Time's corrosive dewdrop eats

Of earth in earth and rust in rust.

-Francis Turner Palgrave

eel Stronger Fast – As far back as the 1950s, and for decades thereafter, this was the advertising tagline for one of the most popular nutritional supplements in America. With this enticing promise, and with a little help from the awesome power of television, advertisers were able to convince millions upon millions of Americans that the common symptoms of fatigue and general malaise may have been due to a condition nebulously defined as “iron-poor” blood. Of course, the viewer was to believe that their symptoms could be rectified with the simple use of a multivitamin product – a product which contained a shockingly large dose of iron.

And even though the company selling this particular product was eventually penalized for its deceptive marketing practices in a false-advertising suit brought against it by the Federal Trade Commission, it seems that over half a century’s worth of similar marketing by food and multivitamin producers has given the average American a dangerously one-sided view of this essential mineral. Even today, most of us know iron simply as an aid to building “good red blood” and for its role in supporting our overall strength, energy, and vitality. But perhaps more than any other nutrient, iron can also have a dark side – as we age, this much-touted mineral has been shown to wreak metabolic havoc within our body, and can be a driving force behind literally every manifestation of the aging process.

Owing to a “glitch” in our evolutionary design, our body doesn’t possess the ability to rid itself of excess iron as it does with most other nutrients.  In fact, iron is one of the few nutrients which slowly but steadily accumulates in our cells and tissues over a lifetime.  In so doing, this mineral which was once so important to proper growth and development in our childhood, eventually serves to catalyze an ever-increasing amount of oxidative stress and cellular damage in our adulthood and old age.

Over the past several decades, scientists have even uncovered strong links between our bodies’ iron levels and our rate of numerous age-related degenerative conditions – conditions like heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.

Due in large part to our artificially “iron-enriched” food supply (which makes iron over-consumption more likely than not) most of us who have reached adulthood can bet that we’re currently storing far more iron in our tissues than our bodies actually need. And though we may not suspect it, this excess iron may well be predisposing us to the ravages of aging well before our time. In this, and upcoming editions of the Integrated Supplements Newsletter, we’ll put the true role of iron in focus – we’ll look at the metabolic effects of iron in relation to the aging process, and we’ll show you simple and practical ways to keep your iron levels within a safe and healthy range during every stage of your life.

Iron – One Size Does Not Fit All

If you’re the type of person who reads food and nutritional supplement labels closely, you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with the concept of nutrient “daily values” – the amount of vitamins and minerals which government and public health agencies say we need each day.

These values were initially established (and were required to be listed on food and nutritional supplement labels) as guidelines to help the average consumer. But not surprisingly, food and supplement producers have figured out ways to spin these values to their advantage, and not necessarily ours. Product marketers know that when we look at our multivitamin bottle, or the box of our favorite breakfast cereal, we get a comforted feeling when we see that they contain “100% of the daily value” of various vitamins and minerals; or similarly, food advertisers know that we’re more likely to buy a brand of orange juice which contains “a full day’s supply” of vitamin C, for example.

But have you ever asked yourself where these recommended daily values come from, how they were derived, or how much these daily values actually suit your nutritional needs? Chances are, if you knew the answers to these questions you’d see that the daily values which have been established for various nutrients aren’t nearly as useful of a guide as we’ve been led to believe. Often, they may merely serve to give us a false sense of nutritional security.

Even according to the Nutrition Board of The National Academy of Sciences Research Council – the organization responsible for setting these nutrient daily values – the nutrient levels which are deemed full daily values (or a “full day’s supply” in marketing lingo) are merely guidelines to help prevent nutrient deficiencies in the majority of the healthy population - they are no indication whatsoever of the optimal nutrient intake needed to ensure good health over a lifetime.

In fact, the daily value of some nutrients may be far lower than what we actually require for life-long health, and as we shall see in the case of iron, some daily values may be dangerously excessive. Consuming even the recommended amount of iron each day may eventually predispose us to the harmful effects of iron overload.

Iron needs may vary greatly between one person and the next based upon individual factors such as age, gender, activity level, or the genetic predisposition to store iron. While some people, like children, or pre-menopausal women may require close to the RDA of iron each day to stay healthy, many people like adult males, and post-menopausal women, may wish to keep their iron intake as low as possible, and may even wish to take steps to rid their body of a lifetime’s worth of accumulated iron.

Iron Fortification – A Blessing, Or A Curse?

For decades in this country, massive amounts of dietary iron have been nearly force-fed to us whether we needed them or not in the form of “enriched” and “fortified” foods. Even today, products such as breads, flours, pastas, and breakfast cereals continue to be fortified and enriched, not in line with the latest research in nutritional science, but in line with half-century-old government mandates.

Around the time of the Second World War, when, by law, the iron-fortification of refined grains began, the concepts of oxidative stress and antioxidant protection were not yet part of our scientific or nutritional lexicon. Few scientists of the time recognized the pro-oxidant, pro-aging, and free radical-generating capacity of iron – and even fewer recognized iron’s central role in age-related diseases like heart disease and cancer. But even though the “dark side” of iron became very well-documented during the latter part of the 20th Century, the rampant iron fortification of our food supply continues unabated to this day. As a result, iron overload – the gradual accumulation of iron in our tissues - has slowly become a very serious national health problem.

(Note: Although not required by law, iron is added to most meal-replacement powders sold as nutritional supplements. Most of these products seem to contain approximately 9 milligrams of iron per serving which represents 50% of the daily value. Companies often recommend that their customers consume several of these shakes per day. The addition of iron to such products, especially products containing oxidation-prone unsaturated fats and cholesterol, is among the most scientifically unfounded, and ignorant practices in all of nutrition.)

Who Needs Iron?

Of course, technically, we all need some iron. Iron is absolutely indispensable for the proper production of the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin, found in red blood cells; and is therefore an integral part of energy production.

Children, because of their high energy requirements, and their rapid rate of growth, are known to have a particularly high iron requirement. Children’s high iron needs are probably the basis for the generally excessive levels of iron enrichment we still find in many foods today.

(Note: even though children’s iron requirements are relatively large, the consumption of excess iron by children is still problematic. In some studies, children given iron-fortified foods were significantly more susceptible to infection, and several scientists have implicated iron-fortification of “kid’s foods,” like breakfast cereals, with higher levels of childhood leukemia, autism, and allergies.)

Study Link - Excess dietary iron is the root cause for increase in childhood autism and allergies.

Study Link - Oxidative stress in autism: increased lipid peroxidation and reduced serum levels of ceruloplasmin and transferring - the antioxidant proteins.

People who have suffered blood-loss or surgery may sometimes require high levels of iron to properly build their red blood cells back to normal levels. Similarly, people recovering from parasitic infections may require additional iron as well. Parasites, which need iron to grow, are known to use up the bodies’ iron stores at an accelerated rate. Parasites are probably a major reason why iron deficiency is so common in third-world countries.

But as important as iron is to our health, its therapeutic window – the dose at which it offers benefit and not harm – is often very narrow. With how commonly iron supplements are haphazardly recommended for vague symptoms like fatigue, or cold hands and feet, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that iron is one of the few nutrients where even a slight excess can be decidedly harmful.

For example, the “conventional wisdom” asserting that pre-menopausal women need more dietary iron or iron supplements because of blood lost through menstruation is probably unfounded. As we shall see, the fact that women lose small amounts of iron through menstruation may actually be one of the most significant factors in explaining the well-documented longer lifespan of women relative to men.

It’s worth noting too, that even women who have been diagnosed as “anemic” may not necessarily need additional iron as is commonly thought.

The term anemia, which is often associated with iron deficiency, technically denotes a deficiency in the quality or quantity of the oxygen-carrying component of red blood cells called hemoglobin. It’s important to realize that iron deficiency is only one cause of anemia, and true iron-deficiency anemia is probably much rarer than people think.

Hypothyroidism, for example, can cause low hemoglobin levels, and can also explain the fatigue which many anemic people experience. Sub-optimal thyroid function is probably one of the more common causes of anemia in women, but it’s still common for many doctors to interpret low hemoglobin levels as an indication of nothing but an iron deficiency.

For what it’s worth, tests of serum ferritin – a measure of how much iron is actually stored in the body - will give the patient a better gauge of whether or not iron levels are really low enough to require additional dietary iron. Even if additional iron is needed, food sources should be the first choice, incorporated along with strategies to safely improve iron absorption and metabolism. As we shall see in this series of articles, there are many ways to improve iron absorption, serum iron levels, and proper iron metabolism even without consuming iron supplements. Iron supplements can, in fact, be dangerous, and probably shouldn’t be consumed nearly as frequently as they are.

Waste Not, Want Not - Recycling Iron

Long before recycling became popular as a way to conserve energy and protect our polluted planet; it seems that our primordial ancestors developed mechanisms of biological recycling which have proved essential to the survival of our species. Though we may not think about it much, the human body represents a stunning masterwork of efficient design largely due to its uncanny ability to continually “recycle” and reuse an amazing array of cellular and metabolic components – you can think of this function of your body as an evolutionary validation of the old saying: waste not, want not.

In the context of iron, it turns out that our body is able to break down battered and worn-out red blood cells to salvage the iron they contain. In fact, iron is so valued by our body, that we possess a nearly unlimited capacity to store it for emergency use. But iron would do far too much damage to our cells if our body simply let it float around loose. In our bodies’ wisdom, it has developed several ways to protect our fragile cells from the harmful effects of this two-faced mineral.

Free Iron – Cellular Destroyer

Free iron, or iron which isn’t bound and protected by various protein molecules, is a very chemically reactive element. Iron is very much prone to combine with oxygen, and, in so doing, can stimulate a massive amount of oxidative damage.

It’s not hard to see, that if the combination of iron and oxygen can weaken even hardened steel into a useless pile of rust, then certainly the same combination can easily damage the delicate cells of our body. So, while iron is indeed necessary to healthy cellular function, this is true only when it’s protected by certain proteins. Iron atoms left to run loose, are little more than free radical-generating cellular hooligans just itching to damage the structures of our cells, and just waiting to stimulate the production of the age-pigment, lipofuscin, and all of the other “cellular junk” of aging which we talked about in our previous newsletter.

This is why, in healthy cells, iron is always bound to or stored in proteins. From the time it’s absorbed from our intestinal tract, iron is transported through the blood by a “police escort” of a protein known as transferrin. When it comes time for iron to be stored in our cells, the protein known as ferritin serves this role, and acts as a storage container keeping iron out of trouble – that is, at least for the most part.

Iron and Injury

One of the most frightening things about heart attacks and strokes is how suddenly and without warning they can occur. Certainly, the process of arterial hardening and narrowing due to plaque formation can gradually accumulate for decades; but only in an acute event, when a blood clot or a fragment of hardened arterial plaque becomes lodged in an artery, does the flow of nutrient and oxygen-rich blood to our heart or brain become impeded enough to characterize an actual heart attack or stroke.

Yet, what many people don’t realize is that most of the damage incurred due to heart attacks or strokes actually occurs shortly after this blockage, and is due to something called reperfusion injury.

When blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain and heart are temporarily blocked, many of the cells in these tissues die. When they die, these cells break apart releasing, among other things, ferritin’s load of stored iron into the tissue. Then, when oxygen-rich blood is again able to reach its destination (what’s called reperfusion), it encounters not healthy cells with iron bound up as it should be, but rather, seriously damaged cells with large amounts of free iron strewn about. As you could probably guess, when the tidal wave of oxygen-rich blood encounters this free iron, there is a massive and disastrous increase in free radical formation; it becomes a scene of absolute cellular chaos, and, as a result, many more cells are permanently damaged and killed.

And even though heart attacks and strokes are extreme examples of reperfusion injury, the crux of the issue is, that the more iron-packed ferritin we have stored in our body, the more “free,” unbound iron is prone to leak out and damage our cells in response to a variety of stressors. Even common sources of cellular stress like the exposure to cold weather or intense exercise could be enough to make ferritin “leak” free iron into the cell. Such minor cellular insults don’t amount to much on a moment-to-moment basis, but over a lifetime, such damage is akin to the age-old torture of “death by a thousand cuts.”

So, before we haphazardly consume iron supplements, or before we consume large amounts of iron-rich foods with reckless abandon, we should realize full-well that our body won’t simply get rid of excess iron the way it will with most other nutrients. We should also realize that there’s a limit to how much iron our body can store safely, and over a lifetime, excess iron can gradually build up to levels which predispose us to both premature aging, and degenerative disease.

So, Why Don’t We Get Rid Of Excess Iron?

With iron being such a “double-edged sword” as we get older, some researchers have wondered why we as humans never evolved any significant mechanisms for ridding our body of the excess. Sure, our distant ancestors never feasted on iron-fortified breads or breakfast cereals the way we do today, but it’s pretty certain that they did avail themselves of large quantities of another significant source of iron – meat. So, one wonders, why didn’t our primitive ancestors seem to suffer the ravages of iron excess - how come “iron-overload” seems to be a phenomenon of only modern aging?

Well, our distant ancestors probably never lived long enough to accumulate massive amounts of iron and suffer the ravages of heart disease, or Alzheimer’s disease the way older people often do today. And, as is so often the case when looking at evolutionary adaptations, we have to assume that the biological machinery which has been passed down to us originally served the needs of immediate survival. Such life-saving adaptations always seem to take precedence over the adaptations which would produce the longest-lived humans.

Massive blood loss due to injury was certainly more of a concern to our Paleolithic ancestors than it is to us here in the modern world. The ability to store iron for such emergency situations may have come in handy because it allowed for the rapid production of new red blood cells. Luckily, blood loss isn’t quite as prevalent or as deadly to us today. In emergency situations, any blood we lose due to injury can often be quickly replaced by blood transfusions.

(Note: To show you how harmful excess iron can be, it’s a known fact that individuals who require regular blood transfusions, like those afflicted with kidney disease or sickle cell anemia, often suffer many side-effects from the iron in the blood they receive. The medical strategies employed to improve the survival of these patients often involve ridding their body of excess iron. Conversely, those who donate blood on a regular basis are thought to have significantly lower risks of many iron-related diseases like heart disease and cancer - more on this below.)

Some researchers have even pointed out that our ancient ancestors may have had to deal with another significant “drain” on their iron levels - one which we, again, don’t have to worry about much in modern industrialized countries. Namely – parasites. These researchers believe that one of the reasons we’ve developed such an exquisite means for storing and sequestering iron in doses much higher than what we need, has to do with the chronic parasitic infestation our ancestors must have faced. As we touched upon earlier, parasites (as well as other infectious organisms) feed off of iron. The common presence of such organisms may have seriously compromised the iron status of our distant ancestors.

But, whatever the cause, this evolutionary remnant which allows us to store and retain a massive amount of iron over a lifetime, is one that we simply don’t require for survival in modern-day America. Ironically, this adaptation, which was once a lifesaving work of human engineering, is now probably a major factor hastening the aging process.

(Note: Because infectious organisms feed off of iron, increased susceptibility to infectious diseases is another symptom of iron-consumption. Decades ago, the World Health Organization reported that the death rate from infectious diseases - especially malaria - increased when anemic populations in Africa were given iron-fortified foods – another reason to believe that rectifying iron deficiency safely may require a bit more nutritional expertise than simply adding iron to food, or recommending iron supplements.)

Iron and Aging

Roughly similar to the type of oxidation reactions which iron causes when it rusts, iron can also be a potent catalyst for all sorts of harmful free radical reactions within our body. In aging, as iron accumulates in our tissues, our level of free radical damage and oxidative stress are known to increase right along with it.

Study Link – Iron, Free Radicals, and Oxidative Injury

Quote from the above study:

Free iron is a loose cannon, chemically. One of the most devastating actions of free redox-active iron within the cell is the initiation of lipid peroxidation. Lipid peroxidation is a free radical chain reaction between polyunsaturated fatty acyl groups in cell membranes and molecular oxygen. It leaves in its wake dysfunctional membranes and cell death . . . on a small scale the free radical-induced liberation of iron from an iron-binding protein may reflect an evolved signaling pathway; on a larger scale, however, it may result in the wholesale destruction of the organism.

We’ve talked about many of the pro-aging effects of polyunsaturated fats and lipid peroxidation products in previous Integrated Supplements Newsletters. On a cellular level, free iron can easily interact with the delicate polyunsaturated fats in our cells, producing cell-damaging free radicals known as hydroxyl and peroxyl radicals. These iron-generated free radicals just happen to be some of the most harmful ones known to science. They can wreak havoc within our cells and can damage all cellular components including the protein of our genetic material, DNA.

Iron and Cancer

Iron-induced DNA damage is probably a major reason why high iron levels are so commonly linked to the development of cancer (damaged or mutated DNA is unable to replicate cell division properly, and is well-known to be associated with cancer development). We touched on this association in our previous newsletter with a link to the following study:

Study Link - Iron, Lipids, and Risk of Cancer in the Framingham Offspring Cohort

Quote from the above study:

Iron and lipids combine to create oxidative stress, and oxidative stress has a role in the development of cancer. . . The results suggest that elevated serum iron levels coupled with either high VLDL-C or low HDL-C appear to interact to increase cancer risk in this cohort.

 Study Link - Body iron stores and the risk of cancer

Quote from the above study:

Among 242 men in whom cancer developed, the mean total iron-binding capacity was significantly lower (61.4 vs. 62.9 mumol per liter; P = 0.01) and transferrin saturation was significantly higher (33.1 vs. 30.7 percent; P = 0.002) than among 3113 men who remained free of cancer.

Study Link - Transferrin Saturation, Dietary Iron Intake, and Risk of Cancer

Quote from the above study:

Among persons with increased transferrin saturation, a daily intake of dietary iron more than 18 mg is associated with an increased risk of cancer.

(Note: 18 mg of iron is the current daily recommended intake in the United States – the amount you could find in a single bowl of some iron-fortified breakfast cereals or a single one-a-day multivitamin. According to the above study, any intake of iron even slightly above this amount is sufficient to increase cancer risk in significant segments of the population; specifically, those who are already storing high amounts of iron – i.e. males and the elderly. We continually hear of the benefits of iron-fortification, but it seems people are never warned about the potentially carcinogenic role of iron. Perhaps this fact should make us re-evaluate how much we trust the food producers and the nutritional establishment of this country to safeguard our health.)

Men, Women, Iron, and Heart Disease

One of the reasons that iron overload doesn’t receive the recognition it deserves is because many physicians still think of it as being caused only by a rare genetic condition known as hemochromatosis. But we now know that iron overload doesn’t just affect small numbers of genetically-predisposed individuals as was once thought. The iron overload we’re talking about has been shown to be influenced mostly by diet. Studies have shown that in older people especially, iron overload, the kind that may increase cancer risk and other degenerative conditions, is actually much more common than iron deficiency:

Study Link - Iron status of the free-living, elderly Framingham Heart Study cohort: an iron-replete population with a high prevalence of elevated iron stores

Quote from the above study:

The likely liability in iron nutriture in free-living, elderly white Americans eating a Western diet is high iron stores, not iron deficiency.

Iron overload may be so common, in fact, that it may silently underlie even the most common disease of aging – heart disease. High levels of iron have become a well-established risk factor for heart disease, and iron’s role in heart disease may even explain the age-old mystery of why women, on average, experience significantly longer life spans than men.

According to the most recent United Nations data, the average lifespan of a male in the US is around 75 years, whereas the average life expectancy for a female is around 81 years – and this same sort of female-dominated discrepancy mirrors itself in countries around the globe. Many theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, but interestingly, a recently-proposed theory involving iron is currently seen as one of the most promising.

It’s well-known that women naturally lose small amounts of iron during menstruation, and generally have much lower iron levels than men during their child-bearing years. A woman’s iron level during this time may be fully half that of a man the same age. And even though a woman’s total iron loss per month may only amount to several milligrams, if this theory is correct, even this small amount of iron loss, may be able to confer significant longevity benefits to women.

(Note: The fact that iron is lost during menstruation is often used to automatically justify the use of iron-containing supplements by women – a practice which could nullify any benefit of ridding the body of iron. As we mentioned previously, the need for iron supplements is actually very rare, and should only be assessed using a sensitive test of actual iron status like serum ferritin.)

The theory of iron’s role in influencing the longevity of women seems to hold up well in light of what we currently know about heart disease. Indeed, even if a women’s iron loss protected her from heart disease alone, this would be more than enough to explain a significant increase in longevity. In fact, heart disease is so closely related to aging itself that many researchers believe that if we live long enough, we will all develop advanced heart disease. Many anti-aging scientists have even taken somewhat of a defeatist attitude, and have proposed that our goal should not be to prevent, but merely to delay the effects of heart disease as long as possible.

It’s been shown that iron levels are directly related to heart disease, and it’s strongly suspected that iron plays a fundamental role in causing cholesterol to oxidize, triggering into motion the first stages of arterial plaque formation.

Study Link - Iron, Atherosclerosis, and Ischemic Heart Disease

Quote from the above study:

"There is growing epidemiological evidence for a relationship between iron levels and cardiovascular disease"

During her reproductive years, a woman’s risk of heart disease is but a fraction of that of a man’s. It makes sense then, that women of child-bearing age often maintain stored iron levels several times lower than that of males as well. Upon reaching menopause however, a woman’s level of stored iron quickly begins to equal that of a man of the same age - as does her risk of heart disease.

Initially, hormonal changes were thought to play the most dominant role, but recent research has made it clear that female hormonal changes are not responsible for protecting a woman’s heart as once thought. Knowing this, researchers began to suspect that the elusive factor explaining the lower rate of heart disease and the longer life-span of women may be a woman’s enhanced protection from the harmful effects of iron.

The theory almost seems too simple to be true – the less iron we carry around in our system, the less harmful oxidation occurs to lipids (especially cholesterol), and thus the lower our level of arterial plaque and heart disease.

But also lending significant support to this theory is the fact that men who give blood on a regular basis – one of the few well-established ways for a male to rid his body of excess iron - have been shown to reduce their risk of heart disease by up to 30%.

Article Link - Men Who Donate Blood May Reduce Risk Of Heart Disease, According To KU Medical Center Study.

Quote from the above article:

The study supports the "iron hypothesis" which suggests that women are protected from atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, because they have lower body stores of iron than men. Through menstrual blood loss, women have one-half the iron stores and suffer about one-half the heart attacks and deaths from heart disease as men of similar age.

Iron in Metabolic Syndrome

As we age, especially if we become less-than-diligent about maintaining our health, there are many risk factors of disease which often increase in concert with one another. Even before any full-blown disease state develops, the presence of these risk factors can serve as a clear signal warning us of trouble ahead.

Metabolic Syndrome is a term used when several metabolic factors are present simultaneously in one person. These include:

Insulin Resistance/Pre-diabetes

Elevated Markers of Inflammation (like C-Reactive Protein)

You can think of a diagnosis of Metabolic Syndrome, as modern medicine’s way of warning, “You don’t have any specific disease yet, but your health’s clearly going to hell in a hand-basket. If you don’t clean up your act fast, you can pretty much bank on succumbing to diabetes, heart disease, or any of a number of degenerative conditions in the years to come.”

And in the metabolic syndrome, the dark side of iron rears its ugly head yet again.

It’s been well documented that people with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome usually harbor particularly high levels of iron in their body. It’s unclear as to whether excess iron actually causes metabolic syndrome, or if the diet of people with metabolic syndrome (perhaps owing to an excess of refined, iron-fortified carbohydrate foods, for example), simply contains more iron.

But either way, this excess iron is surely one of the common threads tying blood sugar disorders and diabetes to an increased risk of heart disease and tissue damage. Anybody who has any of the markers of metabolic syndrome (male or female, young or old) should pay very close attention to their serum ferritin levels, and under the guidance of a physician, should aim to continually keep them within a healthy range.

Study Link - Serum Ferritin and Risk of the Metabolic Syndrome in U.S. Adults

Quote from the above study:

Metabolic syndrome was more common in those with the highest compared with the lowest levels of serum ferritin in premenopausal women (14.9 vs. 6.4%, P = 0.002), postmenopausal women (47.5 vs. 28.2%, P < 0.001), and men (27.3 vs. 13.8%, P < 0.001).

Iron in Alzheimer’s Disease

And no discussion of the pro-aging effects of iron would be complete without touching on iron’s well-established role in the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. In a nutshell, the damaging oxidation reactions which are common in all age-related cellular damage are especially prevalent in Alzheimer’s disease - and the oxidation reactions which affect the delicate structures of brain cells are exacerbated by the potent “pro-oxidant” effects of iron.

Study Link - Oxidative Stress and Redox-Active Iron in Alzheimer's Disease

Quote from the above study:

Many lines of evidence indicate that oxidative stress is one of the earliest events in the genesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Iron is a transition metal capable of generating hydroxyl radicals, the most potent reactive oxygen species. Consequently, a disruption in the metabolism of iron has been postulated to have a role in the pathogenesis of AD. Indeed, both senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, the major pathological landmarks of AD, as well as neurons in the earliest stages of the disease, show elevated iron deposition.

Article Link - High Iron Levels Identified in Brains of Alzheimer's Patients

Quote from the above article:

[Study author]Bartzokis tells WebMD, he believes the link between iron and Alzheimer's is so strong that people shouldn't take iron supplements unless a doctor advises them to. "It's well known that there is no mechanism of getting rid of iron from the body. Our findings suggest that, unless medically indicated, people should not take extra iron because it may have deleterious effects," he says.

In the above quote, the researcher advises that people should not take “extra” iron. Presumably, “extra” iron means iron levels above the daily value. If this is so, we should be aware that the “daily value” of iron can easily be exceeded even without consuming iron supplements.

While the average American may often consume excess iron from iron-fortified refined grains, it’s common for even health-conscious people to over-consume iron from such things as multivitamins, breakfast cereals, and even meal-replacement shakes and energy bars. The combination of such products will cumulatively contain a level of iron far in excess of the 18 mg per day which represents the daily value.

And knowing that many people should actually consume far less iron than the daily value should cause us to take pause before we consume any food or nutritional supplement which contains added iron.

Coming Up Next . . .

Now that we’ve familiarized you with some of iron’s less-than-desirable effects, in the next edition of the Integrated Supplements Newsletter, we’ll take a look at some of the strategies which can help to protect us.

With iron so clearly implicated in the disorders of aging, many of us will want to find ways to rid our body of our accumulated excess. Luckily, there are simple nutritional and lifestyle strategies we can employ to accomplish this.

We’ll also tell you about certain nutrients which make iron safer for everybody - whether their iron levels are low, normal, or high. As it turns out, some nutrients are even able to modulate iron absorption, meaning that they can increase absorption if a person is deficient, but not if a person has normal iron levels.

We’ll see how valuable such nutrients can be, especially to those of us whose iron levels are low. Even people with low iron levels should still be wary of the many harmful effects of iron. This is because, often, when laboratory tests show low iron or hemoglobin levels, it’s not iron itself which is lacking, but rather some of the accessory nutrients needed to absorb, metabolize, or store iron properly. To consume more iron, while still lacking the nutrients needed for its’ safe and proper metabolism is almost guaranteed to exacerbate iron-induced damage.

We’ll tell you about the nutrients which the body needs to use iron safely and effectively, including one particular protein which has actually been shown to increase serum iron and hemoglobin levels better than iron supplements themselves - while at the same time inhibiting any and all of iron’s harmful effects.

It’s been well over half a century since the mandatory iron-fortification of our food supply began - and also since the American public was introduced to the concepts of “iron-poor” and “tired” blood via the magic of television advertising. In that time, quite a bit of research has made it clear that iron isn’t always as beneficial or as harmless as some people and industries wanted it to be.

But, like a runaway freight train, once an idea gets rolling, it can be almost impossible to stop – even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. Backed by the power of advertising, and the support of government, the food industry, and the medical community alike, this sort of dangerous nutritional propaganda is sure to continue for as long as it remains profitable.

Luckily, there’s sufficient research in the scientific literature, to allow us to separate fact from marketing hype. Of course, we know that most people don’t spend their time digging through scientific journals - that’s why finding and deciphering this research for you is what we do in the Integrated Supplements Newsletter.

With what you learn here, you can be sure that you’ll always be on the cutting-edge of nutritional science. And remember, more often than not, the real cutting-edge means getting back to basics, and choosing natural foods and nutritional supplements which are as close to the way nature made them as possible.

About Us: At Integrated Supplements, our goal is to bring you the wellness information and products you need to live your life to the fullest. We are dedicated to producing the highest quality, all natural nutritional supplements; and to educating the world on the health promoting power of proper nutrition. You can find out more by visiting: www.IntegratedSupplements.com