Symptoms Of Anemia Despite Iron Supplementation

[Southsidee]

My girlfriend, early 20’s, has a history of anemia symptoms e.g. fatigue, weakness, low BP, dizziness, feeling cold etc. She’s had testing done multiple times in the last few years and consistently her hemoglobin, iron and ferritin numbers are coming in just under, or at the lower end, of the “normal” range.

Her diet has been lacking in iron for most of her life since she doesn’t eat much meat and is a picky eater in general. However, within the last few months she’s been eating green vegetables and supplementing iron (approx. 150% RDI) as well as occasionally eating some chicken liver.

She got some tests done last week and all her blood markers came in unchanged, i.e. at the absolute lower end of the range – and she’s still experiencing the above symptoms.

Has anyone dealt with something like this or could point us in the right direction? Does she need to supplement a higher dosage or is there some systematic issue keeping her iron/hemoglobin low?

Many thanks!

 

[redsun]

My girlfriend, early 20’s, has a history of anemia symptoms e.g. fatigue, weakness, low BP, dizziness, feeling cold etc. She’s had testing done multiple times in the last few years and consistently her hemoglobin, iron and ferritin numbers are coming in just under, or at the lower end, of the “normal” range.

Her diet has been lacking in iron for most of her life since she doesn’t eat much meat and is a picky eater in general. However, within the last few months she’s been eating green vegetables and supplementing iron (approx. 150% RDI) as well as occasionally eating some chicken liver.

She got some tests done last week and all her blood markers came in unchanged, i.e. at the absolute lower end of the range – and she’s still experiencing the above symptoms.

Has anyone dealt with something like this or could point us in the right direction? Does she need to supplement a higher dosage or is there some systematic issue keeping her iron/hemoglobin low?

Many thanks!

Chicken liver has the iron but at this point you would see more benefit in improving hemoglobin values not just with iron but with food that contains the other nutrients that help utilize iron.

Her B vitamin intake may be good and likely is if her diet is well-varied and has chicken liver. Try instead veal liver or adult beef liver. Veal liver has more zinc and less copper than adult one but that way the mineral intake is a little more balanced.

You can do both types, switch them around when you feel like it but there isnt really any other type of food that comes close to being beneficial in utilizing iron properly.

Point is these types of liver will provide a lot of copper which chicken liver severely lacks. Copper is required to properly utilize iron so it can be made into hemoglobin. It also provides the B vitamins pretty liberally just like chicken liver.

So there's copper and so if you can increase copper intake dramatically with livers that will likely help a lot. But also vitamin C is needed to utilize iron properly so make sure vitamin C from food like fruit is really up there as well.

The increased copper intake will also help more immediately, not just in the long term, as copper (along with vitamin C) are vital cofactors in making norepinephrine from dopamine. This should help rather quickly in treating all those symptoms she is having like low BP, dizziness, feeling cold and the other things you mentioned by increase norepinephrine which is likely low.

 

[RWilly]

Here's the scoop on that:
You May Want to Think Twice About that Iron Supplement

 

[wintagal]

Those symptoms could also be low adrenal function. She should eat carbohydrates and more salt and maybe potassium. V-8 juice with a little extra salt is good to try - if the salt tastes good, then she needs it.

 

[BearWithMe]

Taking iron supplements is generally the worst way of dealing with iron deficiency anemia.

Taking manganese sometimes fixes the iron deficiency.

The best source of bioavailable iron is organ meats, as Redsun suggested.