A common occurrence, especially in women, is a shortage of adequate iron with anemia resulting.  Anemia is a disorder of the blood from a shortage of hemoglobin in the red blood cells.  Since the red blood cells carry oxygen to the body, the symptoms of anemia are weakness and shortness of breath.  In some cases, it has even been linked to hair loss in women (see our Provillus review for an excellent hair loss remedy for women). 

An anemic person will also be pale and easily fatigued.  There are a number of different causes of anemia and diagnostic tests must be done to determine which type of anemia it is.  A common cause of anemia is nutritional deficiencies.
Often, women can have iron-poor blood, but not to the point of anemia.  Many women do not consume adequate iron daily to compensate for the blood lost in their menstrual cycles per month.  In studies done on the average women’s dietary intake of iron per day, it’s been found that they take in about 10.7 milligrams each day.  The daily allowance recommended for iron is 18 milligrams.
In addition to not getting adequate iron in the diet, too little of vitamin B12, folate and copper can play a role in iron-poor blood.  If you suspect you are anemic, a visit to your physician is needed to determine if you are anemic and what caused your anemia.  In this case, you should follow your doctor’s orders to correct your anemia.
If you want to eat well and maintain healthy blood cells, choose iron rich foods as part of your daily diet.  Cooking with cast iron pans helps to enrich your food with iron.  Liver is an iron rich food and also contains a healthy amount of copper, B12 and folate.
Iron rich plants include whole grains, enriched flours, dark green leafy vegetables and legumes such as lima beans, chick peas and kidney beans.  Some good sources of folate are spinach, kidney beans, wheat germ and asparagus.  Avoid cooking the folate rich foods for too long as it destroys the folate nutrition.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Vitamins & Minerals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.