Should I be worried about getting too much Iron?

I took intravenous iron at one point. I think it raised my levels by like 1 point, if that. You are faaaar from having “too much” iron so it won’t happen. Even so, they’ll check it as they go. They wouldn’t give you too much.

Follow what the Doctor is saying, don’t second guess the Doctor. You need the iron because you need to make sure the baby is okay, this is not a long term solution but something to get you through the delivery.

Damage to your organs would be for exposure over a long tome period.

Excess iron is generally not much of a problem for pre-menopausal woman because of their menses and the natural blood loss that occurs therefrom. It can be a problem for men, however, since iron generally accumulates in the blood and isn’t generally lost.

Here is some information from the Mayo Clinic regarding hemochromatosis, which is the medical name for the condition of “iron overload”.

If it were me, I would take a minimum of 120 mg a day by pills for a week and see if it comes up. How much were you taking recently? You can take double that if you need to (always check with your doctor of course). Take the pills on an empty stomach or with orange juice (vitamin C helps absorb the iron). I am not a doctor buy I get anemic. I need to take around 80mg a day to maintain in normal levels. Sometimes I up it to double if I get low from being lazy about taking pills. I take the iron 65 mg tabs from GNC in a green box. I take 1,2, or 3 a day depending on where my iron is at. I know people who take 4. I get my iron checked fairly regularly and I trust those pills have the iron they say they do. Or, your doctor could write you a script.

I feel like you didn’t give taking pills a real chance, because you were set on doing it naturally. What I mean from real chance is you didn’t take a large dose. Bit, I don’t know your dose so I am assuming a lot. I also don’t know if your doctor instructed yu whether to eat with it or not to increase absorption.

Having said that, no, I don’t think you will get too much iron from the IV, but I think maybe there can be some side effects you might want to research it. Your iron deficiency is serious, it definitely needs to be addressed. The baby will continue to take iron from you.

^^^Please remember the disclaimer.

Sorry, I see it now, buried in the middle of the text.

I put I am not a doctor and always check with your doctor. Not enough?

Seriously, do not take medical advice from random people on the internet. Ask your doctor.

Your hemoglobin is…

8.25 deciliters/gram ?????

“Normal adult hemoglobin values are generally 13.5 to 17.5 grams per deciliter for men and 12 to 15.5 grams per deciliter for women.”

Source

@Neodarwinian yes it was at 8.25 beginning of May and now it’s at 9.5 after taking the 325 mg iron pills 2–3 times a day the hematologist prescribe for me for two weeks.

Can anyone suggest what I can do to get it up (safely) to 20 (what my prenatal doctor says they want it to be for delivery) in 5 to 6 weeks?

^^^ Why are you unhappy with the hematologist’s recommendation? Have you shared your distress with your ob/gyn? Have you gotten a second opinion?

This is much too serious an issue about which to take random and possibly ill-informed advice from strangers.

I am very careful of what medications I put into my body because for the most part they have some side effect attached with them. That is why I try to do things naturally before I jump on any medication unless it’s a life or death situation. I will take medication when I need to it’s just not my first option.

My OB has also encouraged me in the hematologist’s direction so I was just looking for some confirmation from someone who have been there before or know someone who has. That’s all.

I hope no one here will be offended by me saying that sometimes the doctors don’t always knows what’s best. Though Flutherites are not doctors, Myself included, it does not mean that we can’t give sound advice to someone especially if we have experienced the same situation.

I take all advice I get from anyone with a grain of salt and everyone should do that as well.

Not if you’re pregnant and anemic. Hgb of 8.25 is pretty severe anemia. Not “mild”

@livingchoice Why not take the advice of your hematologist and do a treatment, and then reevaluate with her if you can switch to trying pills again to maintain your levels once you get back into nornal ranges?

@ivingchoice

Talk to your doctor about epoetin alpha, a ligand ( signalling molecule ) that is made in the lab and that which signals the bodies various RBC making tissues ( such as the bone marrow ) to make more RBC’s.

Possibly with more red blood cells you will pack more iron carrying hemoglobin into the RBC’s.

8.25 deciliters/gram is WAY too low!

(grams/deciliters)

Oy. No. Not epogen. Generally epogen is used in patients with a hematopoietic problem. Iron deficient patients generally don’t have that problem. They’re just iron deficient. Give them enough iron and the body will respond.

I’m going to add. Nature does not always do the right thing. I know you are reluctant to take pills and meds in general, I am too, but this is not haphazard popping vitamins and minerals, you have a serious deficiency. My girlfriend was bitten by several fire ants last weekend and her body overeacted and she almost died. That is nature gone haywire, it should have been an annoying itch. For whatever reason your body is not absorbing the iron well in pill form, something haywire. Sometimes we need medical intervention. In my non medical opinion (to make @gailcalled and @chyna happy I will say it again, although you obviously already know the internet is not a place to take medical advice as the gospel) your need for iron to be healthy outweighs your reluctance to take the treatment in my opinion. Pregnancy and delivery can pose serious health risks to women. It is only with modern medicine that we get through it as well as we do. In years past all too many women had serious complications to their health.

I think you gave it the valiant try already. You tried naturally, I assume that means lots of green leafy vegetables and citrus. You tried the large dose pills. Now bigger measures are in order.

You did go up a point in two weeks right? So at that rate you might reach 14 by the time you give birth, but if you deliver early or something goes wrong, God forbid, you are at risk. Remember if you take the IV one time, you are not committing to it necessarily 3 times a week, you can always reevaluate with your doctor, and they will check your iron level to see how you are progressing. Partner with your doctor, tell her your reluctance and make a plan.

I’m just trying to help you think it through. I get kind of paralized when I need to make medical decisions, and I think maybe you are similar. It is very upsetting for me, and I have a hard time trusting doctors and I often question their recommendations, but this one seems pretty straight forward to me. You need the iron.

Just a reminder if you go back to taking the pills, be sure to ask if it is best to take them on an empty stomach if you don’t know already.

As side note, when your iron gets back up into normal you will most likely feel so much better, so much stronger, more energy. Iron is one of those minerals for me that has amazing results once I get my levels into normal.

@Rarebear I just realized she was taking the 325 pills, isn’t that the same as the 65mg? It’s stated differently for some reason I can’t remember. Would it be unusual for her to take 4 a day under doctor recommendations? I know my dad took 90 three times a day I think for a while. 4 at 65 would still be less than that.

Not sure on the formulations. I’m sure her physician was prescribing correctly and it sounds like the physician correctly recommended the IV iron. It’s what I would have done.

@Rarebear

Yes, I know how it is used and I have a prescription for it. I also was given iron as a first supplement before they arrived at a correct diagnosis.

They tell her to be at 20 dL/g by delivery date and she is only at 8.25/9.something?!?!

I think a second opinion is needed 8.25 dL/g is way too low for a female, even a pregnant female. Never hurts to see all options even though epogen has it’s risks. I am not sure, but I do think epogen is sometime prescribed in these cases.

The 325’s are 65mg tabs, I just looked it up. I still don’t know how much the doctor will be comfortable with daily, and I still am on the side of seriously considering giving the IV a try.

@Neodarwinian I don’t understand why you want to jump to Epogen when iron will most likely suffice. I’m pretty sure Epogen is category C for pregnancy. Why bother with a drug not tested in pregnant women when iron will likely do the trick?

Listen to your doctor!

When I was pregnant my iron levels were seriously low. My Dr put me on iron pills with made me violently ill. He took me off of them after about a week saying that they were doing more harm than good.
My dad has the same blood type as I do, so he was on standby while I was giving birth, just in case I needed blood.

@JLeslie
You are right, but 8.25 dL/g is still way too low and iron is only carried by hemoglobin, so no hemoglobin, no iron carriage.

@Neodarwinian My hemoglobin numbers correct when I take iron. I’ve been down in the 9’s and it goes back up into normal if I take enough iron consistently.

Too late to edit above. My red blood cell count, hemoglobin and hematocrit regularly are whackado low. When my total iron gets up around 115, I can get you the other iron numbers like Ferritin and saturation etc, I don’t know them by heart, my RBC, hemoglobin and hematicrit finally normalize. Some doctors only do the CBC. Some only do the iron. Some do both and you can start to see a pattern. That’s how it works for me, I am not saying you are not different. But, there is no reason to assume the OP can’t improve all of her numbers with iron.

@JLeslie and All

Thank you for your responses. I have made an appointment with the hematologist this Friday and will follow through with the IV iron and see what that does. I’m just not a fan of using drugs and when making these kind of decisions I’m always hesitant to do them. It helps to know what others think and have experienced.

Thanks All! I’ll update my status here after I’m finished with the treatment. Maybe this info will help someone else in a similar situation.

@livingchoice I was thinking about the number 20 they gave you as a goal, which seems very high to me. I admit I don’t know if the range changes for pregnancy, but I would bet women tend to be on the lower side of nornal in pregnancy simply because their blood volume increases so much, hence most pregnant women are told to take iron. But, 20? Are you sure the goal wasn’t to be at a minimum of 12? What was the normal range on your labwork?

@JLeslie

20 dL/g is not too high. Mine is 40 dL/g amd I am anemic. A woman’s would be less and pregnancy would make it even lower but 20 DL/g is not that high.

@Neodarwinian You are writing dl/g. On my blood tests it is g/dl, so maybe we are talking about a different measure? Or, the labs could have different normal ranges. The normal range for my lab is 11.7–15.5 g/dl. Possibly pregnancy has a different range. But, as I said, intuitively I would think pregnant women normally run towards the lower side of normal, and it is acceptable, but I don’t know that for a fact, it’s a guess. What is the normal range for hemoglobin for your lab? What lab so you use. My latest tests are from Quest, but the range for the other lab I used to use AEL was the same. Maybe you are thinking Hematocrit? 40 is normal for that.

Maybe @Rarebear will know if he comes back.

Yes. Units are important. I was thinking g/dl.

@JLeslie It took another blood test today and will see the hematologist tomorrow morning. I’ll ask him some of the questions/points posted here and see what he says.I’ll see my OB again on Monday and will confirm my target/desired iron range for pregnancy. I’ll post that info here as well.

@JLeslie (

Yes, you are correct all around.

Perhaps I suffered a senior moment!

@livingchoice Hopefully, your numbers have gone up and maybe if you had been taking the pills on a full stomach or with dairy or antacids (I am not assuming you did any of those) you can increase absorption with just changing those things and avoid the IV you are wary of. Thanks for the update.

@Neodarwinian No problem.

Update:

My iron percentage is at 33% now and my hemoglobin went from 9.4 last Friday to 9.9 yesterday. The hematologist has decided not to give me the IV iron and wants me to continue with the 5 gr (325 mg) iron tables 3x daily along with Vitamin C.

Yay! You must be very happy. Thanks for the update.

Update: So the target hemoglobin for the delivery is 10 and I was at 10.6 last Tuesday. I just took the 325 mg iron they gave meat least twice a day and supplement with vitamin C and that did the trick. Thank you all again for your input.

Wonderful!

Update!
When I gave birth to my son my iron was a whopping 15 points. And that was by taking the iron pills (325mg).

Thanks again for your input!

Are you rusting. That is a beautiful baby.