Why is it so hard to get real answers about your health?

If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.

That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside your body so that you can take the targeted action needed.

With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.

I've teamed up with Dottyasmina, an incredible integrative GP and together we will help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like why am I always exhausted?

What's really causing my stubborn weight?

Am I inflamed?

Insulin resistant?

Or maybe missing key nutrients?

Because when you understand your body better, you can transform your health.

Visit v three sixty dot health or check out the show notes for more.

This is healthy Heir with Amelia Phillips and welcome to another mini motivation episode.

These are shorter, more bite sized conversations focusing on one specific topic in the hope that you will feel educated and of course inspired to take action.

So today we are diving into iron and why low iron matters.

I see so many women walking around with really poor iron levels and not realizing the impact it's having on their health.

In our programs we do a full iron panel and it just blows my mind how many women come back really really low, like rock bottom low.

So if you've suffered with low iron or maybe even high iron, or you know someone who has, then today's episode is definitely for you.

I sat down with doctor Libby Weaver, who's one of Australasia's leading nutritional biochemists.

She's a best selling author of thirteen books, including her just recently hot off the press published book called Fix Iron First.

She's an international speaker and the founder of a beautiful supplement brand called Bioblends.

Now they have a range of high quality food based nutritional supplements that really are designed to support real results.

And she's actually just launched a new iron supplement called Iconic Iron.

So she's got a PhD in bio chemistry, she's got over twenty years in clinical practice seeing everyday people like you and me, and so she's really seen it all.

And she's known for helping women understand the link between nutrition, between hormone stress and emotional wellbeing.

So here's what doctor Libby had to say about iron and women.

You've spoken a lot about how iron deficiency is often missed.

What are some of the subtle signs that us women, especially women in midlife, should look out.

For amelia So fatigue, and I know it's so general to say that, but it's essentially the lousy.

Energy that's not restored by a good sleep.

There's information in that, particularly if it goes on beyond about two to four weeks.

You want to get to the heart of that, because that can be iron deficiency.

Can be other things as well, but that can be iron deficiency sleep that changes.

So iron can drive restless legs, it can drive lousy sleep.

Now, that is interesting that you say that, because you're the second person in a very short space of time that has linked low iron and sleep.

And I did a sleep episode only a few back actually with sleep expert Lisa Moltman.

She brought that up as well, and not many people link poor sleep and low iron.

No, so you literally need it to be able to make melatonin, Is that right?

Yeah?

So obviously serotonin is supposed to be nice and high in the day, and melatonin is high in the evening and allows us to fall asleep and stay asleep in the biochemical pathway that leads to the creation of both of these literally is dependent on iron.

So right, So low energy, poor.

Sleep, anxiety, so right, anxiety.

These are the big ones here.

Yeah, And so anxiety is actually symptom of iron deficiency, and at the moment there's a tendency.

I'm not saying all anxiety is iron deficiency.

But there was a study published in twenty twenty three called the Psychiatric Manifestations of Iron Deficiency Anemia, and the researchers described depression and low mood, anxiety, ahadonia, the inability to feel pleasure, all linked to iron deficiency, and correcting the iron deficiency either improved or in some cases entirely relieved what was being blamed essentially on a psychiatric scenario.

So I'm not saying going down a psychological or psychiatric road is not the right road for some people, because of course it is.

But what I think you're touching on, which is so so important for us to understand, is that our biochemistry and rebalancing.

You know, where's particularly to about iron today, but it can be lots of other things such as hormones and vitamin D.

They're quick wins because they're relatively easy.

I do say that in inverted commas to rebalance with nutrition supplementation as well.

So that's why I'm so glad you're bringing that up.

And it's particularly important, of course for teenage girls to understand that, because there's such a tendency at the moment for them to say I feel anxious or I have anxiety, and then to end up on medications that they don't necessarily need if the anxiety is coming from iron deficiency.

Yeah, one hundred percent.

I want to circle back to the low energy and just take advantage of the fact I'm sitting with a biochemist.

Can you help us, maybe nerd out for a second?

Help us I understand the mechanism behind why low energy is linked to low iron.

So there's almost nothing inside of us.

Iron doesn't touch nothing that iron is not needed for.

So if you can imagine, the body is made up of fifty trillion tiny little cells, So imagine someone took a pencil and drew a circle.

That's a cell.

Inside every circle is a city, and it's forever constructing things.

It pulls things apart.

If it's not being used, produces energy, it eats food, it eliminates waste, and for that little cell to actually do what it needs to do, oxygen has to be supplied and iron is crucial for that.

So red blood cells contain hemoglobin, and it's the iron hemoglobin and iron carrying capacity of the blood that delivers the oxygen to all of those little cities so that they can operate.

We also need iron four thyroid hormone production, so our thyroid gland literally can't produce its hormones without iron, and iron is needed for the conversion of inactive thyroid hormone T four into active thyroid hormone T three.

Selenium is also needed for that reaction.

So for a lot of women over the years I worked with, they would come in with blood tests where they had low end normal ferrotin or low ferritin, high transferrin or high end normal train and so a demonstration of iron hunger coupled with not necessarily a thyroid disease, but a thyroid that wasn't.

Working as well as it once did, or.

Maybe tracking in a poor direction where it might still be normal.

But if you look at the last three or four results, your TSH is slowly climbing up and up and up, beautifully said, and a regular GP will not even bring that to your attention.

That's why we love functional medicine, because a functional medicine doctor will say, well, yeah, your TSH, your thyroid's normal, but it's tracking in the wrong direction.

It's tracking up, which is not a good thing.

And if we just wait and watch, it'll keep doing that.

So let's work out why it's tracking up.

An iron deficiency is often one of the major drivers.

So many women are told that their iron levels look normal, and I'm curious to know whether you agree with sort of the reference ranges we see out there, like on their blood tests, but they might still feel exhausted.

What are the early warning signs?

Is it one of those things where yes, if it's tracking down, or do you have tighter reference for iron?

And obviously with iron there's you know, five or six different markers.

Ferretin is the one we all talk about.

Yes, so firstly transferent So when we have iron studies done, this serum iron then it all the blood test will also measure transferrin and some people will see that that's high and think, oh, I must have high iron no no, Transferrin is a taxi that drives iron around.

So transferren becomes elevated in iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia.

So it's hungry.

It's extending more taxes out because it's like we need more iron.

It's kind of like on a busy night the uber drivers.

More uber drivers get alerted, so transferring goes up to try to hunt down more.

Spot on iron.

And so the normal range in Australia for adult women is two to three point six grams per liter.

For me, once it's above about two point six grams per liter, so you can hear that's still inside that normal range.

That's a sign that the body's seeking more iron.

And that's the transferrent, yes, that you're talking about.

And then ferretin.

The normal range for adult women is twenty to two hundred and twenty micrograms per LITERA and my clinical experience that bottom number is way too low.

Yeah, so a lot of when you like it to be minimum fifty.

That's what my business partner, DOCTORA Hazmena.

So many of our members on Vitality three sixty come back with low iron interestingly high iron as well, which I'm going to ask you about, but she's like, even if it's thirty or forty, she's like, let's try to get above fifty.

Minimum fifty.

I've had patients over the years say they feel better and more robust, more resilient when it's at more like eighty or even one hundred, particularly if there's.

Never had my iron there.

I was at forty nine in the last blood tests, so I'm gonna, yeah, maybe try to push it up a little bit more.

Think of it like a backup battery.

So for women especially, you know, if they have really heavy periods, they might be going through perimenopause and they're bleeding more frequently, you know, two or three times a month, or the bleeds might be very very heavy, so we're losing iron obviously with all of those bleeds.

If our ferretan is really low, there's nothing there to back us up, so that other things inside of us, like thyroid hormone production can end up missing out on the iron it needs.

So it's thinking about having those stores, you know, a minimum minimum fifty.

I would love my beautiful listeners to press pause and grab their most recent blood test and maybe re listen to this.

I just want to touch on saturation as well.

Do you have any kind of thoughts Is that a market that you look at when you're looking at iron stores or are you more focused on the transferrin and the ferretin.

Transferin and ferretin are the two that I really hone in on.

Yeah, But of course, in the context of looking at the whole lion studies, you can also start to see a pattern with what's happening with the saturation as well.

They all play their role, and of course homoglobin does as well.

If it's tracking down, you're on your way to iron deficiency anemia, where there literally won't be enough red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body.

So, and do you have any red flags for us to be aware of of saturation or is that more kind of an auxiliary marker, Like is there something where you're like, oh, if the saturation is on you know, below twenty percent or something like that, or we just look at it more as the complete picture.

Yeah, more as a pattern.

So if saturation is at low end normal, of course that's a problem and you're heading to it.

That's going to happen in iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia.

The saturation will improve usually as iron status improves, but it's not just iron.

We need to consider other nutrients and needed for iron to do what it needs to do.

And the body copper is really important to iron metabolism.

Vitamin A is as well, So we need copper and vitamin a to be able to put iron into storage, pull it out of storage when we need it to be able to send iron to the bone marrow to make new red blood cells.

We make two and a half million new red blood cells every second.

Oh and you need serious Yeah, we need under we're exhausted.

We need iron for all of them, and they turn over every twelve weeks.

Right, so, yeah, one hundred of red blood cells live on undred for one hundred and twenty days.

And the body is so efficient and remarkable it donates the iron inside a dying red blood cell back to the total iron pul.

Thank you, thank you blood cells.

Wow, that's crazy.

So let's talk about what we can do if we do have low iron.

Obviously, you'd love to just be able to pop a pill.

And there are iron supplements out there.

You've got a great one that I absolutely love for some people don't tolerate iron supplements.

Well, constipation is a common one or really dark stools.

Do you have any tips for women that would like to supplement with iron how they can kind of navigate the trickiness around it.

Yes, so there is there are old school iron supplements, and then there's a whole new generation of iron supplements that aren't talked about enough, and they're made and it's what mine is made from.

It's called ferretin iron.

So we extract that from organic peas.

It's really groundbreaking research that has led to it.

It took me took eight years of research and development god to get there.

So it's ferretin iron is if you can imagine, ferretin is like a protein cage and the little peas create that inside themselves and then store their iron inside it.

So there's thousands of iron atoms inside of the ferretin cage and that's concentrated and extracted from the little peas and we pop it into a supplement and then you swallow that.

Most of it bypasses degradation in the stomach and so it reaches the small intestine intact and its absorption mechanism is completely different from all other iron supplements.

So ferretin iron is absorbed through a process with a big, silly name called receptor mediated endocytosis.

No one needs to remember the geeky name.

How do you even remember that?

I guess that's what eight years of research sends my tires, all this stuff.

Imagine the little gut cell reaches out and envelopes the ferretin containing all the iron and takes it inside, and then it delivers that directly to that total iron pull, So the gut cell is never exposed to free iron, which is what happens with stock standard, old school iron supplement.

Why is it so hard to get real answers about your health?

If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.

That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside your body so that you can take the targeted action needed.

With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.

I've teamed up with Dottyasmina, an incredible integrative GP and together we will help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like why am I always exhausted.

What's really causing my stubborn weight?

Am I inflamed, insulin resistant, or maybe missing key nutrients?

Because when you understand your body better, you can transform your health.

Visit V three sixty dot health or check out the show notes for more.

What's the negative implication of that?

There has been talk of supplementing with iron in those more synthetic forms can actually lead to malabsorption of iron, which.

Is a bit of a brain twister, isn't it.

So it's because when so those old school ion supplements, it's iron bound to a salt or a chelate, and so we pop that into our mouth.

Down it goes to the stomach.

We have to have good stomach acid production that's really really acidic to split the iron away from what it's bound to, first of all, and a lot of people today don't have good stomach acid production because of chronic stress.

And then down the iron continues to go and it reaches the surface of the small intestine the cells that line that, and there's a transporter on the surface with an abbreviated name called DMT one.

So think of that like a truck and the iron has to hop on the back of that truck to get inside the cell, but it's free iron, and so it exposes that gut cell to free iron, which is highly inflammatory.

Yeah, they would not like it.

Those pro inflammatory cytokinds would be raising the red.

Flag spot on and so that's what drives the constipation and a lot of the gut related symptoms that come from those old school supplements.

And then to get the iron out.

Of the cell with this mechanism from the old school supplements, there's an enzyme reliant on copper that's needed at the back door of the gut cell to get it actually into the blood.

So that's one of the reasons why they can cause symptoms.

Right, And I guess that on repetition that has some impact on then whatever interaction that has it can actually cause when you're even just eating iron from whole foods, it can impact absorption of iron as well.

So hepsidon is a protein made by the liver.

It's produced when we have enough iron, it's produced when there's any kind of inflammation, and it's also produced when there's high dose of iron, which is so often what happens with those old school synthetics high dose, and that will block the absorption of iron, whereas with my supplement made from ferretin iron, it's low dose, it's absorbed intact, no inflammation, and it doesn't drive that hepsidon response.

Thoughts on iron infusions.

So we're lucky to live at a time where they exist.

We're very fortunate to live with amazing access to emergency medicine.

But that's how I see them.

They there for an emergency.

What worries me hugely is when people use them to treat their iron rather than correcting what's driving their iron problem, whether it's a lack of consumption and absorption issue, another gut related problem.

I've met lots of people over the years who just say, oh, I just have four iron infusions a year, that's how I manage my iron.

So it's a big flood, of course, directly into the blood.

There's no copper with it, there's no vitamin A with it.

So for some women it'll drive that real inflammatory response.

Others feel great and get their vitality back.

So what I'm hearing is as an emergency because you rock bottom, maybe your you know Ferreton numbers are well below you know twenty or below.

Sure as a one off or very occasionally every few years, but don't treat it as your staple.

Yeah, let's get to the heart of why you're deficient in the first place.

Iron accounting, we like to call it.

I love it, don't you love it?

It's like money in and out of a bank.

You know, why is your bank balance low?

Is it that you're not getting enough iron through your diet or is it that you're excreening a lot, whether it be through you know, heavy periods.

We had one of the members on our program who her iron accounting did not match up at all postmenopausal.

Anyways, we sent her for a pelvic ultrasound just to try to get to the bottom of it, and she had a luckily very benign, but a huge tumor the size of a cricket ball in her stomach that was bleeding.

Amelia, isn't that amazing?

Oh?

But how wonderful that you referred her to find that out.

Yeah, and look, it was benign, a simple operation, it was removed and then bang her iron.

So it was twelve weeks later they were perfectly healthy and just quickly to wrap up, I just want to also touch on iron overload, which is interesting.

We see less of that in our programs, but we definitely have a group of members whose FERRETM stores come back well above two hundred.

I had one yesterday it was four hundred and fifty.

Can we talk a little bit about what can cause those?

Absolutely so and so important to shine a light on this as well.

So some women don't find out that they have hemochromatosis until they're postmenopause because menstruation has been keeping it under wrapped.

Ah, is that what it is?

I was wondering why we see the prevalence of hemochromatosis because a lot most of our members that come back diagnose of postmenopausal.

And so it's always been there.

It's just that their body's been handling their ion balance, usually through menstruation.

So hemochromatosis is a genetic condition, and men find out there that they have it, usually pretty early on in life, and they usually control it by not eating too many iron rich foods and or donating blood pretty regularly.

So that's a wind.

But sometimes women will accumulate it through inflammation.

Ferretin It can also be falsely elevated when there's inflammation.

This is an interesting one, and this is one that we touch on a lot.

And I think this is why measuring other inflammatory markers you can see a pattern.

If your CRP is elevated and your ferretin's elevated, it could be and is that because inflammation essentially kind of busts open you know, things like blood cells where there is just a lot more free flowing iron that's then picked.

Up so inter luken six, so that ciderkind is very specific for ion retention, so it'll get it out of the blood and pop it into storage and then falsely elevate how high that ferretin actually looks.

So someone might have a ferretin of two hundred and you think, oh, that doesn't really match up with how they're eating.

Their ferretin might really only be sixty, which is still okay, but it's not as high as it looks.

So that's why you want to measure that CRP.

It's I wholeheartedly agree with you that those full panels of blood work offer way more insight than just doing things on their own.

That's only if there's an issue.

Straightforward iron studies gives us great insight, but if there's an anomaly, that's when you want to do those extra tests.

Absolutely and that's why we love I agree with you.

I love functional medicine.

Yeah, absolutely, whether you're testing once a year or up to four times a year.

If you've got lots going on, all right, well, find a question on our low iron for our mums listening who maybe their iron levels aren't super low but low enough they just want to focus on food first.

What are some of your top nutritional strategies for boosting our iron levels?

So think about breakfast, because it's so easy to not get iron for breakfast.

Yeah, I know, I do not associate iron and breakfast.

So obviously eggs have gone a little bit, so they're a great inclusion.

Muscles, sardines.

I actually want muscles for breakfast.

I actually met a lady.

She was a mate.

She had started work really early in the morning, and she said, my colleagues hate me for this, but she had chronically low iron and wanted very much.

A food first approach.

She wanted to see if she could do it all with food initially, so she used to just have coffee and a muffin for breakfast, and she switched it and started having either muscles or sardines for breakfast, and then waited.

She moved to the polyphenols and tannins in tea and coffee block iron block absorption.

I have about seven cups of tea morning, so it's a problem for me.

So she moved her coffee to mid morning.

So a couple of tips there.

Think about how you can incorporate some iron into breakfast, whether it's through eggs or sardines for each.

Can I just say with a sardines thing because I can actually feel my listeners turning up their noses because a lot of people hate sardines and they give it as cat food.

But try if And actually, this is a great question for you because I know that calcium and iron aren't always friends.

But I love ricotta or cottage cheese on toast with sardines and a cracked pepper and lemon.

Are you going to say that that's probably not a good combo because of the calcium.

So this is where we'll get super science geeky for two seconds.

Amelia, So non iron and calcium compete for absorption because they both use DMT one.

So non heme being plant based.

So your dark green leaf is, for example, which have a lot of non hem iron hem being animal based.

Okay, but in animal foods, yeah, forty percent of the iron is heme and sixty percent is non heme.

So even with the sardines, there's still non hem iron in that, But forty percent of the iron is actually heme, so calcium and hem iron don't compete for absorption.

Okay, So what you're saying is if the only way you're going to tolerate the stinky sardines is by a beautiful big layer of cottage cheese or rocotta, then go for it.

Is that what you're giving me permission?

But I think you're doing a great job if you're doing that.

Okay, And can I just give another I just thought of another really good one, because you know, chicken liver a path it's really high livers, really high in iron.

And I used to meet when my kids were really young, I used to homemake.

It's actually really easy, super easy to make chicken liver pad a dm me if you want the recipe, but I would store it in these really tiny frozen containers because it goes off so quickly.

You just use it on toast like butter, so you can have that.

Just such a gem exactly very much.

So it's a good one because you freeze them and then you just take you just got little like shot not even a shot glass, half a shot glass in the fridge and you just use it like butter for a few days.

Sensational.

Yeah, Or even make some eggs on a weekend.

Maybe see if you can make some muffins out of egg So a savory muffin.

It's chopped up, edges in it and quick easy breakfast with some iron in it just from the egg off, the sardines and the liver.

Is really making your turn your nose up.

But think about breakfast also to I still feel too many women skip lunch.

They're just they're busy, they're on the go, or they're using skipping meals as a tactic to try to manage body shape and size, so they grab coffee for lunch.

It's going to be very hard to meet your own requirements when we're skipping meals.

So we kind of need a proper lunch and a proper dinner.

Okay, And that's where you can you know you've got you've got your red meat, and pairing those red meats with some of that non hemine and someda and see as well.

Right, So whenever we're whenever we're cooking steak, and it's so expensive at the moment, you kind of need to use it properly.

I always make sure I'll have green and then either a red or an orange vegetable or a yellow vegetablege so you've got broccoli and capsicum, or asparagus and carrots, whatever it might be.

Those three colors were well together.

I love that.

Wonderful.

All right, well, we're solving all our low iron problems and why it matters.

Thank you so much, doctor Livy.

As always, I learn so much from you.

Oh it's a joy to sit with you, and thank you Amelia for all the ways that you care about other people.

Your care just paus out of you.

Sitting across from you today, you see it in your eyes and across your beautiful face.

Thank you.

It's been gorgeous.

I love it.

Thank you so much.

Why is it so hard to get real answers about your health?

If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.

That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside your body, so that you can take the targeted action needed.

With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.

I've teamed up with Dottyasmina, an incredible integrative GP and together we will help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like why am I always exhausted?

What's really causing my stubborn weight?

Am I inflamed?

Insulin resistant?

Or maybe missing key nutrients?

Because when you understand your body better, you can transform your health.

Visit V three sixty dot Health or check out the show notes for more