Low ferritin

[Guest guest]

I'm going to make a fresh start with this thread.

I agree with that the body will protect itself against oxidative

damage by maintaining a low ferritin. This will be true in cases of heavy metal

toxicity. It is also true in cases of parasite load. Parasites will feed on

the iron in the body, and having low ferritin will help protect against parasite

load and infections. If a person's ferritin stays low despite supplementation,

I would suspect some underlying condition still exists. Could be parasites

(maybe candida?), could be hypothyroid, could be stomach ulcers from taking

NSAIDS like Naproxen, probably other reasons as well.

My husband's former doctor recommended he take an aspirin every day as a cardiac

preventitive. He did this for about 5 years, then went to my doctor, who did

blood tests and thought his serum iron was less than optimal. My husband had an

endoscope of his stomach, and a colonoscopy, and it turned out he had a erosion

of the stomach lining in several places, probably not quite bad enough to be

called an ulcer, but enough to make him lose a few drops of blood a day. So he

stopped the aspirin. The moral is that you can lose small amounts of blood

every day and never have any symptoms, but those drops of blood add up.

Anyway, iron creates free radicals and causes oxidative damage. That's why I

prefer a more natural form like beef or beef liver or dessicated beef liver to

taking iron supplements. Iron is not such an innocent supplement. You really

want to consume it in a food or chelated form, especially if you have mercury

toxicity.

As for hypothyroid and hydrocortisone, if a person is adrenally insufficient, it

probably is best to start on HC first. But I wouldn't go more than 2 weeks on

just the HC before adding in a low dose of thyroid, and slowly incrementing the

thyroid depending on symptoms. Maybe incrementing the HC too, depending on what

dose a person started on. I think after starting thyroid that if anything the

HC will stay the same or need to increase. The HC can be decreased after the

adrenals have healed, which will take some time. So if you're already on HC,

just start adding the thyroid slowly. I find I need to dose my thyroid 4 times

a day, but I'm not on HC. I found my ferritin has jumped from 30 to 200 just by

increasing my thyroid, getting my body temp up, and eating more meat. I was

also taking dessicated liver for a couple years.

The problem with doing one thing at a time is that our hormones, minerals,

vitamins, and enzymes work in tandem, and taking one thing increases the demand

for something else or affects the metabolism of something else. When you're

talking about the inputs to the human metabolism, you need everything in balance

at the same time. I think this is a different scenario than adding in

pharmacological agents. In that case I would agree to only start one thing at a

time, such as not starting ALA and DMSA at the same time.

Lynn