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Iron Cookware
Recently one
of our staff emailed me a copy of a "health tip" coming from a health and
wellness website that a friend had forwarded to her. Having worked here at
Caring Medical for some time, she felt that the advice contained within
might be incorrect, and asked me for my opinion. The resulting interchange
of emails was interesting enough for me to decide to do an article on this
subject. The emailed tip was as follows:
Young women, young men, endurance athletes, pregnant women and
vegetarians all need iron. But don't think first about iron supplements. To
improve your iron intake, use an iron skillet or cast iron cookware. Acidic
foods, such as tomatoes and vinegar help to dissolve small amounts of iron into
cooking liquids. This increases the iron content of your meal. Discuss concerns
or special needs with your physician or a dietitian.
I know that various web sites like to stay in
touch with their clientele with daily emails, but that doesn't mean they should
be sending out inaccurate and dangerous information. This tip seems to imply
that a major problem for a large portion of our population is keeping iron
levels high enough, and that it is desirable for all these
people to increase iron intake by cooking in iron skillets. In my opinion, nothing could be
further from the truth. No person should ever take iron supplementation, or cook
in iron skillets, unless blood testing has taken place, and a knowledgeable
physician has recommended it. Even in the groups at highest risk for iron
deficiency (infants, adolescent girls, and menstruating females), the incidence
of anemia is no more than about 15%. The overall incidence of iron deficiency is
about 6% of the general population. Thus my first point, despite what the noted
"health tip" implies, is that ALL the people in the quoted groups do NOT
need iron supplementation.
My second point may surprise you. Excess
ingestion of iron by those who are already saturated with enough iron may lead
to serious medical complications and even death. Both in patients with iron
storage disorders like hemochromatosis, and in normal individuals after long
term dietary iron overload, the consequences may be severe, and include fatigue,
arthritis, discoloration of the skin (jaundice), enlargement of the liver, and
liver failure and death. Considering the real life incidences of iron overload
and iron deficiency states, the actual ratio between those whom iron will harm
and those whom iron will help is about 20 to 1. Therefore the free health "tip"
being circulated will actually prove harmful to twenty times more people than it
could possibly help. Iron supplementation or the use of iron cookware is
especially dangerous for men, who, lacking the monthly loss of iron that
menstruation provides for females, are at even higher risk of developing
overload syndrome.
There are several problems working in the
background of this phenomenon. First, physicians are slow to diagnose iron
overload, and often don't order the proper tests to screen for its presence.
Many cases are not discovered for many years, and then only after much damage
has already been done. These patients have often been shunted or searched
between doctor to doctor, even psychiatrists, to find the answer to their
problems. Many times an anemia is automatically treated with iron without
further investigation, liver signs are attributed to alcohol ingestion, and
arthritis is assumed to be degenerative in nature. Secondly, our cultural
heritage is that iron is good. Popeye taught us to eat our spinach to get
strong, and Geritol promised to restore our youthful vitality.Then too, the
vitamin and food industries fail us by generally including iron in all of their
multivitamin formulations and fortifying foods, cereal, and almost everything
else you can think of with extra iron. You can collect the iron filings from a
bowl of iron fortified cereal by holding a magnet over the bowl! Today it is
actually pretty difficult to become iron defiecient. The most common scenarios
causing true iron deficiency anemias these days are strict faddist diets, and
blood loss from hidden gastrointestinal lesions or from excess menstruation
related to uterine disorders.
So to summarize for my readers, here are the
take home points of this article:
1. There is a lot of "junk" information
available for free (and for a charge), on the internet. Making mistakes based on
bad information from supposedly trustworthy sites on the web on your non-health
related matters may cost you some money, but making mistakes like that related
to medical matters may cost you your health or even your life. Therefore, know
who is supplying your information. Don't take what you read at face value. Do
your own research. And very importantly, find reliable (and perhaps multiple)
resources with well qualified, experienced, and licensed physicians to learn
more when it comes to your health.
2. Iron is not an innocuous nutrient. Apart
from its direct toxic effects on the liver, its presence in excess can catalize
free radical reactions which can also promote arteriosclerosis, coronary heart
disease, and aging. If you are taking an iron containing supplement or using
iron cookware, there is a good chance you are hurting your health. Never take
supplements containing iron unless your blood and your iron status have been
tested and then subsequently monitored by a physician knowledgeable in
nutrition.
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