Low IRON

 Hi Ladies,

I got labs back and found out I have low iron.

My total  was 47 mctg/dl
and my saturation was only 11%

She is my primary care and recommended ferrous sulfate 325mg twice a day with food.  Is that accurate for me with my surgery?

Stay as far away from ferrous sulfate as you can. It will not absorb well and will constipate the hell out of you. Try Proferrin Forte (she can prescribe this) or Proferrin ES OTC. In addition and in another dose, try Vitalady's Tender iron in the 60mg capsules x 5. Proferrin is heme iron and Tender iron is carbonyl. Both absorb well. Proferrin will not constipate you at all--it's like eating liver.

Keep us posted.

--gina

hey gina.  Isnt Proferrin and 300mg of tenders a massive dose to start with?   I usually recommend people to start with 180mg of tenders and then adjust from there.  When I tried that, my total iron went from 25 to 125 in one week and ferritin went from 20 to 100 in 1 month.  For those that absorb, the stuff really works, so taking such large doses can really be over kill if they have never taken any of it.

Now forget it, I went from absorbing great for 4 years to not absorbing at all.  Now I get IV iron.  I am in a really tough situation right now though.  I had a ferritin of 20, went for a series of 5 IV's and it went up to 250 which was great.  After about 6 weeks, it felt like it dropped alot and my hematologist said he would recheck my level and if it had dropped instead of doing another round, he would just give them to me once per month to keep my level steady.  Unfortunately, I had a bad accident on my leg - a really heavy table collapsed on my leg causing damage to the soft tissue in my thigh and my hip joint and tore the muscle in my butt.  Due to the severe inflamation in my body, my ferritin is now 700 (it is called an Acute Phase Reaction) due to severe inflamation - it happens anytime I go in for surgery - after gastric bypass it went up to 500 and after illiostomy it was 500 again, so this makes diagnosing iron deficiency almost impossible. With a ferritin of 700, I cant get IV iron - obviosly.  It can take months to go down.

I was going by what her doc told her to take, 325mg of ferrous sulfate twice a day. I was thinking Tender is elemental and 300mg once a day with a little heme from the Proferrin should be about right to get what the doc wants her to have. The thing I might have forgotten to say is to sneak up on the Tender iron. Start slowly with one capsule for the first few days, then add another for a few more days, then another, et****il the full 300mg is going in and not causing any problems.

--g

Yeah, but 325 of ferrous sulfate 2x a day is more like 50 mg of heme. 

We need to be careful with supplementing the minerals. Too much iron supplementing can give you heavy metal poisoning!

Hopfully, labs will prevent that.

Do you have a crosswalk between heme and the other irons?  I would love to know the direct equivalents. One tablet of Proferrin is 12mg of heme iron which is the equivalent to ? of carbonyl iron...

I think we could work it out. Ferrrous sulfate is absorbed about 11% in normies and heme is more like 35%. But it also depends on if the amount reported per serving is elemental or not. I think it is. But, if it's not, there needs to be another factor in the equation.

I will try to find out if there is a conversion to heme but I dont know if there is one.

I do know that ferrous sulfate - 325mg is 65mg of elemental iron (carbonyl iron)

I didn't see this when I first posted... yeah, if 325 mg of ferrous sulfate is only 65mg of elemental iron then I think I was about right with my guess of 50 mg of heme. 

But when you look at how it's absorbed, then you see that 1 Proferrin is about as much absorbed iron as 325 mg of ferrous sulfate because heme is 3x as absorbable.

it doesnt work that way.  They are 2 totally different irons and cant be compared.   I am actually in the hospital and my hematologist came to see me.  I asked him and he said that they are 2 totally different animals.

Heme is much more potent and you cant  compare the 2.  They are 2 totally animals, they are both irons but tenders are carbonyl which is calculated as elemental. The heme is actuall the same as what comes from liver and red meats - pure iron.

The one proferrin 18mg is probably more potent than 1 of the 60mg tenders but there really is no way of knowing for sure other than seeing how they work on any one person.  From what I have read, the tenders work better on bringing up really low ferritin levels and the Proferrin works better on really stubborn hemoglobin and hemacrit levels.