Sometimes your body doesn’t know — hypertrophic scars are an example of this, and keloids a more extreme example. These are caused by fibroblast proliferation and excessive collagen (building blocks of scars). Keloids must sometimes be managed with steroid injections, or other not so successful treatment modalities.
Your body has essentially three phases of wound healing.
1. Alarm phase where cells involved in the tissue damage release signaling molecules that recruit other cells to get their ass over and help stem bleeding and kill microbes.
2. Resolving phase where recruited cells begin to transition from an activated defense state to laying down new tissue and clearing debri
3. Resolution phase where final touches are put on the wound site and scab like tissue is transformed into normal or scar tissue.
The transition between these phases is largely determined by what the cells see in the wound site. If microbe or damage persists, phase one may be longer and more intense. If wound is broken open or aggravated, phase two may be longer etc.
When blood is coming out of a wound, it just dries up, creating a seal over the wound until the skin under it has grown back (and skin is always reproducing itself, you just don’t notice).
Your blood also has cells in it that help battle infection and viruses, like white blood cells and antibodies. Those are always in the blood and do basically nothing until they come across a bacteria or virus that shouldn’t be there. There is a reaction that should kill the intruder. Once the intruder is killed, there is nothing left to cause a reaction, so everything just turns back to normal.
You body really doesn’t control any of that. The only thing it does do is making sure that there are enough cells and antibodies.
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