access cannot end with a helpline,” she said.

She called for continuity of care, affordable specialists, screening through reproductive and primary healthcare services, privacy and stronger referral systems.

“Mental healthcare becomes meaningful when seeking help is easy, safe and followed by appropriate care,” she said.

Mittal described treatment as a chain in which every step matters.

“It's a series of events... you need to know it exists, then know where to go, then know the steps that follow. Miss any link, and the cycle of treatment or intervention breaks,” she said.

Building Women-Centered Mental Healthcare

The experts said mental healthcare should be integrated into services women already use.

“It would meet women where they already are, rather than expecting them to seek out psychiatry or therapy separately,” Dr Kavita said.

This could include mental health screening during antenatal and postnatal visits, training obstetricians and gynecologists to identify concerns, and helping primary-care providers recognise warning signs.

Families and partners can also play a role in recognizing changes and encouraging women to seek help.

Awareness, the experts said, must ultimately translate into accessible, affordable and continuous care. “Women-centered care isn't a separate track; it's the standard track for care, done well,” Dr Kavita said.

Prostate cancer remains the fourth most common cancer worldwide and the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men across most nations, with an estimated 1.5 million new cases and nearly 420,000 deaths in 2024 alone.

Despite how common it is, misinformation still shapes how men view their risk, symptoms, and treatment choices. Here's a closer look at some myths that just won't go away, and what the evidence actually says.

1. Myth: A high prostate-specific antigen (PSA) number automatically means cancer.

Fact: PSA can rise for reasons that have nothing to do with cancer, including prostatitis and an enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH). A raised PSA is a cue to investigate further, not a diagnosis in itself.

2. Myth: Prostate cancer always comes with warning symptoms.

Fact: Early-stage disease is usually silent. Most men are picked up through screening or incidental testing, and symptoms like trouble urinating typically show up only once the cancer has advanced.

Also read: Hot Tea, Coffee May Triple Esophageal Cancer Risk: Study

3. Myth: Testosterone therapy fuels prostate cancer.

Fact: This idea comes from decades-old research. More recent studies haven’t found that testosterone replacement therapy meaningfully raises prostate cancer risk in most men, though doctors still monitor patients on it as a precaution.

4. Myth: No family history means you’re in the clear.

Fact: A family history does raise risk, but most men diagnosed have no affected close relative. Age, ethnicity, and lifestyle count just as much.

5. Myth: Treatment always leaves men permanently impotent or incontinent.

Fact: Side effects vary depending on the treatment, the person’s overall health, and the stage of cancer. Many men see real improvement within a year, and not everyone experiences these issues at all.

Also read: 9/11-Linked Cancer Cases Surge 75%: Why Researchers Are Concerned

6. Myth: Only older men need to worry about this.

Fact: Risk does climb with age, especially past 50, but men in their forties can be affected too, particularly with a strong family history or certain genetic mutations.

7. Myth: Getting a vasectomy raises your risk of prostate cancer.

Fact: Decades of research have consistently found no link between vasectomy and prostate cancer risk, despite how persistent this myth has been.

8. Myth: A prostate cancer diagnosis means your days are numbered.

Fact: Prostate cancer has one of the highest survival rates among major cancers when caught early, and many men live for decades after diagnosis. Outcomes depend heavily on the stage and grade at diagnosis, not the diagnosis itself, and many low-risk cases never need aggressive treatment at all.

9. Myth: How often a man ejaculates affects his prostate cancer risk.

Fact: Several large studies have found no such link, and some even suggest higher ejaculation frequency may be tied to slightly lower risk. It isn’t something men need to actively manage.

Created for general disease awareness only. Kindly consult your physician for any further information.