So I just went and donated blood again and durring the recovery period it occured to me that it takes quite a bit of work for your body to regenerate that lost blood volume and the actual blood cells. Regrowing that many cells seems like it would be fairly energetically intensive. So how many calories does producing all those new blood cells actually consume? Is there even a way to know that?
It’s something you’ll never truly figure out and can’t really as your body is a constant state of maintenance. When my brother was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia, the next day he didn’t really grow a beard. Makes sense. When you’re at deaths door, maybe don’t worry about growing hair.
Your body is always managing resources.
Basically it’s going to take the energy needed from other maintenance items (hair, nails, skin, etc.) and devote them to blood manufacturing. It’s also going to cut your energy to save calories so you’ll feel pretty sluggish for a bit.
How we currently deal with calories is just wildly misleading.
Yeah. “Calories in calories out” is correct in theory but it is an oversimplification. Most people burn a vastly majority of their calories “at rest” by just maintaining their body temperature.
I dunno. I usually give platelets.
I’ve always been under the belief it’s a day’s worth of calories.
Considering a day’s worth of calories varies by person and that the general recommendation is 2,000 calories per day for an average, active adult I would question this idea
We have 10-ish units of blood in our body. When we donate we give one unit. A unit is around 500ml. Someone else on the thread says 650 cal per donation. That means each ml of blood takes 1.3 calories to make. Work harder you lazy bastards! I didn’t make you out of butter to pump like this!
Then wouldn’t it make sense to not put an actual figure down for how much donating is actually freeing up?
