How Does the Body Make Blood?

Video transcription

Did you know that the average person has a gallon to a gallon and a half of this substance in their body. Hi I'm Janice Creneti and I'm here to talk to you about how the body makes blood. But in order to understand how the body makes blood, you really have to understand what blood is all about. Blood is actually made of four different parts. In fact if you ever donated blood you may notice that they take that blood and they separate it into the parts before they ship it off to the hospital. So lets look at what some of the parts are that are in blood. One of the primary components is your red blood cells. They are the ones here that look sort of like a donut. They are actually part of what helps your body carry oxygen. You also have your white blood cells. You may be familiar with those as helping you with fighting off disease in your body. Sometimes if you go to the doctor they actually will take your white blood cell count and if it's up, it means you are probably fighting off an infection. Then there's these little guys right here. And they are called platelets. Platelets are responsible for helping you to have your blood clot if you ever gotten a cut. If you've ever seen a scab, well that's made mostly of platelets. And then all of those cells are floating around in a substance called plasma. Which is actually a clear liquid. So where does this stuff actually come from in your body. Well plasma is mostly water and it's absorbed into your body through your intestines when you are consuming food and water. The rest of these, your platelets, your red blood cells and your white blood cells are actually made believe it or not inside of the marrow. That's the goopy stuff that's inside of your bones. So the white blood cells, the red blood cells, the platelets get made by the bone marrow and they float around in the plasma, the water that's absorbed by the body. All those four components together make the blood that's coursing through you and helping to keep you alive. I'm Janice Creneti and this is how your body makes blood.