Get Rid Of Anemia With Nutrition

Anemia is one of the most prevalent deficiency diseases in America right now. It's so widespread that it's verging on a hidden epidemic, and along with low thyroid hormone counts stemming from iodine deficiency, it's one of the first places you should look if you always seem to be off-color and tired.

In a world where many deficiencies and allergies seem to be only for the health-club crowd, though, anemia is a serious illness for the seriously ill.

Where an elderly person presents as anemic, he or she is usually prescribed iron supplements in the form of pills. The main effects of these are to stain feces black and cause constipation. There's a disconnect between anemia's prevalence and its treatment, and that disconnect is found in diet.

Where a younger person presents as anemic... well, where does a younger person present as anemic?

Or you might read an article like this one online and think of taking a supplement. Since it won't have much effect on your blood iron count it will be pretty hard to tell empirically whether you're anemic or not that way. You could be anemic and not know it. 12% of US women between 12 and 49 years old are iron-deficient - and that's by the low standards that describe a person as anemic when a man has a blood hemoglobin count of 130-140g/L, or a woman has 120-130g/L. 10% of pregnant women in the US are anemic.

Hopefully, those figures are enough to convince you that anemia isn't an invented disease, or a fancy name for being tired.

Anemia is also a condition with many causes

Roughly speaking anemia is caused by three things: you aren't making enough red blood cells, you're breaking red blood cells down faster than you're making them, or you don't have enough blood. You can have anemia from traumatic injury or from any bleeding. One major cause of anemia in women is menstrual bleeding. You can also have anemia as a result of malaria or sickle-cell disease, which goes some way to explaining why a billion people in the world are anemic. But there is one cause that outstrips all the others. 

See Also: Study: Iron Deficiency Anemia Increases The Risk Of Stroke

In the West that's not necessarily true. But it remains largely a disease of poor diet. And feeding people iron pills just doesn't work.

Why can't I just take iron pills?

The main reason iron pills don't work is because anemia isn't always caused by a lack of iron. Imagine if your car was underwater up to the windscreen. The fuel gauge reads full, you're turning the key, but it won't start. Why? OK, OK, because the sparkplugs are wet. But more importantly because the engine doesn't just need fuel. It needs air too. Taking iron doesn't solve the problem because you need other nutrients to absorb the iron ad to use it inside your body.

The Iron Triangle Nutrients For Anemia

Iron is just one of a group of three nutrients that need to be taken together to combat anemia and ensure a good blood iron level.

Without sufficient B12, you can have enough red blood cells, but they'll be enlarged and function poorly. Low-B12 anemia is the one you don't want; known as 'pernicious anemia,' it's associated with neurological symptoms like dizziness, dementia and numbness, as well as with an increased risk of stomach cancer. Vegetarians and vegans need to beware - B12 is all but impossible to get anywhere but animal foods. One excellent source of it is yeast extract (yeast are technically not-quite-animals but they're animal enough to provide B12), but meat is better.

Insufficient iron leads to red blood cells that are just the right size, but few and far between. Folic acid deficiency usually causes megaloblastic anemia - big, poorly-functioning red blood cells - too.

Each of the three 'iron triangle' nutrients can be deficient and cause anemia that way - but they're not just three things you need. You need them together. There's a complex interaction between the three nutrients and deficiency in one is sometimes covered up.

So what's the best way?

The best nutritional choices to get on top of anemia are those where you're taking in iron, B12, folate and vitamin C at the same time, in foodstuffs. That's not a 'back-to-nature' prejudice on my part - the iron in meat, for instance, is 30% bioavailable, meaning you'll absorb and use about 30% of it. No supplement hits that figure, so those 14mg Iron tablets are actually delivering only a few milligrams under ideal conditions. And no-one's taking them under ideal conditions. The folate in fresh, dark green leafy vegetables is more easily absorbed than that in supplements. And the Vitamin C in vegetables is absorbed better than the pure stuff in tablets, due to interactions with other phytonutrients in the plant material. Finally, you've got a B12 source right there on the plate.

A 100g steak offers you about 15% of your daily iron needs. Clearly you're not going to eat 700g of steak a day (good luck with that!) - but it's a better start than the 'enriched' flour products that are often most people's best source of iron.

Watch your health as you change your diet this way and see if it improves - look for increased vigor, reduced sense of malaise and less feelings of tiredness and apathy. 

See Also: The Importance Of Iron In Our Diet

Gluten is a controversial topic. Some sources will say that outside a small number of people with honest-to-goodness celiac disease, gluten intolerance is a self-indulgent myth. Other people argue that as many as half of us don't produce enough of the enzymes needed to absorb a high-gluten diet safely. Some will say that most people are 'gluten-intolerant.'

Make up your own mind - but experiment with reducing your bread intake while you do it

Gluten containing grains can interfere with iron absorption by irritating the lining of the small intestine. If you cut out bread and nothing changes, maybe you - like me - tolerate grains well. If you suddenly feel great, maybe you should skip gluten-containing grains. Almost all grains will interfere with iron absorption to some extent. Finally, legumes are a good idea to avoid, since their phytate content reduces nutrient uptake in the small intestine. 

If you like something you've read here, or you think you've seen an error and you want to correct it, please get in touch with me in the comments section below and we'll talk about it.