So I had to go get some blood taken for the Dana Farber - IMPACT - study. So I decided to get a few more limited blood tests. I retested Ferritin, tested Vitamin D and, TSH.
For the last two weeks I have not had any red meat and I am happy to say that my Ferritin dropped down, from 245 to 211. That is still higher than I would like but I think shows a clear issue with iron and red meat. Both my Vitamin D and TSH were great. Mainly, not having red meat really dropped the value in a short time period.
There is great controversy about red meat for health. And I happen to find results all over the map. Based on those I was pretty confident that red meat would not be an issue and, since I was alternate day fasting, I assumed I would not over do it. But thank god I tested it and it was an issue. Now I know.
I was overdoing it. Primarily because of changes to the food supply.
- Recently I have been having trouble finding veggies. What ended up happening is I tended to eat either "cauliflower" or "creamed spinach". Cauliflower has a ton of Vitamin C which allows absorption of iron and Spinach has iron. I was eating the entire bag, not just a serving. In addition at one point I was told that the oxalates in the Spinach stop the iron from absorbing, but that only applies to raw Spinach, not cooked.
- Recently I got into a nasty habit of having a burger for lunch (no bun) this is not my normal but, McDonalds no longer has grilled chicken food wraps and I was doing keto. Typically I don't even eat at McDonalds but it was a nice ride every day in the pandemic.
- I have added red meat to my listing of food that I can eat and I switched to having red meat more frequently than chicken. And I would have like a 5 oz serving. In addition, I think I was having cuts that were more muscle (which has a lot of iron).
A lot of people tell me that food cannot make your iron stores go up. The truth is, they are just wrong. It is often said that once iron goes into your body there is no way to get rid of it - that is even more true that one might know. Even though you supposedly need a lot of iron per day... just recently it was discovered that we already have a massive source of iron.... our own blood cells. Our bodies recycle blood cells and the iron in them. Thus, the vast majority of iron that you get each day is from this recycling. Like 80%. So, if you are eating a lot of iron and absorbing it, you are continuing the build up of iron - that basically - unless you donate blood - is hard to reduce. This means it is VERY easy to over do it with iron.
After looking into iron more I am horrified that it is so ignored as a health concern. I am rather furious that my doctor never ran this test. Imagine if I hadn't? I would have been unknowingly hurting myself? As it is, I have no idea if I did hurt myself. I had an issue with this once. I started taking a multivitamin that had iron it it and I started turning brown. My iron was wayyyy high. I stopped taking the vitamin and all was well. So I feel like my doctor should have been looking for that.
But it is apparently well known as something that should be watched in women post menopause. Especially if they have had issues before. Yet, even with my much higher RBC and hemoglobin counts being on the high side... nothing. I will have to be careful in the future. Keto without red meat is not easy. I can have things that block the absorption of iron but I don't fully trust them.
I happened also to come upon some science in this area last night and our understanding of iron has radically changed in the last ten years. In particular, they have discovered a hormone that controls the amount of iron in your body... and this hormone being high, is not necessarily a good thing. Hepcidin helps to control the expression of iron in the body and recently it was shown to be unregulated in gastric cancer. The cancer that took out my mother. Hepcidin is a key regulator of the entry of iron into the circulation in mammals. Hepcidin is typically elevated with inflammation.
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