How does the body know when to produce more blood? Is there a difference between quickly producing more blood to make up for an injury vs slowly producing more blood for a body gaining more mass?
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Your body is always producing blood cells (as long as you have healthy marrow) and old blood cells are continuously dying off. Without injury or growth, they reach an equilibrium where the rate of death equals the rate of production.
If you do grow or suffer an injury, some of your cells in your kidney will notice that they aren’t getting oxygen as quickly as they used to. They’ll create a hormone called EPO (erythropoietin, which is also used by athletes as a performance enhancing drug). Your bone marrow reacts to EPO by going into overdrive and creating blood cells much faster than usual to try to recover.
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