Iron and Sideremia

Iron and Sideremia!

What is iron or sideremia and what is it used for?

IRON AND SIDEREMIA

Iron is a necessary element for our organism. The main function of iron relates to the production of haemoglobin, the protein present in the red blood cells that allows the transportation of oxygen to all tissue and of myoglobin, another protein tasked to fix the oxygen inside the muscles.
Iron is also essential for the proper functioning of several other enzymes and proteins.
The total content of iron in the human body is around 6 grams in men and 2 grams in women and you should follow these parameters to check.
It has always been spoken about a balanced diet to maintain proper levels of iron in the body, while compensating for the losses that occur through the urine, faeces, sweat, desquamation of the skin cells, and of those of the intestine.

Approximately 70 per cent of the iron is contained in the red blood cells, linked the haemoglobin and another 10 per cent is located inside the myoglobin.
The remaining 20 per cent of iron about goes to form (in liver, spleen, bone marrow and skeletal muscle) a reserve that the body holds.
The body retains this reserve because every time you will have a sudden increase in the demand for iron, as occurs for example during a haemorrhage, when the organism must produce a large amount of new red blood cells, it will have at its disposal the iron to use.

LACK OF IRON AND SIDEREMIA

The lack of this mineral can be particularly serious and manifest itself with tiredness, fatigue and anemia (sideropenic anemia).
There are also very comon symptoms such as; cephalalgy, palpitations, neuralgia, increased susceptibility to infections.

A lack of Iron can also lead to other types of symptoms such as:
Tongue burns, small cracks (rhagades) at the corners of the mouth and nails, fragility of the hair.

The lack of iron has always been linked to a diet in which meat is poor or absent (vegetarians) or a high consumption of cereals, especially if wholegrain, which may obstruct the absorption of this element.
In fact, today we know that being a vegetarian does not necessarily mean lack of iron, especially if you follow a correct vegetarian diet.

FOODS CONTAINING IRON AND SIDEREMIA

The foods richest iron are :

• Liver and Intestines in general,
• Dark chocolate,
• Legumes,
• Red meat,
• Dried fruit
• Green leaf vegetables.

But what only a few people know but which is very important is that the ability of our organism to absorb iron varies considerably from food to food.

Iron absorption is facilitated by fructose and especially by vitamin C and citric acid: for this reason it is recommended to dress the vegetables with lemon.

On the other hand the obstacles to the absorption of iron are:

– Tea and coffee (due to the presence of tannin),

– Foods that contain oxalic acid (wholegrain cereals, spinach, beetroots),

– The EDTA preservative.
Also different drugs lower significantly the ability of the intestine to absorb iron: for example anti-acids, anti-inflammatories and some antibiotics.  Moreover an Iron shortage can be also determined by the assumption of anabolic steroids in particular of testosterone.

Take a look at our tried and tested method: Anti-Diet