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?
The number floating around the web is 650 calories but I haven’t been able to track down the actual source.
(Google Scholar is no help at all. Whoever these UCSD researchers are, I have no bloody clue.)
So I can shotgun two pints of beer after a donation (gotta rehydrate!) and still be a couple hundred calories ahead? Win-win!
And you’ll get drunker due to the blood loss!
Jokes aside, you shouldn’t drink alcohol the day before and after your donation