Your blood has nothing to do with true love

CHENNAI: Love letters written with blood were proof of true love in the 90s, thanks to movies popularising it. Social media seems to have brought it back, as it’s trending on Instagram in the form of reels.

From Instagram art pages to individual influencer accounts, love letters written with blood are doing the rounds. Aside from the ick factor, it wouldn’t behove its ardent fans to remember that it’s a health hazard to be writing in one’s own blood.

What’s surprising is that the trend does not stop with love letters. Artists have drawn face sketches using the blood of an individual. Apparently, the trend is an example of brevity and lauded on social media.

This insanity has led to many emergency-cases reaching government hospitals. The issue reached the State assembly too when Health Minister Ma Subramanian issued a warning on the risk it poses to one’s health in the form of infections or damage to the veins, which can often turn fatal.

Government doctors said that most patients in the ER were teenagers with cuts on hands and wrists, and immense blood loss due to damage to the veins. They reuse syringes to draw blood, which leads to many infections. The cuts could lead to blood loss that can cause irreversible damage.

Nothing fancy or brave about it, doctors opined, and called such life-threatening acts utterly stupid.