10 — Iron | nutrients we’re deficient in

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Episode Transcript

This is the Eat Ancestral podcast number 10. Iron deficiency is the most common micronutrient deficiency. It affects billions of people worldwide. Are you one of them? Well, you might ask, how would I even know? Here are a few common symptoms of iron deficiency. This is by no means an exhaustive list. But here are the most common ones; very pale skin, cold hands and feet, fatigue and shortness of breath, dizziness, lightheadedness, or headaches. If you're worried about your iron status after hearing that, then you might easily be able to get a blood test to verify, but you should also keep listening to learn who is most at risk, why that is the case and what foods we can eat or not eat in order to prevent iron deficiency. But first, let's learn a bit more about why iron is so important to our physiology and what are some of the consequences of iron deficiency? Okay, so iron is essential to human health. I have a quote here from a paper by Bailey et al. from 2015. Check the show notes for the references if you're interested. "Iron is a mineral that is an essential component of haemoglobin myoglobin, enzymes and cytochromes and is necessary for oxygen transport, and cellular respiration. Iron is also critical for optimal growth, and cognitive function". So iron is super important, and a deficiency will compromise our quality of life and health span in a variety of ways. Okay, so how does an iron deficiency compromise our physiology? And what are some of the outcomes here that might affect us during our lifetime? Well, the first one on my list is related to the quote that I just referenced with regards to iron being an essential component of our red blood cells. And our red blood cells are what are responsible for transporting oxygen around the body and delivering it to our tissues and organs. And so a deficiency in iron will impair this function and lead to something called anaemia, which no doubt you have heard of. This is a big problem actually in the world, so we're going to talk more about anaemia very soon. Iron deficiency also impairs our physical and cognitive development and function. Iron deficiency also impairs our immune system and our endocrine system. So if you're interested in having a robust immune system, and healthy levels of hormones, then you're going to want to pay attention to this. So what does this mean in terms of health outcomes during our lifetime? Well, some downstream effects from nutrient deficiencies like an iron deficiency include things like disability, increased susceptibility to sickness and chronic disease, decreased work capacity and earning potential and a lowering of our socioeconomic status. So these are some of the higher level problems or outcomes that we can expect, and that we see as a result of nutrient deficiencies. And at the top of the paper that I referenced earlier by Bailey et al., they had a quote here that I found quite striking, that reads "Like poverty, under nutrition and nutrient deficiencies often occur as part of an intergenerational cycle." So that's how problematic this can become. If our children are born into a life where they are nutrient deficient, or their parents suffer from sickness, disease and inability to work. And you grew up in a family with a low socioeconomic status, it can be really hard to dig yourself out of that hole. And so what is seen most of the time is that these deficiencies, and these outcomes don't just affect the individual in question, they are actually passed along through the generations. So that's something to consider there. As we talked about previously, with regards to vitamin D, which is another common nutrient deficiency, a single micronutrient deficiency will eventually snowball and lead to many significant problems. Okay, so let's talk about who is most at risk of developing an iron deficiency. I think this is important because along with tracking your symptoms and potentially getting a blood test, just knowing if you're a part of a group, who are going to be predisposed to an iron or nutrient deficiency, I think is really helpful. Because you can triangulate, and and just be aware, like what is your risk profile as with anything, I think it's very helpful. So the following groups are most at risk of iron deficiency, women, children, vegetarians and vegans, and people with compromised gut health. So just and we're going to break down the reasons why that is the case and how you might go about mitigating this risk as we get along in this episode, but I wanted to read out another quote, because I think it really is worth your time to consider just the the scale of our iron deficiency problem. So this is a quote by from a paper by Ning and Zeller from 2019 that reads "The World Health Organisation estimated worldwide prevalence of anaemia to be 42% in children 29% in non pregnant women, and 38% in pregnant women in 2011. In 2013, iron deficiency was identified as the predominant cause of anaemia among the 1.93 billion anaemic people (27% of the world's population) globally, making iron deficiency anaemia, a major global health issue." Why is nobody talking about this? This is not just a problem in poor developing countries. The irony here is that globally, we are overfed with calories been undernourished, with nutrients, because our food is so low quality, that calories are not coming along with the nutrients, people eating lots of grains and this kind of thing. And as we'll discover later on in this episode, this is not a great strategy if you're interested in getting all of your micronutrients. And the other problem is that we've given people the idea that they can just take this synthetic multivitamin, and it's going to solve that problem. And guess what; it doesn't. Nor does this other program, which they call fortification, which is basically taking a food like grains, which has, which does not contain the requisite micronutrients that we need, and adding synthetic, often poorly bioavailable sources of these nutrients to those foods, so that people can continue eating grains. Whereas a better strategy might just be to eat the foods that actually contain the nutrients we need, and then you don't have to inject them into those foods. Furthermore, and very interestingly, almost 100 years ago, in 1934, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology was actually awarded to three doctors who discovered, or rediscovered more accurately, a cure for anaemia. And it's a type of food, a food item that until the modern era had been a central part of the human diet for millions of years. So in light of this, how is it acceptable that 40% of children and pregnant women and 30% of other women in general, are so deficient in iron that they are suffering from a preventable disease called anaemia? Again, we've known about how to cure this for almost 100 years. Why is this still a problem? Anyway, moving on, let's talk about how women and children are at risk of iron deficiency and why that is often the case. So women of reproductive age lose blood every single month, which depletes iron stores. As we talked about, iron being an integral component of our red blood cells. So a loss of blood means a loss of nutrients like iron, pregnant and nursing mothers will require more iron than usual, obviously, for themselves and their own physiological operations, but also for for that of their growing baby. So to build and nourish, their growing baby, pregnant and nursing mothers will need more nutrients than usual. Young children are often deficient in iron simply because their mother was deficient and there was a low transfer of iron across the placenta and/or via the breast milk. And children are also obviously not in control of their food choices. This comes down to parents and their school and this kind of thing. And because of the way our nutrition guidelines are set up, many parents and schools seem to think it's a good idea to to not eat meat. At least once a week, so, Meatless Monday, vegetarian meals, this kind of thing. And this will lead us on to our next section. So why is that a problem? Why are vegetarians and vegans at risk of iron deficiency? So, first of all plant foods as you know, or should know at this point, plant foods are very poorly bioavailable sources of many nutrients, and iron is no different. So all this means bioavailable is that these nutrients are not as valuable, let's say to our physiology, and the body might have to alter them to manufacture a more appropriate type of whatever nutrient it is before it can be used in normal physiological operations. And so it is no different here I have a quote by Pawlak & Bell from 2017 that reads "The most readily absorbed type of iron is heme iron, which comes from meat, poultry, and fish. Therefore, since these foods are not consumed by vegetarians, except for semi and pesco vegetarians, vegetarians consume the less absorbable non heme iron. Furthermore, plant foods contain several iron absorption inhibitors. They include phenolic compounds, oxalates, and phytates. Food especially rich in the above listed iron absorption inhibitors include grains, especially whole grains, beans and nuts, many vegetables including spinach, and parsley, but also spices and condiments, such as oregono, cinnamon, tea, coffee, red wine, and cocoa." So, we have previously discussed the importance of understanding how plants defend themselves against predation. This is by manufacturing chemicals and distributing these chemicals throughout their roots, stems, leaves and seeds. And we modern humans love to call these parts of the plant 'vegetables'. But that is not their intended purpose. And it's because of these chemical defences that many plant foods seem to easily impair our digestion, block absorption of many nutrients like iron, and effectively compromise our gut health in a variety of ways. And this is because humans don't have the anatomy to deal with high amounts of these chemicals. We are not specialist herbivores. We are omnivores. We are built, designed, perfectly suited to digesting and assimilating the nutrients from animal foods, like meat and organs. We are not built and designed to consume lots and lots of plants. So that is why vegetarians and vegans are at risk of developing an iron deficiency. And this leads us on to the next section, which is how people with compromised gut health are at risk of also developing an iron deficiency. And I didn't realise how big of a problem this was until I did the research for this episode. But gastrointestinal loss of iron, so loss of iron via the gut, is actually a major cause of iron deficiency. And one of the one of the symptoms here one of the ways you might notice that you're losing blood via your gut is in your stool. So if you're pooing blood, that is definitely not a good thing, you should look into it. And it might just be a loss of iron, or it could be something more serious, but effectively if our gut health is compromised our nutrient stores likely are too. So some gut related conditions that will negatively negatively impact our ion status include things like inflammatory bowel disease, celiac, gastric bypass, gastritis, ulcers, h pylori infection, GERD, or acid reflux. And anyone who has been treated with antibiotics, or proton pump inhibitors. And anyone who's eating processed food, there's a lot of stuff in our personal care products, in our food, in our pharmaceuticals, that is going to mess with our gut health. And the fact of the matter is that a lot of people in the modern world, especially those of us who live in urban environments, we really don't have healthy guts. And healthy just means optimally functioning. And so there's normal gut function is really important, obviously, for many things like nutrient absorption, and the microbes in our gut will also manufacture vitamins for us and neurotransmitters for us. So we should pay much more attention to our gut status. As Hippocrates said a couple of thousand years ago, all disease begins in the gut. I don't know if all disease begins in the gut, but a hell of a lot of it seems to start there. So you should learn more about your gut health and how to optimise it with diet and lifestyle measures. I'll include a couple of links in the show notes with regards to that. Okay, so let's recap what we've learned today. And then I want to share some very specific examples of the foods that we should be eating in order to prevent iron deficiency. And also I want to share the Nobel Prize winning food item that was shown almost 100 years ago, to be an effective and quick cure of anaemia. So first of all, iron deficiency affects billions of people worldwide. You should find out if you're one of them. Common symptoms of iron deficiency include very pale skin, fatigue, cold hands and feet, headaches and dizziness. In children, iron deficiency impairs normal growth and development. In adults, iron deficiency impairs physical and cognitive function leads to anaemia, impairs the immune system and disrupts normal hormone function as well. People most at risk of iron deficiency, children, women, especially pregnant and nursing mothers, vegetarians, and especially vegans, and also those of us with compromised gut health, which is more people than would like to think it is. So to prevent iron deficiency, we must eat higher quality foods that 1) are rich sources of bioavailable iron, and 2) will support our gut health. So this means eating more animal foods like beef and lamb, and less plant foods, which will actually give you more of a chance of absorbing the nutrients that these foods contain. And the Nobel Prize winning food item that cures anaemia? It's called–it's an organ meat–it's called liver, the most nutrient rich food source for humans on the planet, and you should get some liver in your life. Figure it out. I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't taste great, but it's packed full of nutrients. And I know you've eaten things like broccoli in the past because you thought they were good for you. So we don't always eat things that taste awesome. But hey, that's the trade off we make. And if you're not willing to make that trade off, then I don't know what to tell you. Anyway, that is it for me today. This has been the Eat Ancestral podcast. My name is Ben and we have been talking about iron and the nutrients that we are deficient in. Take care. I'll talk with you soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai