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Main points of donating blood
- Too much iron in your blood is common and dangerous to your health. The danger comes form the creation of too much reactive oxygen species(ROS) which damage your cells.
- You can easily diagnose this by a serum ferritin test. Ideally you want to be between 40 and 60 ng/ml .
- Adult men and non-menstruating women should get their levels checked and if high can easily reduce their levels by donating blood.
Why excess Iron dangerous
Mitochondria are the energy power plants of the body. A byproduct of this energy production is oxygen. Most of the time the oxygen is converted to water. But up to 5 percent of the time free radicals are created. Obviously we need iron since it is present in all of our red blood cells. The problem is when we have too much. The excess will cause extra hydroxyl free radical to be produced which will kill your mitochondrial DNA and other cellular membranes.
Our body operates off of two fuel sources: carbohydrates and fat. Carbohydrates is a dirty fuel and can add an extra 30-40 % more reactive oxygen species(basically free radicals) on top of those produced by reactions from a high iron level. Fat is a much cleaner fuel for the mitochondria and much less ROS’ are produced. While your doctor may check for low iron levels, not many are checking for excessive levels unless you are symptomatic. Iron excess can speed up the process of just about every chronic disease we know of. Those diseases are diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimers, hypertension, and the list just goes on.
What to do to treat high iron levels
Two basic ways to treat high iron. One is by donating blood and the other is taking antioxidants. Now ROS is actually necessary for life . If you have cancer cell, infection, or have damaged cells that need to be removed ROS are instrumental in taking care of this. So if you take antioxidants to suppress this system you are interfering with your bodies natural defense system. A better way is to donate blood. Since red blood cells have such a high level of iron in them this will reduce your bodies levels down to a normal amount.
I recommend that everyone get there serum ferritin checked every year. Do not believe the lab that a level greater than 100 ng/ml is ok. For max health you want your level between 40-60 ng/ml. Males and non-menstruating females should be getting their levels checked. I just recently had mine checked and my level was 386ng/ml. I will be donating blood 4 times a year till I get that level below 100. I recently read a really interesting article on a study that was done in Finland that correlated less heart attacks in people who donated blood regularly. You can read that article here.
Fats and ROS
The Loveland Medical Clinic runs a nutritional therapy program. We start by putting people on a high fat , low carbohydrate diet. As I mentioned above a high carbohydrate diet produces more ROS. Even worse is that the standard american diet is high in polyunsaturated fats which interacts with ROS in chain reaction causing even more damage . A diet that is high in good fats decreases ROS. It is important to eat the right fats. If you would like more information on our diet plans you can look here.
Call us at the Loveland Medical Clinic to see how we can improve your health.
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