What your doctor doesn’t tell you about diagnosed anemia and why it probably isn’t iron deficiency
Approximately 50% of all female Personalworkout clients have been diagnosed with anemia. However, fixing the problem with iron pills or IV fluids is not really the solution. In this blog post you will find out why this is the wrong strategy, why it harms the body and how the complexity of the human body is once again underestimated.
Different causes of anemia
According to the WHO, anemia is defined as a hemoglobin level below 130 g/l for men and 120 g/l for women. There are many different causes of anemia, but they can be divided into 3 main categories:
- a “loss” of red blood cells
- a “lack of production” or
- an excessive “breakdown”.
Where the problem lies is very important for subsequent treatment.
The most common cause of loss is heavy menstruation. Of course, childbirth, accidents, or short-term blood donations can also contribute.
A production problem is multifaceted. So many different micronutrients are needed for the production of red blood cells (vitamins B6, B12, C, folic acid, zinc, copper, iron and many more) that a deficiency of any one substance can happen “quickly” with today’s food and diet.
There are also many reasons why erythrocytes do not survive 120 days. Diseases and medications are probably the most common.
What must be tested in a blood count to make a reliable statement about anemia?
An initial analysis can be done using the RDW (Red Cell Distribution Width). If this value is (too) high, there is a good chance that it is due to a micronutrient deficiency and therefore limited production, since “loss” or too rapid “breakdown” does not really change the number of red blood cells.
The MCV, MCH, and MCHC values are also important for more detailed analysis. They show how large an average red blood cell is, or how much hemoglobin it contains. Knowing this can help determine the cause.
The iron values
First of all, the serum iron marker is not very meaningful.
Ferritin is a protein that can bind up to 4500 iron molecules and is stored in various places in the body, mainly in the cells of the liver, spleen and bone marrow. It is elevated in the serum during inflammation (more on this below). In the absence of inflammation, however, it should reflect the” iron stored “in the body. In functional medicine, this is sometimes called into question because people want to extrapolate from cars on the road (serum iron) to cars in the garage (intracellular iron). There may be a correlation, but not necessarily!
Transferrin is a protein that transports iron. It can bind 2 molecules of iron. It picks up iron from the blood and transports it to the cells where it is then transferred to ferritin via ferroportin or, conversely, picks it up and transports it to the bone marrow where iron is needed to form red blood cells.
TIBC (Total Iron Binding Capacity) is a marker for transferrin and therefore an indication of how much iron the body is looking for.
The more iron stored in the liver, the more hepcidin is produced. This inhibits ferroportin, the iron transporter in the membranes where it docks. Iron can no longer be released into transferrin, which, as mentioned above, is responsible for transporting iron in the blood. Instead, the iron remains in the cells.
The influence of copper and vitamin A on iron levels
Ceruloplasmin is produced in the liver and is an important transport protein and one of the most important proteins. It is dependent on copper (95% of all copper in the human body is bound here). Ceruloplasmin’s job is to convert Fe2+ into Fe3+. This requires copper. Fe3+ is then transported around the body by transferrin. Fe2+ in the blood would oxidize, which is a highly toxic process (see below). With copper deficiency, we have too little functioning ceruloplasmin. The body signals an iron deficiency when it really lacks copper.
But there is more. Vitamin A is needed for transferrin gene expression and ceruloplasmin activity. Vitamin A deficiency results in transferrin deficiency or lower ceruloplasmin activity, which in turn means that iron cannot be regulated in the body.
The importance of vitamin A and copper cannot be overstated! There are countless studies on this, but hardly anyone knows about them. The paper by Hodges et al. is a good introduction to the topic and shows that only vitamin A supplementation was able to improve hemoglobin levels in test subjects, not iron!
Ergo: We at Personalworkout always have ceruloplasmin, serum copper and vitamin A tested!
How bacteria and autoimmune diseases affect iron levels
Bacteria require iron to survive. The body has learned to deal with this problem over millions of years. It produces more hepcidin via interleukin 6. The iron now stays inside the cells, where the bacteria cannot reach it. This is called inflammatory anemia. So you can have high hepcidin levels with low iron, which seems illogical at first. No matter how much iron you supplement, the levels will not improve, on the contrary, you are feeding the unwanted bacteria! However, serum ferritin levels are elevated in cases of inflammation.
Why iron deficiency is often misdiagnosed
Results are only as good as the test that produces them. As explained above, the low iron level tested may actually be a vitamin A or copper deficiency. And it often is, because our bodies are extremely efficient at recycling iron. We only need to replace 1 mg of iron per day. Elevated homocysteine levels also indicate copper deficiency.
Iron is the second most abundant metal in the earth’s crust after aluminum. Therefore, it is far from true that there is a shortage of iron, as many foods contain more than adequate amounts. The fact is that iron is not absorbed in the same way from all foods, and even in the case of an iron deficiency, only 20% of the iron ingested can be absorbed (incidentally, alcohol increases the absorption of iron). You can find the iron content of foods at the following link. Some people will notice that innards and blood sausage, which used to be common on the menu, are hardly eaten today! On the contrary, the tendency goes in the direction of veganism, which is complete nonsense from a health point of view.
Conclusion
There is a lot of money to be made with iron injections and pills (the same goes for B12 infusions). I personally experienced this when my friend was to receive an iron infusion immediately after giving birth. The only marker that was tested beforehand: Hemoglobin! No wonder it was low after losing 0.8 liters of blood. I don’t go to give blood and get an iron infusion in the next room. Nonsense!
Too much iron in a balanced diet is more common than iron deficiency, because it is much harder to get enough copper than iron.
What’s more, all men and all menopausal women have no way of getting rid of toxic iron. The only way would be to donate blood regularly. But I talk about the positive effects of this in another article.
By the way, it has not been proven that copper supplements increase the bioavailable copper in the body. Copper, like everything else, must be obtained naturally. By the way, artificial vitamin C, i.e. ascorbic acid, has a negative effect on ceruloplasmin activity. Did you know that ascorbic acid, like iron, is found in many popular multivitamins? Doubly bad. Last but not least, drugs like Accutane, used to treat acne, are copper destroyers and extremely dangerous for us.
Did iron pills and injections not work for you?
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SOURCES
- https://www.functionalmedicineuniversity.com/public/1268.cfm
- https://www.eisencheck.at/eisen-im-koerper/eisenhaltige-lebensmittel/
- https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcd/2018/9394060/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3655940/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/22495939_Hematopoietic_studies_in_vitamin_A_deficiency
- RPC Kurs und private Konsultationen mit Morley Robbins
- Blood Chemistry Interpretation Course Dr. Bryan Walsh
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