Iron and Red Meat (December 5, 2010)
Dear Ana,
I just finished your blog about the trip to the GP and was wondering how you maintain your iron levels without meat. About 3 months ago, I was diagnosed with severe anaemia due to bleeding. The gynae put me on hormones, which I resisted, then after about 6 weeks stopped taking because the side effects sucked and the bleeding didn’t stop. I’ve been off them for about a month, and slowly my body’s normalizing. I’m still having problems getting enough iron, though. When my iron counts drop, I have trouble breathing. This becomes an issue if I skip meat for a day or two.
As an aside, the hormones were causing me to retain water, which caused my joints to swell. The doctor was puzzled because the “solution” should have been NSAIDs, but because of the “reactive respiratory disorder” caused by the anemia, she couldn’t advise me to take them regularly. This helped end the hormone prescription because I couldn’t deal with the pain they were causing. What should I do?
Best,
Marcy
Hi Marcy,
Thank you for your question. The issue of iron deficiency is a big one. Correcting it is not a simple case of taking iron and high iron containing substances into the body but rather it is a case of creating the environment for building healthy blood. What Natalia feels made the difference in her hemoglobin count was moving from being a waste-filled body to a waste-free body. Pre-cleansing, when she was chronically anemic, she says her system was suffocating – denied adequate life force and unable to absorb and make proper use of the nutrients that she took into her body. The radical change came from the radical steps she took to unblock her system. That is what ultimately strengthened her blood. After cleansing she naturally absorbed and synthesized all nutrients more efficiently. The simple answer is that a clean body is able to get all of the nutrients it needs, and to perfectly regulate blood levels, as well as all bodily systems. When cells are carrying a toxic load, and frantically helping the body to deal with the daily onslaught of ingested and environmental toxins, the body suffers and, of course the blood reflects this.
I could point to the high levels of iron in vegetables like kale, broccoli, and spinach, but this is not the whole answer. The cleaner a body is, the better it is able to properly assimilate the nutrients it receives. Clean cells sustain optimal blood level!
I hope this helps your decision-making process, and thank you again for your email.
Love,
Ana
