Hello Health Champions. Today I want to talk about the top ten signs of iron
deficiency but more importantly while that is a huge problem with iron
deficiency it is almost as important to understand if you have too much iron so
we don't want to jump to conclusions and we want to understand the whole picture
Coming right up.
Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg. I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if
you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works
make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss
anything iron is a trace mineral we need very
small amounts comparatively and it's involved in metabolism it's part of
enzymes and protein that help us metabolize things but the big thing that
we're concerned with when it comes to iron is oxygen transport that's what
everyone talks about with iron is iron deficiency and anemia because iron is
involved with making red blood cells and hemoglobin hemoglobin has iron in it and
it only works if we have enough iron without that we can't make red blood
cells we can't transport oxygen hemoglobin is a large protein and it has
four subunits it's a globular it's large that's where
the name comes from globin and heme means that it has heme in it so these green
areas they are the heme area so there's four places four subunits where iron can
attach here we're seeing one of those subunits and the arrow is pointing to
where that iron would attach on the heme ring now something most people don't
realize is that if we just take one atom and change it if we take iron out and
replace it with magnesium then the whole hemoglobin turns into chlorophyll which
is plant based so animals make hemoglobin plants make chlorophyll and
they only differ by one atom per subunit so what that means is if you have a
condition where you're anemic but it's not because of a lack of iron then you
could actually benefit by taking chlorophyll because you would get the
whole complex you get all the components of the hemoglobin and
you just have to pop one iron atom in there to make it happen maybe the most
common sign of iron deficiency is fatigue and when we're really low in
iron we can't make the proper components of the blood so we get anemia or an amia
meaning literally lack of blood the first thing we look at is hemoglobin and
we're supposed to have 14 to 15 grams of hemoglobin per deciliter when we run
a blood test and what does hemoglobin do it grabs oxygen the blood comes to the
lungs it picks up oxygen and the hemoglobin holds it and carries it out
to the tissues when we don't have enough oxygen when we're suffering in our
oxygen carrying capacity and can't deliver it now energy production falls
we can't make enough of the body's energy currency called ATP and as a
result we have fatigue this is something we really want to check for in our
office because if we try to get somebody healthy whether it's for pain or
metabolism or to heal something the body has to have oxygen and energy to make
that happen so anemia is kind of a deal breaker if it's supposed to be at 14 to
15 gram and it starts dropping down towards 10 now you have lost 1/3 of your
oxygen carrying capacity and a lot of your ability to produce energy all
around the world this is the number one blood disorder it's huge proportions
globally 25 percent of the world's population is anemic 1.6 billion people
and in kids it's even worse so for children age 0 to 5 47 % of them are
anemic and in some areas like sub-saharan Africa it's as high as 70
the numbers are gonna vary widely depending on the region but just as an
example because we are in the u.s. here where I am US adult men have about 2%
anemia whereas Caucasian females have about 10%
and why is that because females have a menstrual period
they lose a little bit of blood every month it's a combination of nutritional
status and how much blood you're losing African American females and Latina
females are twice as high though and that probably may be some genetic
component but probably more so with nutritional status when we look globally
it is very very clear that the cause of anemia is primarily an iron deficiency
very little doubt however in the United States and especially for men the
picture is not so clear so we don't want to jump to conclusions whenever we see
anemia and think iron deficiency iron deficiency sign number two is pallor or
paleness why is that because oxygenated or arterial blood is red whereas once it
drops off that oxygen in the tissues the blood turns blue and that's why the
venous blood the returning blood is blue so most of the veins that you see most
of the blood vessels you can observe on yourself or veins and that's why they're
blue rather than red some of the places you're going to see this are in the face
your gums and lips the lower eyelids so if you just pull down a little bit on
your eye it's supposed to be a deep bright red if it's not then you could be
anemic the nail beds when you look at the area under the nail that's supposed
to be a pink if it's more whitish that's another sign of anemia and iron
deficiency and the sclera the white of the eye is supposed to be white if it
starts turning bluish that means you have less oxygenation and a possible
deficiency let's talk about the causes why might we be missing iron well
there's two simple reasons one is that we're not getting enough and that could
be from diet one contributing factor is veganism because the best quality iron
the heme iron comes from animals and countries that are primarily vegan have
much much higher rates of anemia and iron deficiency but even if we're
getting enough through the diet we have to be able to absorb it and if our
absorption is lacking in any way because of maybe not enough hydrochloric acid
maybe we have celiac disease we have some inflammation the gut lining isn't
working properly or we might have parasites any of those reasons and many
many others if they make our absorption suffer we can't absorb it then we're not
getting enough the other major cause of the principle of why we're not having
enough iron is because we're losing too much and this is actually a much more
common reason than that we're not eating enough especially in the United States a
very common way of losing a lot of blood quickly is through an internal bleeding
called an ulcer and also would be in the stomach but we could also have holes and
perforations at other places in our GI tract a big reason is heavy periods
women in their reproductive years have a menstrual period and some women lose as
little as a tablespoon and others lose as much as 80 milliliters or even a lot
more the average is somewhere around 2 to 3 tablespoons and with that blood
you're also losing iron and that is iron that has to be replenished through the
diet and you have to manufacture those extra red blood cells every month
medications can also make you lose blood and something as simple and common as
aspirin for each aspirin you're losing about 5 milliliters of blood give or
take and there are other medications as well like antibiotics and ACE inhibitors
that can change the permeability of your gut lining and then we want to think
about what if we are taking some medication but we already have an ulcer
now we're really really multiplying those effects and losing blood at a much
faster rate sign number 3 of iron deficiency is shortness of breath if you
get winded very easily just because you're walking or you're walking up the
stairs and this didn't used to happen last year then you might be iron
deficient why do we get easily winded because you have lost some oxygen
carrying capacity you can't make as much energy and now your body is making you
breathe faster to compensate to try to take in more air to make energy
so is anemia always an iron problem no it's the most common worldwide but there
are many other things like sickle cell anemia when the blood cells are miss
shapen genetically and then they get destroyed and recycled at a much higher
rate then we can have anemia from that you know pernicious anemia
Sidra blastic anemia and there's hundreds of different types of anemia a
lot of them are genetic and there's also anemia of chronic disease this happens
as people get older or they develop a chronic disease at a younger age when
the body stops working optimally now we also get higher rates of anemia and you
would think that especially in women that when they get older they don't have
their periods anymore they would kind of catch up well oftentimes they develop
something else like a chronic disease instead and something else isn't working
as well and in all or most of these cases
the iron is not the problem it's that the cells are breaking down or we can't
manufacture them fast enough but the iron is not the issue sign number four
is heart palpitations that's when your heart starts beating harder or faster
you can feel it thumping in your chest that's again because when we don't have
the oxygen carrying capacity we can't make energy and ATP and now the heart is
going to increase is going to beat faster and harder to try to compensate
when the blood is less quality when it's less concentrated resources then we're
going to make up for it by sending more sigh number five cold hands and feet and
it's the same reason where the oxygen and the energy but now it's because the
body is prioritizing the vital organs your liver and your heart and your
kidneys and your spleen and your digestion come first
you will die real quick if they don't work you can live with cold hands for a
while so your body is going to create some vasoconstriction and that pools the
blood toward the core and we prioritize those essential organs sine number six
dry damaged brittle hair and that is the same mechanism we don't have as much
resources in the body and now we're gonna prioritize the vital organs so
this is very very similar to the cold hands and feet sigh number seven is
headaches dizziness and lightheadedness and at first this one looks like the
previous two with lack of oxygen energy and ATP but this one is quite different
because the brain makes everything else work so it gets the highest priority it
is two percent of the body weight but it's 20% of the energy consumptions it's
an energy hog it is using a lot of energy but it's supremely important so
no matter what else happens we're going to try to make sure
the brain gets its resources and now what we do then is we create
vasodilation to the brain we vaso-constrict to the periphery but we
vaso-dilate to the brain and now what happens is as those blood vessels dilate
that's where the headache comes in it's like a migraine that migraines often
have a throbbing quality where you can feel each heartbeat as a pain and this
would be very much the same way when we have a vasodilation headache and that's
because the body is just trying to get more nutrients there then what about the
dizziness and lightheadedness well because the brain is such an energy hog
and very thin brittle nails so if you see this nail it's kind of spoon shaped very thin and it's flaring out
and that's a sign of long-term oxygen deprivation this nail has not been getting oxygen or nutrients
for quite some time again both because resources are limited but also because
resources are prioritized to the vital organs so we get vasoconstriction
Sign number nine is kind of crazy it happens sometimes with
anemia with iron deficiency but also sometimes in pregnancy
and it's called pica and this is where we get cravings for things that have no nutrients
where we want to chew on something that can't give us anything
such as ice or clay or dirt and another common one is paint chips
so if you notice that you start having cravings for these things or if you notice your
child is starting to chew on these then that would be a good reason to start checking your iron levels
sign number 10 is anxiety and why does that happen
because as we can't make enough energy as our energy levels and ATP levels go down
now the frontal lobe starts to suffer the brain like we talked about
it's an energy hog it uses a tremendous amount of energy and it's sort of like a
dimmer switch that if you have a light turned on and the dimmer is all the way
up to a hundred and then you turn it down to 60 or 70% then the lights will
come down gradually and that's kind of what happens with that frontal lobe as
well and the frontal lobe is critical for anxiety because it inhibits things
like anxiety it inhibits unwanted things and if the overall activity of the brain
goes down then we lose some of that inhibition of the anxiety and now that
anxiety is more uncontrolled take iron if you need it but absolutely don't take
it if you don't need it so before you take it you want to measure and make
sure you want to measure a minimum of red blood cells hemoglobin the size the
hematocrit serum iron iron saturation total iron binding capacity and ferritin
if you are anemic and you need iron then taking some of a good quality source
could tremendously increase your health and your quality of life but on the
reverse of that if you don't to actually need iron and you take it
then it could set you up for a heap of trouble if you enjoyed this video you
can continue learning about health and how the body really works by checking
out that one thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video