Where Your Red Blood Cells Come From:
The Controversy

By now you may have been asking yourself the following question.

"Where does my blood come from?"

You're going to find the information on this subject of where your blood comes from compelling because it's quite different from what 99% of the medical community considers to be fact.

It is (supposedly) common knowledge that your blood is created in the marrow of your bones. Here's how it works. If your kidneys start receiving low amounts of oxygen, some of their cells stimulate the activation of a hormone known as erythropoietin. Erythropoietin then travels to your red bone marrow and stimulates increased production of red blood cells. However, this is only partly true. Here's the background on why.

In 1952, four physiologists (Jordon, Donn, Sabin and Cunningham… all doctors) did a two week starvation experiment using doves and chickens.

After doing autopsies on the animals, they concluded that blood production in the animals was originating from the marrow of their bones. This was in fact the case. But they missed a very important point.

These were not normal, healthy animals!

These were starving animals. What the scientists were in fact witnessing was simply the animal's reaction to starvation where, with no resources from which to build the blood, the body goes into wasting mode and builds new blood through the biological transformation of bone matter, muscle and other tissue into blood.

When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense because all animals, including humans, would be expected to experience periods of time in nature when food is not readily available. Doves, chickens and human beings would not have survived the evolutionary process if they did not have some sort of mechanism to continually be able to create new blood during times of scarce food or even starvation. Similar experiments on rabbits bears this out.

For example, it is known that rabbits have between 5.5 million to 6 million red blood cells. And during starvation experiments scientists have found that if they are fed nothing they will die in 2 to three weeks from starvation. As much as this may sound brutal, we can certainly give these poor rabbits some credit because they have demonstrated something quite profound that will benefit you greatly if you continue to follow the logic here.

During this period of starvation the number of red blood cells in these rabbits never decreases to less than 3 million. So how is it possible for a rabbit to maintain a constant amount of red blood cells during starvation?

In other words, how are they able to make new ones without the raw materials that normally come from the food they eat?

It's because the rabbits are able to take body cells and transform them into red blood cells. Reverse transform them actually. In fact, it has been shown that these rabbits will actually have empty body cells after they have been examined through autopsy. It has been found that the cells of the liver or kidneys (and even the brain) become porous in these rabbits.

This is evidence that, in order to ensure that the all-important blood supply remains intact, the rabbit's body will use bone and tissue cells to create red blood cells. And as one would expect, all animals have this capability. Including humans.

So what very important point did these doctors miss? They never asked the question, "Where is the focal point of blood production in HEALTHY doves and chickens?" All they proved was that starving doves, chickens and rabbits produce new blood from their bone marrow (among other places) when they are starving.

So let's get back to the original question which is this:

"Where is the primary focal point of blood production
in healthy humans?"

It turns out that scientists in Japan and the United States who have studied the blood and blood production believe that although blood can be created through the bone marrow, the primary source in healthy humans comes from… are you ready for this…

The villi in your intestinal tract!

Now, think about this for a minute. If this is true, then your small intestine is truly the heart and soul of your body. Here's why.

First, the proper absorption of the nutrients from your food, which is the fuel that keeps all the cells in your body alive, depends on the quality of your small intestine. This alone should be enough of a reason to put the health of your small intestine as your top priority.

Second, if the primary source of red blood cell production is the villi area of your small intestine then not only does your small intestine create the means by which your food is absorbed and made ready to be transported to your cells, but it is ALSO responsible for creating the red blood cells that transport the life sustaining oxygen to all of your cells.

How does all this work? Find out in the next issue of Foundations of Health.

Yours in health,

- Andy

Go back to the first page of this issue.