Pumping Iron
I know, I know. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted new content. It’s not for a lack of writing. It’s simply a lack of finishing anything. When I first started this blog, I promised myself that it would be my creative outlet, a space for me to share what’s on my mind, but that it would never become another item on my to do list. So far, I have held that promise.
Today though, I feel like writing AND finishing. Imagine that.
Here goes…
I have not been feeling my best over the past several months. Not quite ill, but not quite healthy either. My guess is that it started in February or March. I was feeling exhausted. My sleep schedule went bananas. I felt light-headed. I couldn’t seem to regulate my body temperature. I felt agitated much of the time. My cycles were irregular and when Aunt Flo came to town, she pillaged. Weight started creeping in around my mid section. I was having headaches behind my left eye. I discovered lots of hair growth on my head (which told me that I had lost a fair amount). I assumed that peri-menopause was raging.
BUT THEN, the tell tale symptom presented itself: my restless leg syndrome began to flare. So I had some blood work done. And just like I expected, my ferritin level was ridiculously low.
As the Mayo Clinic tells us,
“Ferritin is a blood protein that contains iron…If a ferritin test reveals that your blood ferritin level is lower than normal, it indicates your body's iron stores are low and you have iron deficiency…The normal range for blood ferritin in women is 11-307.”
My ferritin level was 16. Oopsies.
Remember several months back, in In The Name of Health, when I talked about recovering from an unhealthy relationship with food? I mentioned in starving my body to the point of developing a semi-permanent neurological condition. Well, that condition is restless leg syndrome and it’s miserable. The medical field doesn’t totally understand RLS, but it is known that low ferritin can be a marker. My neurologist has told me that to see significant improvement in the condition, my target ferritin number should be 70. The highest it’s ever been is 53. It should definitely not be 16.
I began researching other symptoms of low ferritin levels. Here’s what I found:
Interesting, right? All of the symptoms that had caused me to feel unwell were related to low ferritin. I started taking a slow release iron supplement at the beginning of May and within days, I began feeling so much better. Over the course of the past three or so months, literally every.single.symptom has improved. My cycles are exactly 28 days and I have started to lose some of the weight around my midsection. It’s crazy to me that something as simple as iron could cause so much havoc.
As a self-declared iron deficiency expert, here’s my advice:
If you are concerned that you, too, are experiencing iron deficiency, ask your PCP to order labs. The regular iron panel is not enough. You can have adequate levels of hemoglobin and myoglobin and still be low in ferritin. You need to specifically request a ferritin test.
If you are peri-menopausal, it is incredibly likely that you are deficient in iron.
Find an iron supplement that works for you. I like the slow release type because it’s gentler on my gut. I have been taking this one because it also contains Vitamin C, which helps with iron absorption.
That’s it for today, friends. Take your iron. Feel better soon. ❤️
