Eli5: How long does it take for blood to die? Is it even alive in the first place?

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I work at a place that makes blood sausage and the older blood gets the thicker it seems to become. Is it coagulating? It also seems to take a while to go off (I’ve not experienced it going bad) which kind of blows me away.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Blood cells are not alive. Although it makes sense why you’d think that since there are plenty of single-celled organisms, blood cells are dependent on the human body so without being inside of it they start to deteriorate rapidly. I don’t know much about how blood sausage is made unfortunately lol. With refrigeration medical centers can store blood for about 42 days, after that the cells aren’t very viable. I don’t know if blood sausage uses whole blood or just plasma, but if you just use plasma then it can last upwards of a year if frozen / kept very cold.

Anonymous 0 Comments

>How long does it take for blood to die? Is it even alive in the first place?

_Blood_ is composed of many different things. There are both living and nonliving components to blood.

The largest living component of blood and the most well-known is the _red blood cell_, or RBC. RBCs, under normal circumstances live for about 100-120 days in the body.

Are RBCs truly alive? Yes. All cells are considered to be alive.

RBCs require energy to function. They “eat” sugar and require oxygen, and without those resources, like all living cells, they will die quickly. Thus the blood that you encounter at work is dead.

>the older blood gets the thicker it seems to become. Is it coagulating?

No. Coagulation, or blood clotting, requires substances that are no longer present. Blood often does coagulate in the body after death, but will turn liquid over time. It cannot reclot.

>It also seems to take a while to go off (I’ve not experienced it going bad) which kind of blows me away.

Putrefaction (“going off”) happens to all formerly living tissues. The substances that make up the tissues degrade, and bacterial and fungal action causes changes that we are all familiar with. Keeping things refrigerated or frozen, and using clean containers and tools can delay this.