May 31, 2017
Story at-a-glance
- Iron is essential for life as it transports oxygen in your body, helps regulate cell growth, maintains brain function, metabolism and endocrine function and is involved in energy production and immune function
- Having either too much or too little iron can have serious repercussions. While iron deficiency is commonly checked for, iron overload is actually far more common a problem, yet is often overlooked or ignored
- Excess iron accelerates every major disease we know of, and causes the pathologies associated with liver and cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, treatment is easy and inexpensive: Simply donate your blood
By Dr. Mercola
Iron is essential for human life, as it:1
- Forms hemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells), as iron binds to oxygen and provides it to tissues for their metabolic needs
- Is a key component of various proteins, as well as enzymes that catalyze cellular oxidation reactions
- Helps regulate cell growth and differentiation
- Helps maintain your brain function, metabolism and endocrine function
- Is involved in energy production and immune function
Having either too much or too little iron can have serious health consequences and, while iron-deficiency anemia is commonly checked for, many doctors are still seriously misinformed about the dangers of iron overload, which is actually a far more common problem. In fact, most men and postmenopausal women are at risk for iron overload due to inefficient iron excretion, since they do not bleed on a regular basis and blood loss is the primary way to lower excess iron, as the body has no active excretion mechanisms.
There's also an inherited disease, hemochromatosis, which causes your body to accumulate excessive and dangerously damaging levels of iron. If left untreated, it can damage your organs and contribute to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and many other health problems.
The good news is iron overload is easy and inexpensive to treat. By monitoring your serum ferritin and/or GGT levels, avoiding iron supplements and donating blood on a regular basis, you can avoid serious health problems. In a recent podcast, Chris Masterjohn, Ph.D., delves into the biological imperatives of iron, the effects of low and high iron and how to address both of those issues. You can find that episode on Masterjohn's website.2
Health Problems Associated With High and Low Iron
Having just the right amount of iron is important, as without it, your body cannot work properly, and with excess, iron causes a great deal of destructive harm within your body. Following is a list of conditions associated with either extreme:3
| Diseases associated with low iron levels | Diseases associated with iron overload |
|---|---|
Anemia
|
Anemia of chronic disease
|
Fatigue
|
Insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome
|
Atherosclerosis
| |
Hypothyroidism
|
Anorexia
|
Depression / anxiety
|
Grave's disease
|
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
|
Heart arrhythmia
|
Parkinson's disease
|
Cancer
|
Neurodegenerative conditions
|
Sideroblastic anemia
|
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Excess dietary fructose is a primary initiator of NAFLD, but high iron is another culprit that triggers disease progression
| |
Restless leg syndrome
|
Liver damage and liver disease. Each year there are roughly 36,000 deaths from liver diseases and about 6,000 liver transplants.
Most all of these cases are affected by excess iron, even in the absence of a hemochromatosis genotype4
|
Hair loss
|
Still's disease
|
Muscle weakness, decline in motor skills
|
Hemochromatosis
|
Mental changes and memory loss
|
Hemophagocytic syndrome
|
What's an Ideal Iron Level?
The serum ferritin test measures your stored iron. For adults, I strongly recommend getting a serum ferritin test on an annual basis as a screen to confirm you're neither too high nor too low. When it comes to iron overload, I believe it can be every bit as dangerous to your health as vitamin D deficiency.
As with many other lab tests, the "normal" ranges for serum ferritin are far from ideal.5 In some labs, a level of 200 to 300 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) falls within the normal range for women and men respectively, which is FAR too high for optimal health. In reality, you're virtually guaranteed to develop disease at those levels. An ideal level for adult men and non-menstruating women is somewhere between 40 and 60 ng/mL. You do not want to be below 20 ng/mL or above 80 ng/mL.
Maintaining a healthy iron level is also important during pregnancy. Having a level of 60 or 70 ng/mL is associated with greater odds of poor pregnancy outcomes.6 That said, iron deficiency during pregnancy is equally problematic. The most commonly used threshold for iron deficiency in clinical studies is 12 to 15 ng/mL.7
GGT Test for Free Iron
Another valuable test is the gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) test. GGT measures liver enzymes. Not only will this tell you if you have liver damage, it can also be used as a screening marker for excess free iron and is a great indicator of your sudden cardiac death risk.
For women, a healthy GGT level is around 9 units per liter (U/L) whereas the high ends of "normal" are generally 40 to 45 U/L. For men, 16 U/L is ideal, while the normal lab range can go as high as 65 to 70 U/L.8
According to Gerry Koenig, former chairman of the Iron Disorders Institute and the Hemochromatosis Foundation,9 women with a GGT above 30 U/L have a higher risk of cancer and autoimmune disease. In the video above, Koenig discusses this and other health hazards associated with iron overload.
What Causes Excess Iron Buildup?
Two of the most common causes of iron overload are:
1.Having one or both genes for hemochromatosis (indicating mild or severe form). In the video below, Masterjohn provides an overview of these two genetic markers. About 1 in 3.5 or an estimated 100 million people in the U.S. have the single gene for hemochromatosis.10
Approximately 1 million people have the double gene variant, considered the genotype most predictive of liver disease complications. However, this only becomes a serious problem if significant iron overload occurs before a diagnosis is achieved and proper treatment can be administered
2.Inadequate iron elimination. Adult men and post-menopausal women are at increased risk due to the fact they do not have monthly blood loss, which is one of the best and most efficient ways to rid your body of excess iron
Another common cause of excess iron is the regular consumption of alcohol, which will increase the absorption of any iron in your diet. For instance, if you drink wine with your steak, you will likely absorb more iron than you need. Other possible causes of high iron levels include:
- Cooking in iron pots or pans. Cooking acidic foods in these types of pots or pans will cause even higher levels of iron absorption
- Eating processed foods fortified with iron
- Drinking well water that is high in iron. The key here is to make sure you have some type of iron precipitator and/or a reverse osmosis water filter
- Taking multivitamins and mineral supplements, as both of these frequently have iron in them
Why Excess Iron Is So Dangerous
Your body creates energy by passing the electrons from carbs and fat to oxygen through the electron transport chain in your mitochondria to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Ninety-five percent of the time, the oxygen is converted to water. But 0.5 to 5 percent of the time, reactive oxygen species (ROS) are created.
Iron can react with hydrogen peroxide in the inner mitochondrial membrane. This is a normal part of cellular aerobic respiration. But when you have excessive iron, it catalyzes the formation of excessive hydroxyl free radicals from the peroxide, which decimate your mitochondrial DNA, mitochondrial electron transport proteins and cellular membranes.
This is how iron overload accelerates every major disease we know of, and how it causes the pathologies associated with liver and cardiovascular disease. Unfortunately, few doctors understand the molecular biology of this reaction, which is why iron overload is so frequently overlooked.
If you eat unhealthy levels of net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) the situation is further exacerbated, as burning carbs as your primary fuel can add another 30 to 40 percent more ROS on top of the hydroxyl free radicals generated by the presence of high iron.
Unfortunately, most people reading this are burning carbs as their primary fuel. If you struggle with any kind of chronic health problem and have high iron and eat a standard American diet that is high in net carbs, normalizing your iron level (explained below) and implementing a ketogenic diet as described in my book, "Fat for Fuel," can go a long way toward improving your health.
Taking extra antioxidants to suppress ROS generated by high iron alone or in combination with a high-sugar diet is inadvisable, as ROS also act as important signaling molecules. They're not all bad. They cause harm only when produced in excess.
Your best bet is to lower the production of ROS rather than squelching them after the fact. One of the easiest and most effective ways to do that is to eat a diet high in healthy fats, adequate in protein and low in net carbs. Eating healthy fats can make a bigger difference than you might think, especially if you have high iron.
How to Address Low Iron
If your iron is low, you can improve your iron status by:
•Eating iron-rich foods,11,12 i.e., organ meats such as liver, grass fed red meat, dark turkey meat, clams, spinach, pumpkin seeds, quinoa, broccoli, dark chocolate (minimum 70 percent cooca) and seaweed.
As a rule, animal-based iron is more readily absorbed while plant-based sources are less bioavailable. Avoid iron-fortified foods, as these provide an inorganic iron that is far from ideal and may actually promote oxidative stress and could cause gastrointestinal side effects
•Taking vitamin C can help improve bioavailability of the iron in your food.13 Avoid combining iron-rich foods with calcium-rich foods, as calcium binds to iron, thereby limiting absorption
•Taking a liposomal iron supplement. Beware of ferrous sulfate, a form of iron found in many multivitamins, including children's multivitamins, as it is relatively toxic and can lead to significant problems. The biggest danger is acute overdose, which can be lethal. A safe form of supplement is carbonyl iron.
However, keep ALL iron supplements away from children, even carbonyl iron, and do not take any kind of iron supplement if you have hemochromatosis, hemosiderosis or hemolytic anemia such as sickle cell anemia or thalassemia (aka Mediterranean anemia, a type of genetic anemia where hemoglobin is not well formed)
How to Address Iron Overload
If your iron level is high, the easiest and most effective solution is to donate your blood. If you're an adult male, you'll want to donate blood two to three times a year once your levels are normal. If ferritin levels are over 200 ng/mL, a more aggressive phlebotomy schedule is recommended.
It is also wise to have a percentage transferrin saturation done. Ideally, this value should be between 30 and 40 percent. If it is higher, and you have an elevated ferritin level, then I am sad to tell you, but you have iron overload that is hurting your mitochondria. This needs to be addressed if you want to lower your risk for chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer.
As noted by Masterjohn in the video above, trying to control high iron through your diet by avoiding iron-rich foods can have a number of detrimental effects, as you will also forgo many valuable nutrients. Ideally, you will want to donate your blood twice or three times a year until your lab values normalize. If you are unable to donate your blood, you can get your doctor to write a prescription for a therapeutic phlebotomy to have this done.
When you donate blood, they typically remove a pint of blood, which can be a challenge for many. Most people tolerate this process much better when they do smaller donations more frequently. So, if you or someone you know can draw blood, removing 2 to 6 ounces every few weeks would be a wiser strategy.
A recent study14 in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience notes that iron-restricted diets "affect brain ferritin levels, dopamine metabolism and cellular prion proteins in a region-specific manner" — effects that highlight the importance of adequate iron for general brain health and for the prevention of neurological diseases.
That said, if your iron is high, you may want to avoid combining foods high in vitamin C with foods high in iron, as the vitamin C increases iron absorption. On the other hand, calcium will bind to iron, limiting absorption, so eating iron-rich foods with calcium-rich foods can be helpful.
Avoid using phytate or phytic acid (also known as IP6) to prevent iron absorption and chelate iron out of your body, however, as this can easily result in other mineral deficiencies, such as zinc deficiency. A far safer alternative is curcumin. It actually acts as a potent chelator of iron and can be a useful supplement if your iron is elevated.
Maintaining an Adequate Iron Level Is Important for Optimal Health
Iron is indeed essential, but it's important to maintain a level that is neither too low nor too high. Being at either extreme can lead to significant health problems and aggravate many chronic diseases and, contrary to popular belief, iron overload is actually more common than iron deficiency. To reiterate some of the most important points in this article, if your iron is high, be sure to:
- Lower your net carb intake and increase healthy fats to switch over to fat-burning mode and protect your mitochondria. This will help to radically reduce ROS and secondary free radical production
- Donate blood at least twice a year to normalize your level as indicated in the lab discussion in the previous section. Recent U.S. legislation allows all blood banks to perform therapeutic phlebotomy for hemochromatosis or iron overload. All you need is a doctor's order
- Don't avoid iron-rich foods. Instead, just avoid combining them with vitamin C-rich foods. Combine them with calcium-rich foods instead, to limit absorption. Also avoid alcohol, which will increase the absorption of iron in your diet. You could also consider a curcumin supplement to reduce your iron load without risking the elimination of other valuable minerals
- Unless you have a lab-documented iron deficiency, avoid iron-containing multivitamins, iron supplements and mineral supplements that contain iron
