• Question: how many blood cells do we have?

    Asked by Alix to Cristina, Gemma, Loan, Michael, Praveen on 10 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by horsey10.
    • Photo: Gemma Barron

      Gemma Barron answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Hi @358hrtd28,
      Thank you for your interesting question. I knew that we had a lot of blood cells in our bodies but, I didn’t know exactly how many so, I had to look it up and we have approximately 20-30 trillion at any one time. However, your cells do not fill out a form so they can’t tell us themselves and although we can see them through a microscope and count the number we see, this method isn’t practical when you think about all the blood cells in our bodies at one time. Even if we counted 10 cells per second, it would take us tens thousands years to finish counting. We also can’t drain you of all of your blood and count each cell so the number I have written is an estimation. I hope that answers your question. Thanks, Gemma

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