ALL ABOUT IRON 2.0
Good morning friends! If you missed the first post on this topic, I’ll link it HERE so you can catch right up!
Today we will talk more about iron and the impacts of iron in the body. Of course, iron is an important mineral for our health. We have three primary ‘houses’ for iron in the body. We have Iron in the recycling system (BONE MARROW) – if you recall from last week, 95% of our daily iron needs can come from a healthy functioning recycling system! The second would be in our blood – this is our hemoglobin (Hemoglobin refers to the protein containing iron that facilitates the transport of oxygen in red blood cells). 70-80% of the body's iron is meant to be in hemoglobin. And the last is our spleen and liver where iron is dumped in by the storage protein: Ferritin.
BUT there's more to the story. As we age, our bodies begin to store up more and more iron in those two storage sites (the spleen and liver) AND… these levels are never checked. It's estimated that we accumulate 1mg of Iron per day. So whatever your age is, you can pretty easily figure out how much STORED iron you have. Why is this alarming?
We know that since 1941, the food industry has been adding iron filings to our wheat and grains (btw, iron filings are YES… tiny metal filings. And you can extract them from cereals with a magnet – check it out on YouTube). In the early 1970’s, the amount was increased by 50% thanks to the Food & Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine. Here's the real kicker. It's estimated that the nutrition labels are incredibly inaccurate. As a side note, if you can find organic UNENRICHED wheat, you may find you have a much easier time digesting it. I've had a couple of clients who thought they were gluten intolerant – turns out it was just the additives.
Check out this information from a study conducted at The University of Guelph:
Over the past eight years, Bruce Holub, a food sciences professor at the University of Guelph, has tested a range of products including baby biscuits, breakfast waffles, pancake mix and chicken fingers and has found surprising results.
"There are a significant number of products which have values on the label on the carton which are not correct values based on direct analysis," Holub said.
While federal regulations legally allow for 20 per cent variability on the food labels, Holub said that up to 15 per cent of products surveyed exceeded the legal limit.
YIKES – so while we may be able to at least pick a product without too much iron, we don't even know if the labels are accurate.
Here are some reasons why we need to really deeply understand iron metabolism in the human body. UNBOUND Iron (which is present when we have low bio-available copper, known as the ceruloplasmin protein) causes:
a lowered cellular pH and forces the cell into an acidic state
lowers oxygen in the cell
lowers the production of ATP inside the mitochondria (AKA energy loss) – as much as 96% loss of ATP
Iron causes cell aging – Free radicals + iron = fatty brown deposits in the tissues and age spots on the skin.
parasites, pathogens and bacteria breed in iron-rich environments
iron is a potentially toxic heavy metal (causing oxidative stress in cells & tissues)
Here's an article from Dr Ray Peat and some quotes to make you ponder. I will link the website here:
1. "Iron deficiency anemia does exist, in laboratory situations and in some cases of chronic bleeding, but I believe it should be the last-suspected cause of anemia, instead of the first.”
2. “aluminum and iron react similarly in cells and are suspected causes of Alzheimer's disease”
3. "The fact that arsenic, or iron, or other toxic material stimulates the formation of red blood cells doesn't indicate a "deficiency" of the toxin, but simply indicates that the body responds to a variety of harmful factors by speeding its production of blood cells."
4. "Recently, the iron content of food has been identified as the major life-shortening factor, rather than the calories. [Choi and Yu, Age vol. 17, page 93, 1994]"
SO HOW DO WE IMPROVE IRON RECYCLING?
This is exactly what the Root Cause Protocol is designed to do. We harness copper and make it bio-available. We increase anti-oxidants across the system to combat the potential for oxidative stress with the excess iron. We access some labs and do a hair tissue analysis to see what's really going on in the body and formulate a plan. The best course of action if you want to manage your iron intake is the following:
Check out the RCP Stops LIST
Avoid Iron fortified foods and any supplements with iron (this is a stop)
Look into liver supports (we discussed a couple back in December if you missed out on those emails and you'd like to see them, just let me know)
Castor Oil Packs
Raw Carrot Salad
Work in a methodical way to increase bio-available copper through food and possibly supplements
Consider a blood donation (lots of details about this can be found on the RCP site)
A study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that donating blood may reduce the amount of iron people have in their bodies. You need iron to live, but too much can increase your chances of getting cancer. The study found that frequent blood donors had lower risks of liver, lung, colon, stomach, and throat cancer.
WOW! If you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back. This was a very in-depth look at iron and the issues surrounding our modern-day lack of understanding of this mineral. The automatic assumption is always ‘anemia’. But this couldn't be further from the truth, in most cases. Next week, we'll discuss anemia even more – why does the blood show low iron markers if you're not truly low in iron? And we will go into all the markers that I use to assess iron metabolism in the body.
