O positive as a matter of fact… but by typing “what blood type am i” into a search engine I’m sure you were really more curious as to how you can find out your blood type, what interesting facts there are about your blood type or just how blood typing works and affects our lives. Here we try and answer all of those questions in different posts around the site but first let’s figure out your blood type.
There are primary ways that you can find out your type:
- Donate Blood
- Use home blood typing kits
- Call your doctor and get the some labs drawn.
There is a more detailed article on the site about each of these options here: How do you find out your blood type?
If you are interested in how and why blood typing works I’ll give you the general idea and highlight our more specific posts via links throughout the article. You are given 1/2 of your blood type from your mother and half from your father through simple mendelian genetics. These genes code for different sugars attached to proteins, called antigens, on the surface of your blood. This is what gives people their different blood types of which there are four in the ABO blood typing system: A, B, AB, and O.
Of course, blood typing doesn’t just stop there. When thinking about what blood type you are, you will also want to know whether you are positive or negative. The terms positive and negative really just refer to another common antigen called Rhesus factor D. This is a separate genetically coded antigen which we inherit. Rhesus factors are actually numerous but the “factor D” is the only one that really plays into whether your blood is “positive” or “negative” because it can have severe consequences in the form of transfusion reactions and miscarriages among pregnant women. As a note all of these negative reactions are avoidable given proper medical typing and precautions, especially miscarriages.
So with the positive and negative added to your blood type, there become 8 different blood types that are commonly found. As a note, there are also thousands of other antigens and antibodies that are related to blood and our immune system but they are rarely documented because of their infrequency or their lack of negative medical outcomes.
If you know your type already then there are also several articles that we are compiling on an ongoing basis about your specific blood type facts. This is my favorite part of the site and all of our sources for information are well sited. However, this is definitely the place where you can contribute the most. If you have suggestions about content you would like us to add about your blood type then please send us a request. However, there is one thing that we will not be posting about in these pages. There is very loose and badly compiled data about how someone’s blood type causally determines their personality traits. In our research we have found that the data is fraught with problems and seems to be a downright scam or just very badly done statistics without proving causality at all. There are so many characteristics that make up a person’s personality that it seems to us that to try and causally link blood types and personality traits is very bad science and therefore we don’t write about it.
We hope that you enjoy finding out what blood type you are, learning more about blood typing, and the interesting facts about your specific type. Let us know if there are additional content areas you would like for us to cover and we will do our best. - The staff of what blood type am I.