do vampires suffer from mental and chronic illness ONLY because the human was suffering with those things prior to turning or can these ailments occur post transition?
how do vampire bodies really work. like obviously they drink blood because they aren’t producing any. but like what about chemicals and brain function and hormone balancing. especially as a female vampire. OH!! ok so obviously the female reproductive system affects a lot about women’s health and emotions, so if you were of menstruating age and had a period cycle when turned and it just stopped do you think their hormones would be unbalanced in the same way that having a hysterectomy and the absence of a uterus and period can leave a woman in need of certain hormonal supplements.
maybe female vampires have to be extra particular about who they feed from. like if a woman had pcos and was turned then she might not want to feed from men or other people with pcos and unbalanced hormones because the excess testosterone and progesterone could cause a bad flare up
any vampire dietitians and women’s health experts that find this in 10 years plz share your thoughts
Considering how there are constantly blood shortages and how many people need the blood that is donated to live, wouldn’t it make more sense for so called “enlightened” vampire stories to have the vampires take no more than 470 milligrams from from non donors, rather than stealing from blood banks? I mean, there seems to be consent issues either way, and in that scenario less people would die from being unable to get a blood transfusion and literally nothing would happen to the other party except they might need to drink a bit more water the next day?
This is for @spikesjojo who commented on a reblog to this post that Angel had human blood in his fridge. That got me thinking and sent me down a rabbit hole…
We know that Vampires do not need to eat to live as they will not die of starvation. We also know that they will suffer if they don’t eat and that they get hungry. How often, then, should they drink and are there better types of blood? We’ll start with the latter.
We know that Whistler told Angel that he could buy blood from butcher shops. However, in the episode Angel, Angel had human blood in his fridge. It could be that he turned his nose up at animal blood, and changed his mind as his character matured. However, given that he’d been living of rats for over two decades, I doubt that this is true. Thus, the implication comes that, to be healthy, vampires do require certain amounts of human blood. This is supported by the fact that, to revive Angel, Wesley feeds him his own blood as only human blood would be “substantial” enough to revive him. So, how much human blood does Angel need?
Unfortunately, we don’t have enough information to be sure. We do have one tantalizing hint though in the picture of Angel’s fridge above. I’m making the assumption here that the bags are human blood and the bottles are animal. Now, blood will expire if its kept more than 42 days, but it is better if used within 5 as the platelets will not last. This means that Angel, who has four half-liter bags of human blood, would best drink it within five days. So, I’d estimate that he needs a half-liter of human blood a day. However, that seems quite excessive, especially given the effects human blood can have on vampire as seen later in the show, so let’s say platelets aren’t a concern and that Angel only needs a half-liter of human blood about every once a week or once every week and a half. We would have to assume that these small amounts of human blood imbibed to remain healthy are so minute that they wouldn’t be detected by the checks Angel has going when he takes over Wolfram and Hart.
Which leads us into how much blood, animal and human, does Angel need to drink total? Well, typically, we only see Angel drink in the mornings. He has a large glass full which amounts to a quarter of a liter. He drinks this, from what I can observe, everyday. This amounts to a total of 1.75 liters a week. So, let’s just say Angel needs two liters of blood a week. This would also answer the how much do vampires need to feed question. The average human has between 4-6 liters of blood in their body, so I’d say a vampire would need to feed once or twice a month. This also explains how it is that vampires share their food like when Angel offered to share Xander with Spike, or Darla to share Joyce with Angel. There really is plenty of blood to go around. This fact comes with the implication that 4-6 liters might be too much to drink for one vampire at a time unless they were starving or gluttonous. This means that there are three options a) share, b) hunt more often, c) keep the prey chained up. There is evidence for all of the above. We’ve seen vampires share, we’ve seen them only drink a few gulps before leaving a body behind, and we’ve seen them chain people up. Incidentally, Angel once threatened to chain someone up and feed off of them for a month. This lends credence to the idea that vampires need one body a month, (in spite of the fact that I’m sure Angel was exaggerating and trying to intimidate the man he was threatening.) So, once or twice a month it is.
However, if Angel does need human blood, and he sometimes drinks human blood to be healthy, where does the idea of going through “withdrawal symptoms” come from when weaning off human blood? Well, I found a delightful essay by Peasant entitled Vampire Feeding Habits Reconsidered which explains it quite nicely. In it, Peasant examines the vampire from the lens of a predator and his/her relationship with prey. It can be observed that predators are frequently predictable in their hunting patterns, however, when presented with many targets, like a “fox in a hen-house” they can go on a killing spree. After this killing spree is over, the predator frequently returns to the sight of the killings looking for more. Further, now that he/she has killed so frequently, being limited from that excess of hunting can lead to withdrawal-like symptoms in animals. This can be observed in Spike’s behavior in Season 7 and Angel’s when he is fed his own son’s blood everyday (rather then his usual once every 1.5 weeks for human blood). Suddenly, they both got an excess of “good” blood and were frustrated when they were denied the ability to get more, more, more. Hence, it became like an addiction. They got used to the excess and came to crave it. Suddenly, everything and everyone seems like food. (I would recommend you read the essay as Peasant explains it so much better then my brief and poor summary.)
Incidentally, I doubt all blood is equal, even if it’s human. When Darla brings Jesse to the Master, she says “his blood is pure.” This indicates that there is “impure” blood. I would imagine that drug-riddled blood isn’t so good and neither is the blood of the diseased. I would further imagine that drinking the blood of a drunk individual would lead to a drunk vampire due to the victim's high BAC. Even more intriguing is the fact that humans produce stress hormones when they’re afraid. Angelus claimed that “fear makes the blood taste sweeter.” Who knows? Maybe it does.
Not all vampires are allergic to garlic. Pure vampires are more susceptible to the garlic allergy gene than humans, and since pure populations aren’t massive, the allergy is noticeably common within the species, but it is not universal. Vampires can be allergic to other things too, but the garlic allergy is the most common.
If a person without an allergy is turned, they don’t automatically get the allergy, same as if someone with an allergy gets turned, they don’t automatically lose that allergy.
This of course means vampires must eat “normal” food as well, and that’s where it gets more complicated.
Before we go into that, let’s clarify the difference between “pure” vampires and “turned” vampires.
Pure vampires are vampires that have always been vampires, whose parents are also pure vampires. Pure vampires are not seen as being more important or dominant that Turned vampires, in fact, their rarer by a large extent due to persecution [we’ll get around to that in a different post]. Pure vampires have the ability to turn humans into vampires, but can choose whether they do this or not, most of the time choosing not to, unless the person specifically asks to be. Often times, cases of turning involve a vampire and their lover.
“Turned” vampires however are vampires that were once human. They are more common and do have some traits in common with Pures, although lacking some supernatural abilities that the Pures have [we’ll get round to that in another post]. Among other things, the Turned cant turn other already living humans into vampires, only Pures can do that.
Anyways, back to vampire diets, if you’ve stuck with it this long then well done.
Pure vampires don’t need “normal” food. They can eat it if they want but they don’t need any of the nutrients derived from the meal, given they’re vampires and their bodies work differently to “natural” animals. They do need blood, but they don’t need to have regular meals. Your average Pure vamp will either have one large feast a week or will drink small amount continuously throughout the week. That being said, there are gluttons out there who overfeast for their own reason- though they are rare. A Pure vampire will often choose to eat “normal” meals throughout the week as well, mostly to keep up appearances. This does no harm to the vampire, but doesn’t have any nutritional value either.
“Turned” vampires however, are still partially human, so their bodies are a weird mix between human and vampire. After a recent turning, the new vampire will need to eat more blood, perhaps three or four feasts a month, as their body adjusts, but once they are fully adjusted, a Turned vampire will find they only really need to feast on blood perhaps once or twice a month. Of course, Turned gluttons appear too, but are once again rare, particularly since making your feeding habits noticeable isn’t a particularly great survival skill.
Due to their still semi-human biology, Turned vamps do need to eat things other than blood to survive, although they don’t need as much as humans do. Often a turned vamp will have at least one “normal” meal a day, often eating majority protein based food [meat, poultry, seafood, ect] and fruit/vegetable. A lot of Turned vampires will eat more than one “normal” meal a day to keep appearances up with friends, family and strangers who don’t know they are vampires, although when first turned, a many find that they temporarily lose their appetite for anything but blood for the first few weeks to a month.
If you’ve read this far thank you and well done, I’m sorry if any of this doesn’t make sense.
regarding the post you reblogged abt vamps keeping domesticated animals: in the book "the reformed vampire support group" by catherine jenks, the vampires keep hedgehogs! (they're also the disgusting little gremlin kind of vamps n i love em)
Some time ago, I posted about vampires going after feral cats. But yes!!!
This is the kind of energy vampire media needs. Have fun with the concept, think about your premise!
Like ok, I get the tortured vampire thing. But you better give me a good reason why your vegetarian vampires can't simply keep animals or own a farm.
Also thanks for the rec, I'll check the book out. It's been a really long time since I've read a book.
Dunno if it helps any of you, but menu planning helps me. So here it is, hopefully you can get an idea or two! The basic plan is to use what I consider the “Vampire Diet” to be, ie one that makes you feel better and hopefully live healthier, just like vampires have enhanced strength and so on. Nothing is going to make you immortal, but hey, it’s just a fun analogy. Vampires have to be careful…
