The Importance of Iron in the Body

High iron levels can negate your good diet and exercise habits while raising your risk of age-related diseases like cancer and heart disease. In our latest episode Dennis Mangan shares the best methods for testing for high iron and reducing iron to healthy levels in your system, plus touches on the benefits of intermittent fasting and his perspective on SARM’s.

Dennis started with the basics of iron as a reactive element. Iron reacts with different constituents in our body, so the more iron in our body the more damage it causes. The #1 storage mechanism for iron in our bodies is our blood. Interestingly, Dennis points out than 10% of people in the US are truly iron-deficient, and those are mostly pre-menopausal women.

The basic problem is this: Our bodies are evolutionarily conditioned to retain iron, so we have exquisite internal mechanisms for grabbing onto iron and no controlled means for getting rid of it.

Over the years our bodies gradually accumulate iron and continue accumulating it beyond a healthy point. In fact, Dennis explained, “The average 35-yr old man has about 4-5x the amount of iron in his body as a woman the same age.”

Our internal systems for mitigating the damage of iron aren’t perfect, resulting in age-related diseases like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, all of which afflict men at much higher rates. So you may have your diet and exercises and sleep dialed in, but an over-accumulation of iron may negate those good habits.

Then Dennis went into detail on how to get your iron to healthy levels; “Know your ferritin levels – this test is the most common measure of the level of stored iron in your body...The #1 most effective way to get rid of iron is blood donation. The average man who donates blood once a year cuts his ferritin levels in half.”

If you’re not qualified to donate blood you have other options for lowering iron levels, from exercise to supplements and diet habits that inhibit iron uptake. There are no iron-reducing pharmaceutical products, which explains why there’s no incentive to raise public awareness of the issue. We hear much more about cholesterol as the cause of age-related issues like heart disease, because there are so many cholesterol-reducing drugs being pushed on the public.

We finish up by touching on the benefits of intermittent fasting and keto powders. Intermittent fasting puts you into a state when your body is burning fat for fuel, and keto supplement powders that help put your body into ketosis faster can help you fast longer and reduce hunger pangs.

There is an important point to remember- Adding protein or BCAA’s during your fast will cause an insulin response and mitigate the benefits of intermittent fasting. All studies show that intermittent fasting does NOT burn muscle - provided you’re getting enough calories overall. 

To get the benefits of intermittent fasting, start by experimenting with minimizing your eating window – skipping breakfast and shutting down food intake at 8pm  - to turn on your body’s fat burning furnace.

 Iron levels are so critical to aging that excess iron may negate all your good diet, exercise and sleep habits. So getting your iron to healthy levels should be an integral part of your self-directed health management. Start by working with forward-thinking doctors who can help analyze your lab tests and donating blood 1-2x per year.

Dennis Mangan is the author of Dumping Iron and the founder of Rogue Health & Fitness, where he educates others on natural means of rehabbing their bodies and creating the body of their dreams. Click here to get the book Dumping Iron on Amazon.

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