Hello Readers, Welcome to April when the flowers are displaying their vibrance, birds are chirping from sun rise to sun set and furthermore people are wearing more colour. This is also a time to start detoxing, perfect time to shed the old and blossom into the new. On that note of blossoming I am aiming to clear up the confusion around the subject of iron supplementation.
Every mineral in our body has a relationship with another mineral (actually there is NO part of our body that is separate form any other part, it’s all super connected). In other words when one mineral is out of balance another mineral will be affected. For example, manganese in combination with iron increases energy, physically and emotionally.
As manganese levels fall, so do our energy levels as well as our iron levels. Make sense? To put it into simple words when manganese has a ‘low’, so does its buddy iron and since we are made up of minerals (as well as other matter) we go on a ‘low’. Taking iron at this point in time (just because the blood tests show that the iron containing haemoglobin levels are low) is not wise.
You see, supplementing iron without addressing the low manganese is just really asking for long term biochemical ‘chaos’. Why? Well, although iron is being supplemented the manganese levels will continue to fall…catch my drift?
Let me give you an example of a case in clinic;
28yr young Lucy (showing my age), a hard working lawyer came to clinic for her first visit 7 months ago. She was taking iron tablets prescribed by her doctor (as her blood tests showed low iron containing haemoglobin) but she still felt exhausted. However, she commented that when she first started taking the iron tablets she did feel better energy-wise, but about 2 weeks later the energy slumped again (although she was still taking the iron and her follow up blood test showed improved haemoglobin levels). She came to see me for a hair mineral test as recommended by her work colleague (who was a patient of mine).
Lucy’s hair test revealed high copper although iron was fine. Now what does copper do?..copper not only prevents the iron binding to the haemoglobin (nasty rascal) but it is also known to ‘slow’ down the thyroid gland (our body’s engine). Although her thyroid blood test results were ‘within range’, she did typically display the ‘sluggish’ thyroid type symptoms, ranging from low energy throughout the day, cold hands and feet, irritability, mentally feeling ‘low’ and some hair loss.
She was prescribed specific vitamins with minerals and 4 weeks later she was much more ‘upbeat’, physically and emotionally. Over the next few months her hair test started to reveal an underlying high ‘mercury’ load. It is pretty common for the body to start to throw out ‘toxic’ metals (or any other toxin for that matter) into the hair as the body is being fed good food with good nutrient supplementation on top. The mercury was being mobilised from the storage sites into the blood stream and then into the hair (hair can be used as a toxic dumping site) in order to protect the body from re-intoxicating with the mercury again.
Lucy is currently on a mercury detox programme and just like the standard ‘naturopthic’ text book, her health continues to improve where she no longer experiences the lows all day (still dips in afternoon), is happier and no longer irritable and hair loss has ceased. She continues to experience cold extremities which I believe are due to the hormonal pill that she is taking creating a ‘masked’ hormonal crisis.
To great health!