I became concerned about iron in my body
after reading an article by a researcher at Duke on the “Golden Age of Iron Biology”. I then read, “Dumping Iron: How to Ditch this Secret Killer and Reclaim Your Health” by P.D. Mangan, an excellent book on recent research about the negative effects of high levels of iron in the body. In
simple language a non-biologist like me can understand, the book explains
astonishing new discoveries of why high iron concentrations in the body
degrades health and shortens lives.
According to the book, iron starts
accumulating in men at age 19 and in most women starting at about age 50 after
the end of their menses. At 50, the average man has 4 times as much iron in his
body as the average women; he also has 4 times the mortality from diseases that
appear to be caused by high iron. Women’s mortality increases as their iron
levels reach the same high levels as men. Though women live 4 years longer than
men, at their death the average iron levels of women are the same as the average men's level. The author notes
that the majority of
the oldest people alive have had low levels of iron most of their lives and
populations that are long lived have low levels of iron in their blood.
According to the book, there was a dramatic
rise in iron levels in the US population due to the addition of iron to grains
and cereals, which has caused the average person to have higher levels of iron
than is healthy. One of the issues with iron is that the body has no natural way to get
rid of it so it builds up first in the liver, then in the pancreas, then other
organs including the heart and brain. To make matters worse, sugar and fructose
increase iron absorption significantly. So all the sugary drinks and foods
people have added to their diet over the past few decades has further increased
their iron levels.
High iron levels damages cellular
mitochondria and is suspected to cause cancer. Even more interesting, cancer
cells need large amounts of iron to grow and spread. Tumors in people with low
iron tend to be very small and grow slowly.
Iron is also implicated in cancer reoccurring
after treatments of chemotherapy and radiation because iron is needed for
cancer stem cells to form. Cancer
stem cells are special cancer cells that can travel throughout the body and
restart cancer growth after treatment. Low levels of iron in the blood may prevent them from forming.
I was surprised to learn that high iron
levels are needed for invasive bacteria to grow in the body and low iron levels
actually increase immunity to bacteria. Even viruses, like colds and flu, need
lots of iron to grow so low iron levels are also antiviral. It helps explains why people with low
levels of iron live so long.
Evidence is also growing that high iron
levels contribute to obesity because it destroys the hormone leptin, the key
hormone that reduces hunger after eating. High iron levels can make you
insatiably hungry which can lead to obesity.
The author believes that the best blood iron
level is just over what would normally be considered anemia. He recommends that
people keep their iron levels much lower than the normal ranges and consume
things that both remove iron from the body and take things that decrease iron
absorption from the foods you eat. What is really interesting about this is
that most of the things that decrease iron absorption are considered
life-extending like green tea, dark chocolate, red wine, low dose aspirin, low
calorie diets, high fiber, vegetarian diets, and exercise.
I highly recommend this book for anyone
wanting to improve the quality of their health and longevity using recent
discoveries about iron biology. Five stars!!!!
