They must be broken down and they must be recycled in special areas of our body. Now, there are three places where red blood cells are generally recycled and broken down. It's inside our liver, inside the lymph nodes and also inside an organ known as the spleen. The spleen is an organ found in close proximity to our stomach and it not only stores blood in our body, but it also breaks down the red blood cells. Now, recall that some factors that increase the rate of production of red blood cells in our body are exercise, exposure to high altitude hemolytic diseases, damage to the bone marrow, low hemoglobin concentration of content in our blood. And all these things not only lead to the increase in production of red blood cells, but because we also produce more red blood cells, that implies we also have to break down more red blood cells as a result.