Low Iron?

Iron is an essential trace mineral that plays a number of important physiological roles in humans, including oxygen transport, energy metabolism, and neurotransmitter synthesis.

When your stomach is generously acidic, it’s surrounded by a plush mucus wall. That thick mucus wall also contains the major constituents for helping you to absorb Iron from the food you eat.

To be absorbed, iron must be in the ferrous (Fe2+) state or bound by a protein such as heme. Stomach acid (HcL) helps convert ferric iron (Fe3+), from your food, to ferrous iron. A vegetarian diet primary contains non-heme iron (existing in the ferric insoluble iron form) ,and an omnivorous diet contains mostly heme iron (the soluble form of iron). HcL or gastric stomach acid is required for iron absorption because it dissolves the insoluble ferric salts and enables the conversion to Fe2+ [ferrous, also known as iron 2], allowing them to now be absorbed by the brush border enzymes in the small intestine.

Much like the control of salivary secretions, the gastric secretions (including mucus secretion) is largely controlled by neural influences. An increase in mucus production is signalled by a stimulation of the Vagus nerve (*tress response hint). If we are always in a sympathetic nervous system response (Flight, Fight or Freeze) our stomach acid will be compromised. This may include the influence of physical, mental or mechanical stressors.

So, in short, even if you eat the foods that contains the iron (these are often animal proteins) you still need constituents from a healthy and functional stomach to utilise those nutrients, without which your red meat will be wasted.

I am often seeing clients consuming more red meat than they ever have, with excessively reduced ferritin, RBC and hemoglobin and hematocrit. This suggests that their low iron status is not a matter of low iron in their diet but more likely a matter of deficient stomach acid, which requires a thick mucus lining, allowing for the proper conversion of dietary iron to usable iron for the blood cells and storage.

Accumulating evidence indicates that excess of unabsorbed iron (so you’re eating that hormone-free grass-fed meat but your are not absorbing the iron) in the colonic lumen causes unwanted side effects at the intestinal host–microbiota interface. Unabsorbed iron may cause unhelpful growth, composition, metabolism and pathogenicity of the gut microbiota detrimental to human health.

A low iron picture is a secondary state, one that deserves proper investigation of where the underlying factor may reside, and not a primary diagnosis. Without adequate HcL it is extremely difficult to have optimal iron levels.

Constipation, diarrhoea, food malabsorption, reflux, bloating, candida, parasite infections are all common symptoms of low stomach acid.

With a low digestive capacity you can be walking around eating the best diet ever and still be malnourished because your body can’t utilise the nutrients you’re bringing in.

If you have continuously low iron levels and are suffering from any of symptoms described above, contact me to resolve your low iron permanently - I did it, and I will show you how 🧡