Nutrition News

Giving Blood May Save Your Husband, Father, Grandfather or Son!
By Dr. Jeff Bartlett

We have a major health crisis in America with the incidence of obesity, cancer and heart disease reaching catastrophic heights. In fact, heart disease is the leading cause of death for both women and men in the United States, killing more then 900,000 people per year. Right now, approximately 13,900,000 Americans suffer from coronary heart disease. I’m confident that your doctor, and the media, has already informed you of the common risk factors for coronary heart disease:

• high blood pressure
• high blood cholesterol
• smoking
• obesity
• physical inactivity

But what the majority of the population doesn’t know is that our body’s IRON stores may be a major contributing factor to death post heart attack or stroke. Therefore, for all the important men in your life, please pass on this information.

Iron is absolutely essential for life. We must have it to build red blood cells needed to carry oxygen in the blood, to make new proteins that repair the wear and tear of our tissues, to make new enzymes that run the millions of chemical reactions that fuel our bodies, to keep our hormones working properly, and to produce the substance needed to efficiently burn fat for energy.

However, iron is a double-edged sword; although it’s necessary, too much can also be quite dangerous. Iron behaves as an oxidant, powerful enough to turn the steel body of a truck into a rusty heap. This same oxidant power can damage our bodies too. For instance, the most severe damage from a heart attack comes not from the blockage preventing blood flow, but from the reaction that occurs between stored iron released during the attack and the oxygen-rich blood returning to the heart muscle after the obstruction has been removed. And so the body handles iron carefully, wrapping it for storage in packets called ferritin to prevent it from getting loose and “oxidating” us. Iron is a potent pro-oxidant; the opposite of an antioxidant. Pro-oxidators are stimulators of free-radical formation. Iron is one of the most hazardous free-radical promoters we harbor in our bodies, and it is responsible for most of the tissue damage that occurs in heart attacks and strokes.

Men are the group at greatest risk for excess iron storage because they have no way to get rid of iron. Women, conversely, rid their bodies of up to 18 mg of iron with each menstrual cycle and up to 500 mg with childbirth. Therefore, women accumulate very little iron until they reach menopause, at which point they rapidly catch up to men. It is well known that women don’t frequently encounter heart disease until they are beyond menopause, whereas men may have heart attacks as early as their late twenties. As women go beyond menopause, however, they rapidly find themselves with the same risks as men.

So, since men tend to accumulate iron much more readily then women, please inform the men in your life to take this issue seriously. Have their physician evaluate their iron count (by a simple blood test called a serum ferritin) for iron-storage disorder. A reading under 50 mg/dl is a healthy ideal; people who have substantially higher readings are more at risk. The easiest and most charitable way to rid your body of excess iron is to call the Red Cross, set up an appointment, and donate blood. What is excess to you, could save someone else’s life!