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WELCOME
EDUCATION & SOURCES
Good questions start with good information.
Here’s where to begin.
GLOSSARY
Plain-language definitions, written in our own words from standard hematology and cardiology references.
Red blood cells: Disc-shaped cells that carry oxygen.
White blood cells: Larger, less common cells of the immune system.
Platelets: Tiny cell fragments that help blood clot.
Rouleaux: Red cells stacked like a roll of coins.
Fibrin: Protein threads that form as blood clots.
Darkfield: Lighting that makes cells glow against a black background.
Brightfield: Standard lighting, with cells dark against a bright background.
S1 and S2: The “lub” and “dub” of each heartbeat, made as the valves close.
Systole: The working phase, when the heart contracts.
Diastole: The resting phase, when the heart refills.
Cardiac cycle: One full heartbeat: systole plus diastole.
Waveform: A picture of a sound, drawn over time.
Phonocardiogram: A recorded graph of heart sounds.
Stethoscope: The listening tube that started it all in 1816.
MEDIA VAULT
WATCH AND SHARE
Short videos from Drop Focused. Pass them along to anyone who’s curious.
Drop Focused in 42 seconds
Live & Dry Blood Auditing: what you’ll see
Microscope footage: “Blood on 1000x Microscope HD 1080p” by Aurel Manea, CC BY 3.0
Heart Sound Recording: your heart, visualized
Heart sound: “Liz’s heart at tricuspid” by EmilyHopeS, CC BY-SA 4.0
ARTICLE 1
LIVE AND DRY: TWO VIEWS OF ONE DROP
A live view looks at a fresh drop of fingertip blood under a thin glass cover, unstained, so you can watch red cells, white cells and platelets on the screen as they are.
A dry view lets a few drops air-dry on a slide, then looks at the pattern the dried drop leaves behind at low magnification.
Viewing unstained blood with special lighting is a long-standing lab technique. A 1983 paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology used darkfield lighting on unstained blood films (Jamjoom, 1983). Blood also starts to change once it sits on glass. Researchers have shown that bacteria-like particles form in healthy blood on a slide over time, which is one reason the live view happens right away (Scientific Reports, 2017).
Image: rouleaux of blood corpuscles, historical engraving. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0
ARTICLE 2
HOW HEART SOUNDS BECOME A WAVEFORM
Each heartbeat makes two main sounds. The first, S1 or “lub,” comes as the mitral and tricuspid valves close. The second, S2 or “dub,” comes as the aortic and pulmonic valves close (StatPearls: Heart Sounds).
A heart sound recorder places a sensor over the classic listening areas on the chest and draws each sound as a waveform you can watch on the screen. Turning heart sounds into a graph is called phonocardiography, and researchers still use it to study the timing of the heartbeat (PMC review).
Image: waveform drawn from “Liz’s heart at tricuspid” by EmilyHopeS, CC BY-SA 4.0
ARTICLE 3
A SHORT HISTORY OF HEART LISTENING
In 1816, French physician René Laennec rolled paper into a tube to listen to a patient’s chest. His wooden version became the first stethoscope (Wikipedia: Stethoscope).
In the twentieth century, inventors added microphones, amplifiers and recording pens so heart sounds could be printed as a graph (Wikipedia: Phonocardiogram). Today’s recorders do the same job digitally and show the waveform on a laptop.
Image: Laennec’s stethoscope, 1826. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0
ARTICLE 4
YOUR FIRST VISIT
Each session takes about 30 minutes, and you watch everything on the screen as it happens.
LIVE & DRY BLOOD AUDITING
A quick fingertip prick gives a small drop for the live view. A few more drops dry on a second slide for the dry view. Billie points out what appears and answers your questions.
HEART SOUND RECORDING
You relax while a sensor rests over four spots on the chest. For a clear recording, skip food for two hours beforehand, skip caffeine that day, wear one thin layer and arrive ten minutes early to settle in.
ARTICLE 5
WHAT THESE SESSIONS ARE, AND WHAT THEY AREN’T
A live blood view is not a complete blood count (CBC), and a heart sound recording is not an ECG or an echocardiogram. Those are medical tests that your provider orders and reads. Drop Focused sessions are educational. You see and hear your own body, and you bring what you saw to your holistic healthcare provider.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS SO FAR
Studies on viewing fresh blood this way are small and early. A 2016 study of 29 people found that a few red-cell shape and size features lined up with iron and B12 lab values (Keegan et al., 2016). A 2015 university thesis found moderate links between some features and standard lab values (Reeve, 2015). Another study found that two experienced viewers often disagreed about the same sample (Teut et al., 2006). Researchers agree that more work is needed.
Recording heart sounds is well established for capturing valve sounds and rhythm (StatPearls). Drop Focused shows you the waveform and leaves any health conversation to your provider.
SOURCES AND MEDIA CREDITS
SOURCES
Keegan, Arellano and Gruner. Fresh capillary blood analysis using darkfield microscopy. 2016.
Teut, Lüdtke and Warning. Reliability of darkfield microscopy readings, 2006.
Phonocardiography review, PMC.
MEDIA CREDITS
Live blood footage: “Blood on 1000x Microscope HD 1080p” by Aurel Manea, CC BY 3.0.
Dry blood photo by Angelo Popovic, CC BY 4.0.
Heart sound: “Liz’s heart at tricuspid” by EmilyHopeS, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Laennec at the Necker Hospital, by Théobald Chartran. Public domain.
Laennec’s stethoscope, 1826. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0.
Rouleaux of blood corpuscles. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0.