In order to understand whether you have high or low iron, you must get an extra test to check iron. These tests are "serum iron" and "serum ferritin". The ferritin test looks at your stored iron, which is what is available to be used to manufacture red blood cells and other tissues.
Think of stored iron as "potential". Your body will manufacture hemoglobin fine if your ferritin is 30 or 300. Enzymes and hormones will keep the hemoglobin steady. It just needs the potential "pile of iron" to manufacture. A large pile won't necessarily cause high hemoglobin. Likewise, a pile that is very low, but still there, won't necessarily cause low hemoglobin.
That's why high iron (the real subject of this thread) is dangerous. If really high, your organs take a hit storing that extra iron. But it doesn't show up unless you get the test.
Yep, exactly right. Iron is indeed extremely dangerous if you have too much. I have posted here before (a few times) about my experience with high iron a few years ago, and it was not fun. Had I not figured out (on my own) that high iron was my problem, it could have killed me. In my opinion, all males over about age 50 should at least have the serum ferritin test done when they have their annual blood testing done. If your ferritin is above about 200 (or even 150), you have too much iron in your system. When I finally had mine tested (at my insistence........my doctor at the time said there was no need to test it), it was over 500. I was having all sorts of troubling symptoms over the previous year or so......irregular heartbeat, weight loss, hair loss, and more. Even when mine tested 500+, my doctor said it was no big deal, and could not be causing my symptoms. I thought it could be, so I started donating blood to reduce my iron, to see if that would help. It helped immensely. After a few blood donations, the symptoms started to fade away, and after a few more, they were gone completely. Now I have my ferritin checked regularly, and it's at about 60-70, which is where it needs to be, based upon all the research I have done.
Males have no good way of getting rid of excess iron (women lose a lot during the years they are menstruating), so in males it tends to slowly accumulate over time. And you do not have to have hereditary hemochromatosis to have an issue with iron.......I do not have hemochromatosis, but my iron still got way too high over time. Iron overload is the general term for excessive iron, and my belief is that a lot of older males have it, without knowing it.
Excess iron damages virtually every organ system in the body. It is entirely possible that excess iron is responsible for a lot of deaths due to heart disease that are attributed to other causes (like cholesterol).
After my experience, I am a believer that a lot of folks should have their serum ferritin tested, to see where they stand. If it's too high, you can easily lower it over time through donating blood. Now I donate blood twice yearly, which is enough to keep my ferritin at a safe level.
By the way, regular blood donors live an average of 4-5 years longer than those who never donate blood. It is entirely possible that this could be due to the reduction in iron that comes with donating blood.
There has been a lot written in recent years about the dangers of high iron, but in my experience, many doctors still don't know about it, and won't test for it (serum ferritin) unless the patient asks for it to be tested. And it's a cheap test (about $50, I think), so there is really no reason to not have it checked.
