Thick blood

What actually causes increased blood viscosity? For as long as I can remember, my blood has always felt thick; whenever I’ve had to do a finger prick for testing, medical staff have always made a point of commenting on how dense it seems.

The only real symptom I’ve noticed is that building up cardiovascular endurance feels like an uphill battle, and I tend to lose whatever progress I make quite rapidly (even though I stay active with regular recreational sports).

Any thoughts or ideas?

So, what did your blood work actually look like when they ran the tests?

For instance, I deal with this issue myself because my red blood cell count is always running high.
It could be an excess of platelets or high cholesterol, too,
or it might just be something as simple as being dehydrated.

Chloe Hughes2 said:What actually causes increased blood viscosity? For as long as I can remember, my blood has always felt thick; whenever I’ve had to do a finger prick for testing, medical staff have always made a point of commenting on how dense it seems.

The only real symptom I’ve noticed is that building up cardiovascular endurance feels like an uphill battle, and I tend to lose whatever progress I make quite rapidly (even though I stay active with regular recreational sports).

Any thoughts or ideas?

And there you have it—the blood work results.
Any history of lung or blood diseases in the family?

I’ve mostly just been doing casual finger-stick tests, like checking my blood sugar on a whim. I'm going to dig through my medical records, but what specific markers should I be looking for?
As far as I know, there isn't much of a history of lung disease in my family, and I'm not entirely sure which conditions fall under hematology—if I understood correctly, things like anemia and such—but there hasn't been anything like that either. I do deal with varicose veins myself (on one leg, for about 20 years), and it runs in my family too, if that even counts as a hematological issue.

It definitely isn't dehydration; I make sure to drink plenty of fluids, mostly just water and tea.

Chloe Hughes2 said:I’ve mostly just been doing casual finger-stick tests, like checking my blood sugar on a whim. I'm going to dig through my medical records, but what specific markers should I be looking for?
As far as I know, there isn't much of a history of lung disease in my family, and I'm not entirely sure which conditions fall under hematology—if I understood correctly, things like anemia and such—but there hasn't been anything like that either. I do deal with varicose veins myself (on one leg, for about 20 years), and it runs in my family too, if that even counts as a hematological issue.

It definitely isn't dehydration; I make sure to drink plenty of fluids, mostly just water and tea.

You really ought to get a standard CBC, fibrinogen, and a lipid panel done.
Though, if you ask me, I bet they won't find much of anything.
Check for erythrocyte or platelet disorders.

I think I’ll bring this up with my doctor at my next appointment. I actually checked my blood sugar levels the other day, which prompted me to spend some time digging around online to see what might be going on.

The whole idea of having "thick blood" is just some layman's term that doesn't actually mean anything unless you're looking at a real blood panel. Honestly, there might not even be an issue at all.

I got told the same thing—apparently my blood is too thick because my red blood cell count is up. Honestly, I’m just sitting right at the upper limit, so it’s not exactly a crisis or anything. Usually, if you actually cross that line into the danger zone, the standard treatment is just therapeutic phlebotomy. Basically, they just drain some blood every few weeks to thin things out enough.