If you’ve been supplementing iron for longer than 3 months and haven’t seen your ferritin levels increase, you are definitely missing part of the puzzle when it comes to your health
Here are the 4 most simple reasons iron levels dont increase:
- Using a bad iron supplement (ferramax is notoriously terrible). If your iron is constipating you or causing other GI symptoms, you’re not absorbing it. And we need to keep levels under 50mg daily (many capsules are 150mg+), otherwise we will feed dysbiosis (bad gut bacteria)
- Which brings me to reason number 2 – dysbiosis or gut infections. H Pylori is a perfect example, and up to 80% of people with H Pylori dont have GI symptoms (most commonly heartburn or reflux). Candida/yeast overgrowth/mold toxicity are others. So if you’ve got bad gut bacteria, iron in the wrong dosage and form will feed that infection and make it worse (those bugs use iron for fuel as part of their metabolism and create a ton of inflammation as a result)
- Low stomach acid (can be related to reason #2 and/or to acid reducing medications), which people with heartburn typically have (contrary to how its treated pharmacologically)
- Heavy periods. There are many natural ways to reduce the amount of blood you lose with your period, even if you have fibroids/adenomyosis/endometriosis you can calm these conditions down & reduce your flow, thereby keeping your iron levels up. Consider urinary hormone testing to look at the root causes of the heavy periods & the gynaecological conditions listed above
Side note: whenever you test your iron levels, you should be looking at inflammatory markers too! Because your ferritin will move up & down in response to inflammation. So you might see your levels increase, but it doesn’t mean you’re actually absorbing your iron as you might assume. Sadly many Docs fail to do this
When I test a woman’s ferritin levels, I like to run a whole inflammatory panel as well as serum iron and transferrin to get the whole story.
If you’re working on your iron levels and supplementing with iron, I recommend to my patients that we test every 3 months to see if what we’re doing is working. And we never just assume we need iron – we use objective data to guide our decision making when it comes to supplementation. Who wants to be taking iron if they dont need to be?
And for you ladies post-menopause, we actually have to make sure iron levels aren’t getting too high – this can add to your body’s inflammation levels and make things like weight management and controlling auto-immune disease more of a challenge.
It’s still amazing to me when I meet women who have had low iron levels for years and have just accepted that they will have to take iron forever until their periods stop. Or who have accepted the chronic constipation they’re having from their iron prescription. And who haven’t had a proper evaluation into the reasons why their iron is low. I love to show them a better way. You don’t have to settle for this when it comes to your health and you shouldn’t have to supplement iron forever. Link in bio to book an appointment and settle your iron issues once and for all
xo, Dr. Tanya
Trusted Naturopathic Doctor since 2017
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