And then you don’t, right? Because if my experience is anything to go by, there are some patients that just don’t respond to the usual iron repletion strategies. Depending on how low their ferritin is, this can then precipitate ‘practitioner panic’ (we’ve all had it right?!) where we’re inclined to go higher & higher with the dose and number of doses per day. Typically, this also fails. I hear about this from other practitioners all the time and I see the ‘normal’ doses of iron sneaking up and up. Remember the days when we couldn’t get a non-pharmacy supplement with over 5mg elemental iron in it and now we have > 20mg? But still, I hear you say, this fades into insignificance when you think about the standard medical model for iron correction which provides 100-200mg/day and you’re right.
Gee… after hundreds of years of knowing about this deficiency and being the most common deficiency word-wide, you’d think we had our supplemental regime nailed.
But that’s where you’d be wrong.
In spite of 33% of the world’s population being affected by iron deficiency, we have been slow to understand the best way to manage and correct this deficiency. All minerals are different in their regulation and while we actually know the most about iron homeostasis, much new information and intricacies are still fairly fresh. In particular our understanding of the key molecule in iron regulation – hepcidin – has been a game changer or should be! Just seems our practice protocols are taking a while to catch up with the research.
So if I said, the way to best help these hard-to-budge iron deficient individuals, was to give them iron less often…you’d be thinking I’ve lost my mind wouldn’t you…
But that’s where you’d be wrong.
Want to do some reading up on this topic? Or maybe you want to cut to chase and listen to my 30min summary of all the research and exactly what the best iron prescriptions look like here 🙂