I think that's pretty much the story of science: a bunch of individual stories, then someone does research on them to see if there is, in fact, a trend. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. This isn't the first experiment I've done on myself, and actually I'm kind of surprised it's working as well as it is. I went from a pretty much all-beef/vegie diet to a rice/fish/vegie diet, and the heart arrhythmia problems I was getting kind of went away, as well as some other issues.
Not everyone has high ferritin: true iron deficiency IS a problem. Some people think "heavy menstruation" is actually a sign of high iron: it's the bodies way of getting rid of it, at least for pre-menopausal women. The body has a rather extensive array of ways to balance iron, because the stuff is both so necessary and so toxic. Kind of like blood glucose, which is also usually under tight control.
Problem is, sometimes the control breaks. Quite possibly the core problem is that we've more or less eradicated parasites and sword fights and pregnancies every 3 years. And there is a genetic component. Looking into my own genetic history, this does seem to be an issue in our family. Dr. Eades wrote about it in Protein Power also (his recommendation was to donate blood, which is a good recommendation if you can do it: if you are anemic, the blood bank people will tell you). Donating blood lowers the chance of Type 2 diabetes by quite a bit: I don't know why no one talks about that much.
Anyway, if you DO have it tested, you want the blood ferritin test, not "blood iron". Iron fluctuates constantly, and sometimes the body pulls iron out of the blood as a protective measure, so some people with high ferritin actually test as anemic ... then they take iron tablets which just makes everything worse. It's not generally an issue for pre-menopausal women though, AFAIK.
On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 1:33 PM, foxchyck <foxeye@jungle-fire.com > wrote:
The issue of blood ferritin is new to me...I'll need to read more into that one. I suppose it's never occurred to me because I have very heavy menstrual bleeding, so I think of myself as iron deficient, if anything. Can't say I ever had it tested, though.
*gleeful cackle at the prospect of a new internet mission to undertake*
And yes, individual stories are very compelling...though goodness knows, it's hard to really draw widescale conclusions from them. :( Which I suppose is why you are experimenting on yourself.
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