10 Signs You Have An Iron Deficiency

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