(For the donor, I mean). In addition to the basic content of the blood, I imagine there’s some amount of energy that goes into producing the replaced blood. I know it happens over time, but what would the net amount of nutrients be expected to be?
How close is Lamb’s Blood to human? I assume close enough for nutritional value lost.
There’s also this which is supposedly formulated to match blood, but the sodium looks low, sugar is way too high, and the caffeine level is probably toxic.
Well, I’d heard that the spleen holds at least one pints worth of red blood cells, and releases them as needed. (I don’t have an absolute quantitative citation for that, so just help if you know better, don’t club.) So I suppose you need: a pint of water, several mg of NaCl (I know of no concentrated salt reservoir in the human body) and maybe a gram of protein. I suppose a pint of animal plasma would be almost perfect. Because the will have slightly more or less of some amino acids here and there in their blood proteins. As I understand it, whey is compositionally very similar to plasma, and pretty easy to get.
So once you get the proteins and the other elements, that’s pretty much it? Is the cost of producing the cell negligible compared to the rest?
Ah. Yes. I didn’t think of it that way. I guess you do have to replace the reserve in the spleen, don’t you? I guess you better head to the butcher’s shop and buy a pint of animal blood – if you’re in a real hurry to provide your body with the nearest possible replacement building blocks ASAP.
Well, it certainly takes time. The Red Cross’s rules on donating only one unit (a little more than a pint) every 8 weeks are probably more conservative than they strictly need to be, but it at least provides a starting point for estimates.
According to Wikipedia: