Above All, Reduce Iron

natedawggh

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Hi All,

This article I wrote won't be new to long-time Peaters, but my journey continues to remind me how important it is to avoid Iron in my diet. I've discovered a few tricks like eating foods high in manganese, using cilantro, as well as citrus away from iron-heavy foods to quickly reduce iron toxicity. It's All About Iron

This article I found I also really like: Iron, Food Enrichment and The Theory of Everything

Thanks to everyone here who does so much to contribute to our knowledge and understanding, and have shown me how to improve my condition.
 

FredSonoma

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Thanks go to you man! Your initial posts about health have had a huge impact on my life. I'd say second only to Ray Peat you've been the single most influential person on my eating habits. Thiamine, taurine, riboflavin, and shrimp have all had a huge impact on me and my well-being thanks to your posts.

Edit: and cilantro too!
 

Regina

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Hi All,

This article I wrote won't be new to long-time Peaters, but my journey continues to remind me how important it is to avoid Iron in my diet. I've discovered a few tricks like eating foods high in manganese, using cilantro, as well as citrus away from iron-heavy foods to quickly reduce iron toxicity. It's All About Iron

This article I found I also really like: Iron, Food Enrichment and The Theory of Everything

Thanks to everyone here who does so much to contribute to our knowledge and understanding, and have shown me how to improve my condition.
Thanks for sharing it here.
Wrt tetracycline chelating iron, do you think that all the quinones also chelate iron? For example Lapodin and K2?
thx
 
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Rand56

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Great blog article nate!

Some questions..

So no sugar in the coffee while having meat, or would the properties in coffee alone override the extra iron absortipn from the sugar?

I always thought, and maybe mistakenly, that cilantro can mobilize the heavy metals, but a chelator has to be present to bind to it and help excrete it?

I've been doing some Kale broth, RP style..boiling for only 2 to 3 minutes and just drinking the broth. Is the broth good enough, or would I have to eat the whole kale. or any other leafy green for that matter, to have a better iron chelating effect?
 
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What do you do about liver, it's high iron content. Doesn't coffee also bind with copper that is desirable from liver?
 

tara

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What do you do about liver, it's high iron content. Doesn't coffee also bind with copper that is desirable from liver?
I've got into the habit of smaller portions of liver a few times a week, but it has crossed my mind that I might get less iron if I ate a larger portion just once a week.
 

Luann

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The site you post is cool, OP, like a reader-friendly Peat.
 

tankasnowgod

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Thanks for sharing it here.
Wrt tetracycline chelating iron, do you think that all the quinones also chelate iron? For example Lapodin and K2?
thx

Even if they do chelate iron, I doubt you'd see a measurable change. The tetracyclines have demonstrated some iron chelating ability, but not to the degree of Desferal. 45mg of K2 is a fairly big dose, and Lapodin has 120mg combined of emodin and beta lapachone in the standard dose. When Desferal is used to chelate iron, the dose starts at 1 gram three to four times a week, slowly moving up to about 3 grams dose(50mg/kg of bodyweight). That totals up to 12 grams a week of a very potent chelator. With K2 or Lapodin, you would be getting 5-10% of a much weaker chelator, if they chelate iron at all.
 

tankasnowgod

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What about blood donation?
Is the ferritin/AST ratio that @haidut posted 99% definitive on iron burden?

Blood donation is the quickest and most reliable way to lower iron, and if hemoglobin is about 12.5, it's very safe and presents few side effects.
I've taken a quick look at the study, and I'm not sure ferritin/AST ratio would be more reliable than other markers. I go by ferritin and TSAT, personally.
 

tankasnowgod

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I've got into the habit of smaller portions of liver a few times a week, but it has crossed my mind that I might get less iron if I ate a larger portion just once a week.

I think you would. As more iron is ingested, the percentage absorbed goes down (although total iron absorbed goes up). One of the Duck Dodgers (who wrote the Iron and Food Enrichment article mentioned above) also saw a study that suggested an upper limit for total heme iron ingested during a meal. So, you might get more iron from eating 8 oz of steak than 4oz, but get the same from 8oz, 12oz, 1 pound, or even three pounds. (I changed it to steak cause I couldn't imagine eating three pounds of liver in one meal. YIKES. Steak, however, seems much more doable.)
 

tara

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I changed it to steak cause I couldn't imagine eating three pounds of liver in one meal. YIKES.
Yeah, I've never been able to enjoy a big serving of liver (4oz is pushing it). Which is why I switched to the smaller ones. Maybe I'd be better off going as big as I can enjoy, and space accordingly - maybe every 4-5 days, rather than every second day or so.
 

Rand56

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I think you would. As more iron is ingested, the percentage absorbed goes down (although total iron absorbed goes up). One of the Duck Dodgers (who wrote the Iron and Food Enrichment article mentioned above) also saw a study that suggested an upper limit for total heme iron ingested during a meal. So, you might get more iron from eating 8 oz of steak than 4oz, but get the same from 8oz, 12oz, 1 pound, or even three pounds. (I changed it to steak cause I couldn't imagine eating three pounds of liver in one meal. YIKES. Steak, however, seems much more doable.)

You mentioned Duck Dodgers. One of his/her comments under that article linked above states....

"John, in our research, we found that only calcium can inhibit heme absorption found in meat. The other inhibitors you mention<referring to coffee, tea, or red wine> only inhibit non-heme absorption (which is easily inhibited).

But the heme iron in meat is rather difficult to inhibit without calcium. Perhaps about 20%-50% of heme iron could be transformed to non-heme iron by oven cooking (pan-searing could only transform from 0-20%), and that non-heme iron could be inhibited with the usual coffee, tea, cream sauces, red wine reductions and dairy, etc.

The good news is that some mineral waters contain a lot of calcium, which we believe would inhibit a lot of heme and non-heme iron absorption.

The general rule of thumb, according to the reviews we read, was that you needed between 150mg to 350mg of calcium in a single meal to inhibit a lot of the heme and non-heme iron in a meal. It’s not a complete inhibition, but enough to make a substantial difference. A serving of cheese or a glass of milk or two cups of calcium-rich mineral water is enough to achieve that inhibition."

@natedawggh Your thoughts on calcium being the biggest player here?
 

tankasnowgod

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@natedawggh Your thoughts on calcium being the biggest player here?

Well, I'm not Nate, but calcium is the only substance currently known to inhibit both heme and non-heme iron. Other inhibitors could still be useful for inhibition when eating meat, as "Exposing The Hidden Danger's of Iron" suggests that only half of the iron in meat is heme.

In an interview, E.D. Weinberg suggested that calcium channel blockers can also inhibit iron absorption. This study lends some support to that idea- Calcium channel blocker use and serum ferritin in adults with hypertension. - PubMed - NCBI.

"The study population included 2143 individuals (representing 37.4 million individuals, 42.0 % males). 12.6 % of the population reported taking CCBs in the last month. Individuals taking CCBs had lower mean serum ferritin (129.3 ng/mL versus 154.5 ng/mL, p = 0.02). After adjusting for age, sex, menopause and hysterectomy status for women, race/ethnicity, and C-reactive protein, mean serum ferritin for individuals taking CCBs was 26.3 ng/mL lower than for those not taking CCBs (p = 0.01)"

So, it appears that you can inhibit iron absorption both by blocking calcium, and increasing dietary calcium. Apparently, E.D. Weinberg uses a Calcium Channel Blocker along with aspirin as his iron reduction strategy, while his wife uses blood donation, as detailed in this aforementioned interview- Eugene D. Weinberg on Iron Toxicity - Rogue Health and Fitness
 

Mittir

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I've got into the habit of smaller portions of liver a few times a week, but it has crossed my mind that I might get less iron if I ate a larger portion just once a week.

I thought about it when i switched from weekly liver to daily liver.
I usually eat 1 oz daily which has only 1.4 mg iron.
Unlike muscle meat, liver's iron is mostly non-heme iron.
Itt is about 86% non heme iron and 14% heme iron.
I eat liver as a snack separate from the meal with some
200-300 mg calcium supplement and some coffee with sugar.


There is a wide variance in absorption rate for both heme and
non-heme iron. Non-heme iron 2 to 20 % and heme iron
15 to 35. Even with maximum absorption of 20 and 35 %

Total iron absorbed should be
Non Heme 1.4x 0.86*.x .2 = 0.24 mg
Heme Iron =.1.4x.14x.35= .07 mg

That is total of .31 mg from 1 oz of liver at maximum absorption rate.

If coffee inhibits 50% of no-heme iron then
total absorption is .19 mg. Calcium should
lower some of the total absorption.
less than .19 mg iron from 1 oz of liver is quite small.

At the minimum absorption rate total iron absorption is only 0.05 mg
without any coffee or calcium.

I wondered if large amount of protein in a 4 oz liver
would increase the absorption rate much higher than
protein in 1 oz. Protein causes higher amount of hydrochloric
acid secretion which increases non-heme iron absorption.
 
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BastiFuntasty

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Wouldn't it be OK to just reduce iron content from foods in the diet to lower tissue levels on the long run?
 

michael94

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Blood donation is the quickest and most reliable way to lower iron, and if hemoglobin is about 12.5, it's very safe and presents few side effects.
I've taken a quick look at the study, and I'm not sure ferritin/AST ratio would be more reliable than other markers. I go by ferritin and TSAT, personally.

Blood donation does not get iron out of the liver/spleen/etc ( where it is the problem ) and instead wastes valuable transporting proteins. Most people here if they got tests do not have a ferritin over 200 in which case it would probably be good to donate blood but under 100 it is not a good idea and will make you feel incredibly bad. I tried long ago eating basically ZERO dietary iron, large amounts of iron binding substances, and giving blood it does not work out nicely and will make a lot of people worse. I would suspect many here have low blood iron due to infection and heavy metals.

Ok so reducing excess iron especially the rust used to "enrich" grains is good of course as well as citrus peels because they taste good and help a bit at taking out of the liver. But donating blood is not helpful always.
 

dbh25

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I tried long ago eating basically ZERO dietary iron, large amounts of iron binding substances, and giving blood it does not work out nicely and will make a lot of people worse.
So what exactly happened when it "does not work out nicely"? I'm one of those people who lowered ferritin from over 200 through blood donation. What was you ferritin level when you started zero dietary iron + iron binding substances + blood donation?
 

BobbyDukes

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Does Ray Peat give blood? I wonder if he's concerned with all this iron piling up in his organs. It's been brought up a few times on this forum, like its an actual fact (building levels of organ iron being lethal, and blood iron being irrelevant). Has anyone actually run it by him? I've heard him speak about blood iron and giving blood, but never organ iron. Unless I've missed it.
 

dbh25

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This is from a post by Danny Roddy-
"I think the copper/iron ratio is under hormonal-developmental control, and I have never seen an attempt to use ceruloplasmin to guide nutrition. Regular good light exposure is probably important for preventing the displacement of copper by iron.
Although, Dr. Peat did mention more recently that an iron saturation level below 25% was protective against cancer, which appears to jive with the limited amount of data I've seen on the subject."
 

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