This is how riboflavin could help your
iron deficiency anemia.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. And this is
Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about how
riboflavin, vitamin B2, can help iron
deficiency anemia.
Iron is of course needed to make hemoglobin to carry
oxygen in your red blood cells, but
riboflavin is needed to absorb iron and
to utilize iron for that purpose. So if
you're running low in riboflavin, you may
wind up in a condition where you appear
to have iron deficiency anemia, but you
add the iron into your diet, you
supplement iron, you eat iron-rich foods,
and the iron and the hemoglobin just
don't budge. Well, there are several
studies showing that riboflavin can
improve this. There are studies where
1 milligram or 5 milligrams of riboflavin was mixed
into a cocktail of several other
nutrients, and it was shown that the
cocktail of the several nutrients would
be more effective than just using iron
or just using iron and folic acid
alone to improve the anemia. And there
is also a study that showed that
10 milligrams of riboflavin just on its own
could improve hemoglobin levels. So in my
view, it's probably better to have
several servings per week of liver and
one or two servings per day of red meat
to boost the iron levels up because
those foods are providing iron, and
they're providing riboflavin, and they
are providing lots of other nutrients
that are involved. And the studies seem
to indicate that the amount of
riboflavin that you need is not that
high. Somewhere on the order of
1, 5, or 10 milligrams of riboflavin is the
amount that you would need to improve
anemia. So you don't need high levels
that are found in high-dose supplements,
and you may need many of the other
nutrients in those foods. For example,
copper can also be a factor in helping
you utilize iron and get iron into your
red blood cells, and liver is going to
supply the copper as well. So why try to
take each individual piece of what you
need to fix your anemia and why not
just eat the foods like liver and red
meat that are going to provide the full
span of nutrients. And in fact, I have
talked to people who could not get their
iron levels up with supplements and
were able to get their iron levels up
once they started eating liver. Why? It could
have been the riboflavin, could have been
the copper, could have been something
else in the liver. The point is that it's
the whole brew of nutrients that's
really going to be most effective.
So, I do think that if you have
reasons not to eat liver and red meat,
I do think that taking a riboflavin
supplement, even if it's going to be
100 milligrams, might be the thing
that improves it. Not because you need
the 100 milligrams, but because the
first 2, 5, or maybe 10 milligrams
of that supplement was what you really
needed to do the trick. I also think that
taking a B-complex that has 2 to 5 to 10
milligrams of riboflavin in it
may also be just as effective, or perhaps
more effective because of the
combination of the nutrients. So I think
any of these options are there. It's just
that when you have iron deficiency
anemia, you do want to be conscious of
your riboflavin requirement, and you do
want to try to meet it whether it's from
foods or it's from a B-complex, or it's
from a riboflavin supplement.
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