I'm about to tell you something that
could be life-changing and it's about
iron. So listen up.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnpd.com. And you're watching Chris Masterjohn Lite,
where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what
works!" And today we're gonna talk
about how to know if you're predisposed
to iron overload and what to do about it.
Now I'm not talking about anemia. That's
another topic for another time. It's a
serious topic, but it's not today's topic.
Today's topic is iron overload. In its
most severe form, this is hemochromatosis,
which can cause liver damage and heart
damage, and all kinds of really nasty
problems. But I'm not even talking about
that. What I'm talking about is if you
have any predisposition to accumulate
too much iron from your food, that could
accelerate the risk of premature aging.
It could accelerate the risk of
Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's
disease and other neurodegenerative
diseases. It could impair your glucose
tolerance, make you more likely to get
fatty liver; it could make you more
likely to get heart disease. It can make
you feel like crap right now, and you can
feel a lot better if you get the
condition under control. So we're not
talking about a disease. We're just
talking about something, that if it
applies to you, could be life-changing in
what it means for your ability to do
really simple things to optimize your
health now and forevermore. Let's start
by using 23andme to figure out whether
we have a genetic predisposition to
absorb too much iron. What you want to do
is go to tools and browse raw data. Then
you want to take the genes that I put in
the description and copy and paste the
RS numbers. We'll look at H63D first,
which is the mild genetic problem with
iron overload. Copy and paste the RS
number. The risk allele is G. I have a GG
genotype. There's about 2 to 3%
of the world's population that
have my genotype, and we all have
increased risk of iron overload. If you
have CC, you're all set. However, about
30% of you probably have one G
there, and that means that your problem
isn't as bad as mine, but it's still
something you should be taking care of.
The next thing we can do is look at
C282Y, which is the more severe form of
this problem. Copy and paste the RS
number. If you have GG here, that's
actually a good thing. I don't have the
C282Y mutation, which is the most
severe form of this problem. If you have
one A, then you have a problem you should be
looking at. If you have two, it's very
serious. If you ran your 23andMe through
Promethease this is even easier. So you
can copy and paste H63D. Type it in
and you can see it tells me right away, I
have two copies of H63D, which
predisposes me to a mild form of
hemochromatosis. Similarly you can copy
and paste C282Y. You have to be
careful because it will pull up things
that relate to C282Y and not just
C282Y. So you'll have to scroll
down, and it tells me I'm not a C282Y
hemochromatosis carrier. Regardless of
whether you have any of these genetics,
you can't rule out that you don't have
more minor mutations in genes that are
rare, but are not covered by 23andMe. And
so it's really important, in my view, that
everyone have a full iron panel at least
once in their life. I would even say once
per life stage. Because let's say you're
a woman for example, and you have heavy
menstrual flow at one time in your life
that protects you against iron overload.
You may go through a different period in
your life where your menstrual flow
stops or changes, and then all the sudden
your risk of accumulating iron is
different. What's shown here is the Quest
Diagnostics iron panel. The key things that
you want to look for are
% saturation and ferritin. The
% saturation may be called transferrin
saturation or it may be called iron
saturation. It's expressed as a
percentage, and it's one of the key
important things you want to look for.
Ferritin is also important. The ranges
that the lab gives you for transferrin
saturation and ferritin are both
really wide.
I would recommend keeping transferrin
saturation between 30 and 40%.
If it gets a lot higher than
40%, that indicates you have a
problem. That should be the primary
metric that you're looking at. Ferritin,
if it's elevated in the context of a
high transferrin saturation, gives you an
idea of how long the problem's been
going on and how bad it's become. If you
know you have a problem, you probably
want to keep your ferritin on the low
end of normal, like under 100. But
the primary thing you should be paying
attention to is the transferrin
saturation in my opinion. So how do you
manage that? 70 to 80% of
your attention should be on donating
blood. If you're not able to donate blood
for some reason, then phlebotomy is a
substitute. But you'd have to talk to
your doctor about that. If you try to
manage iron with your diet, then you're
going to wind up giving yourself other
nutrient deficiencies, because most of
the foods that are rich in iron are also
rich in other nutrients. Likewise, if you
try using something like IP6, otherwise
known as phytate or phytic acid, to
chelate iron and prevent its absorption,
you're probably going to cause other
problems like zinc deficiency. So it's
always best to focus on donating blood
as the way of dealing with iron overload.
If you manage your iron levels well with
blood donation, you may not have to
manage your diet at all. But, if the
problem is really bad, you should maybe
put 20 to 30% of your
attention into your diet. And the things
you should focus on are limiting red
meat. I'm not saying don't eat it, but cut
it down to what you need to maintain
normal iron levels in your testing. And
just verify that with testing. When you
do eat red meat, add three or four
hundred milligrams of calcium, or food
that provides that amount of calcium
each time you eat the red meat. And that
will have, not a huge effect, but maybe
cut down the iron absorption by about 20%.
A lot of people ask me about liver. I
don't recommend not eating liver if you
have iron overload issues. Let's say that
you eat liver once a week. That provides
you with an enormous amount of nutrition
like vitamin A, vitamin B12, and copper.
That's really meaningful and that
protects you against some of the
negative effects of iron. That liver is
the equivalent of three servings of red
meat. If you just care about your
nutrition, I would eat the one serving of
liver a week and cut out three servings
of red meat. Now of course that's just
from a nutritional perspective. You also
want to enjoy your food as well, so that
has to be something that you consider. If
you don't have iron overload issues, you
don't need to worry about this at all.
But about 30% of you are
gonna have at least an issue that's
sufficient to be mindful of it. And a
small percentage of you are gonna
have it as bad as I do, or even worse. And
if that's the case, it's something you
want to know now. Because you could make
simple choices now that impact your
health in a really positive way for
decades to come.
All right, I hope you found this useful. Signing off, this is
Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
You've been watching
Chris Masterjohn Lite, and I will see you in
the next video.