💊Daily Pill: Red Blood Cells
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The Daily Pill is a series of very short daily posts where I share the definition of a medical term I think we should all know. Read it every morning and build up your medical vocabulary.
🩸Red Blood Cells
Blood is composed of:
Plasma (the liquid part)
Cells (the solid part, or more like the gooey part - cells are probably gooey)
Cells in blood can be either white blood cells (in charge of homeland security), or red blood cells (in charge of carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues, and carrying carbon dioxide on the way back).
Red blood cells don’t have a nucleus like other cells do - they get rid of it so they can make extra room to carry more hemoglobin - the protein that binds to oxygen/carbon dioxide, and actually does the carrying. Hemoglobin contains iron - hence the color, the name, and the rusty smell.
🤔Why you need to know:
You need to have the precise amount of red blood cells with the precise amount of hemoglobin in your blood. You can look at the red blood cell count, hematocrit, and hemoglobin values in your latest bloodwork to make sure that this is the case. Here are my numbers from last month, looking like a champ- I actually play bloodwork competitively with my friends:
If these numbers are too low, you may be anemic, your oxygen-carrying capacity may be decreased, and your ability to exercise will be the hindered as a result. There are many different types of anemia and the treatment depends on the cause.
If the number is too high, the situation is a little bit more complex and falls outside the scope of this post.
🧠Trivia:
We make about 2 million red blood cells every second 🥵. But here is the juicy part:
Some people actually draw their own blood and stash it in the fridge. They let their body bounce back by making more red blood cells over a few days. Once things are back to normal, they infuse their stored blood back into their bodies, boosting their red blood cell count and oxygen-carrying capacity as result. This is what's known as blood doping. 😯