Nutrition

Nutritional cause of fatigue – iron deficiency anaemia

I’m currently 31 weeks pregnant and 2 weeks ago my midwife told me I have iron deficiency anaemia. This makes sense as I felt all the classic symptoms.

 

For me in particular. I was feeling:

-low energy and low mood
-feeling out of breath especially when exercising
-restless legs
-rapid heart beat
-heart palpitations
-lack of focus and concentration
-poor memory

 

My haemoglobin was 123 and dropped to 107.  My iron stores in my liver (ferritin) were 39 and dropped to 11.

 

I want to share this with you as I’d like to take the opportunity to talk about iron and why it’s important and how to boost it. This is one of the major nutritional causes of fatigue.

 

What is Iron and how does it work on your blood 🙂 

-a protein called ‘globin’ loves the mineral iron (science term is ‘haem’) – they fall in love to form haemoglobin
-oxygen you breathe in is attracted to iron/haem this is how your body transports oxygen around your blood
-all your body cells need oxygen to function optimally!
-if you lack iron you cannot form the complex haemoglobin so your levels drop and you cannot carry the amount of oxygen around your blood that your body needs hence you will feel pretty s**t!.
-if anaemia is due to iron deficiency your blood haemoglobin will drop when your iron stores in your liver known as ferritin become depleted.

 

So who needs more iron 🙂
-pregnant women
-women who lose blood via monthly menstruation
-teenage girls in particular
-infants/children
-vegetarians/vegans
-frequent blood donors
-athletes
-people who have active inflammatory bowel disease

 

How to fix it 🙂 

Step 1: identify underlying cause!
Step 2: decide on the appropriate supplement you want to take
Step 3: boost your dietary intake

 

My plan ❤️

Step 1: pregnancy and house move to NZ from UK with food poisoning is the cause for me
Step 2: Floradix (no yeast no gluten) is my supplement of choice as my body feels better on yeast/gluten free diet

Step 3: Key foods for me to boost in my diet are: lean red meat (grass fed beef), black pudding, dark chocolate, dried prunes and dried apricots, cooking in cast iron cookware – with daily dose of spirulina/spinach daily smoothie.

Follow up: I have a re-test in 1 months time and feeling better already!

 

If you are concerned – go to your doctor and ask for a iron studies profile – where you have full blood count, ferritin and they can throw in B12 and folate too.

 

Did you find this blog helpful?  Please share a comment below!  If you would like to stay connected and be notified of when a new blog goes live and also receive weekly inspiration and motivation from me with personal updates that I ONLY share to my email list (it’s FREE)  – click on this link to sign up to my VIP email list

 

With love,

p.s – do you know someone who could be iron deficient – share this post with them 🙂

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Katie Charlton
Health & Nutrition Mindset Expert Coach

Katie is 43 years old – British born New Zealander with a passion to help people reach & keep their health and weight loss dreams by working one to one over 6 weeks in her results coaching programme.

Katie’s clients want to eat better, feel healthier, treat digestive health issues, get better energy, speed up their metabolism, stop self sabotage eating and yo yo patterns and heal from cravings.

One thought on “Nutritional cause of fatigue – iron deficiency anaemia

  1. janu says:

    good is very good

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