86 replies to this topic

[Mind]

The recent negative trend in the cocoa thread brought up the fact that there is a lot of iron in raw cocoa and that is bad, bad, bad. OK, I only have a layman's understanding of the issue. I know that doctors i have talked to say that too much iron in the diet can increase the risk of certain age related diseases, but I am unsure why. From what I have read (non-scientific press reports), iron has been linked to increased risk of certain diseases through general population studies. What I want to know is if anyone has any research that points to a specific mechanism through which iron increases the risk of some age related diseases. For example: is it toxic in more than trace amounts (I haven't heard anything along these lines), does it interfere with metabolic processes, does it interfere with gene expression, etc...

In the back of my mind I speculate that maybe some of the bad news about iron has arisen because of co-factors in the population studies. By that I mean many of the people (men) who have heart disease and high levels of iron probably eat a crappy diet of meat and eggs fried in butter, drink too much beer, and don't get any exercise, thus their high levels of iron just an indication of their poor meat-laden diet, and not a factor in their devastated circulatory system.

[lucid]

Well, I felt that iron was 'bad' after reading:
http://www.longevine...Resveratrol.pdf

It is worth saying that donating blood (getting rid of iron) once a year reduces risk of cardiovascular disease by 86% in men.
http://www.bmj.com/c...ll/314/7083/793

This is the first study to report a reduced risk of coronary events in male blood donors. The mechanism through which donating blood reduces the risk of coronary events could be the depletion of body iron stores.

The longevinex paper also points out that women menstruate there by losing iron which is possibly partially responsible for their lower mortality rates before menopause. A woman on average menstruates about 1 pint of blood a year though this can vary greatly between women.

[bgwowk]

Iron is one of the few supplements for which just handful of pills can kill you. That's why iron supplements these days are packaged in a really annoying way that makes it hard for kids or adults to take very many pills at once.

Acute toxicity aside, iron can have chronic toxic effects as well. It can promote free radical reactions, and is known to participate in a particularly nasty free-radical-generating reaction with vitamin C called the Fenton reaction. Don't ever take iron supplements together with vitamin C.

http://www.pubmedcen...gi?artid=340385

It's a good idea to avoid the ferrous form of iron completely. I would throw out any supplement that has ferrous sulfate. In fact I would never supplement any iron unless there was a clear and specific need.

I realize this is the opposite of what Mind asked, but I'm going to ask it anyway: What constitutes a need for iron supplementation? This is probably a concern for a lot of people here because both vegetarianism and athletics can cause anemia. Endurance sports cause anemia by plasma volume expansion (a harmless adaptive response to reduce blood viscosity), GI bleeding, and foot-strike hemolysis. After a 15 mile run, you can actually taste the iron from all the hemolyzed red cells for hours afterward.

So you've got mild anemia from your "healthy" lifestyle. What, if anything, do you do about it? Could reduced iron stores actually be one of the mechanisms by which both vegetarianism and exercise are good for you? Or is the correlation between high iron stores and disease just a result of iron being a marker for consumption of meat, which has lots of other definitely nasty stuff in it like pro-inflammatory fats? The blood donation study cited is interesting, but as the study itself admits, it suffers from the self-selection effect that healthy people donate blood more than unhealthy people.

I really would like to hear what the health cognoscenti here think about this interesting question.

[stephen_b]

I've heard claims that vegetable sources of iron are much less readily absorbed than iron in red meat. However, vitamin C is supposed to increase iron absorption.

I'm starting to feel the need to give blood ... [tung]

Stephen

[health_nutty]

If you are worried about excess iron, you can add some tea (or coffee) to your cocoa:

http://fscn.cfans.um...and_coffee.html

[Shepard]

I'm not too keen on low iron stores for myself, but I'd be more comfortable there than the other end of the spectrum. I'm not entirely sure how I'd approach that situation. At the moment, I don't have that problem. Cow good.

Sardi's The Iron Time Bomb is essentially a vast amount of studies categorized by health hazard and his individual summary of them. It's worth a look if you can find it used.

[VP.]

From Ouroburos

Neurodegeneration is often thought of as irreversible: Once neurons are damaged (or dead), one expects the decrease in function to be permanent. Granted, there is evidence that neuronal stem cells persist in adult brains, raising the possibility that functional could be reversed as the brain regenerates — but as the rate of damage accumulates with aging, such replenishment will inevitably fall behind. Hence, we tend to think of declining mental function as a one-way trip.

Recent findings, however, suggest that functional losses in the brain can indeed be reversed. The work of Bruce Ames and co-workers, for example, has demonstrated that potent anti-oxidants can return youthful plasticity to aging brains, at least in rats. (Bruce has a favorite joke about these results that I’ve quoted before and will quote again: He told his son, “We’ve come up with a way to turn old rats into young rats!” His son replied, “Let me know when you’re able to turn old people into young rats.”)

Further evidence of the reversibility of mental aging in the Rodentia comes from this recent paper by Martins de Lima et al.. The authors demonstrate that iron chelators can restore mental capacity in aged rats. (Iron is known to accumulate in the aging brain, and is thought to generate cytotoxic compounds termed reactive oxygen species or ROS.)

Reversion of age-related recognition memory impairment by iron chelation in rats

It is now generally accepted that iron accumulates in the brain during the ageing process. Increasing evidence demonstrate that iron accumulation in selective regions of the brain may generate free radicals, thereby possessing implications for the etiology of neurodegenerative disorders. In a previous study we have reported that aged rats present recognition memory deficits. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of desferoxamine (DFO), an iron chelator agent, on age-induced memory impairment. Aged Wistar rats received intraperitoneal injections of saline or DFO (300 mg/kg) for 2 weeks. The animals were submitted to a novel object recognition task 24 h after the last injection. DFO-treated rats showed normal recognition memory while the saline group showed long-term recognition memory deficits. The results show that DFO is able to reverse age-induced recognition memory deficits. We also demonstrated that DFO reduced the oxidative damage to proteins in cortex and hippocampus. Thus, the present findings provide the first evidence that iron chelators might prevent age-related memory dysfunction.

According to the results of this study, functional loss in the brain is not (entirely) a simple steady state balance between accelerating cell morbidity and diminishing regenerative capacity. Instead, it appears that accumulated iron is be causing ongoing damage (perhaps via ROS, perhaps by some mechanism) and that this damage is not irreversible per se: As soon as the iron is removed, the brain begins to regain its youthful capabilities.

The implications for human neurological aging are tremendous: While not everyone develops a specific age-related neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, most people suffer from a slow decrease in mental sharpness as we age. If the results in this paper hold true for primates (that is, if iron is a cause of broad-spectrum functional loss in normal human aging), and assuming that compounds like desferoxamine don’t have awful side effects (the obvious one being anemia), then iron chelation therapy (perhaps along with the elimination of other toxic metals) could become an important part of the anti-aging pharmacopoiea.

http://ouroboros.wor...ut-memory-loss/

[Mind]

Iron is an essential mineral, but I am thinking there is no need for supplementation as long as you get it through food in your diet.

[boily]

What about iron for pregnant women? A lot of the specific women's multi vitamins contain about 25mg of iron each day. Must be essential for creating all the extra blood needed?

[opales]

The recent negative trend in the cocoa thread brought up the fact that there is a lot of iron in raw cocoa and that is bad, bad, bad.

Problem with cocoa was lead (contamination) not iron, cocoa actually inhibits iron absorbtion, as do tea, coffee and red wine.

[Mind]

I was just referring to this comment by Lucid

The raw nibs also have TONS of iron in them. I probably won't get the nibs again even though they taste alright. The powder has much less iron

So even if you eat the nibs, does most of the iron go unabsorbed?

[s123]

Not only iron but also selenium is quite toxic in lager quantities. Some sources mention it as an accumulative poison.
The iron in meat is Fe2+ which is very well absorbed by the body, the iron in vegetables is Fe3+ which has to be converted in Fe2+ before it can be absorbed. The conversion of Fe3+ in Fe2+ happens in an acid environment. Iron can react which peroxides and form free radicals.

[lucid]

I was just referring to this comment by Lucid

My Sunfood Nutrition organic cacao nibs have (57mg - 314%dv) of iron per ounce serving. Cocoa powder had much less per ounce (4mg - 22%dv). My blood iron is already pretty high because I haven't been able to give blood for a while because I have been taking acutane.

So even if you eat the nibs, does most of the iron go unabsorbed?

That would be nice. Apparently normal bioavailability of iron is about 15% from a diverse diet. I am not sure how much more bioavailable iron is coming from meat.

[s123]

I have read that Chlorophyll is a good chelator for iron. It prevents that iron becomes absorbed by your gastrointestinal tract.

[DukeNukem]

The rice extract, IP6, is a powerful chelator of iron. I take about 2-3 grams per day.

[OutOfThyme]

Lead is more of a problem with the powders... another reason for going with nibs.

I ran across this old study from '78 on iron contamination of cacao product.

I didn't see much reason for concern with nibs if one consumes 1 oz p/day or less.

Edited by thymeless, 13 April 2007 - 04:09 PM.

[bgwowk]

Iron is an essential mineral, but I am thinking there is no need for supplementation as long as you get it through food in your diet.

To be clear, nobody here is saying extra iron is beneficial. In my mind, the two questions are:

1) If your iron level is "normal", should extra iron-containing foods or supplements be avoided?

2) If your iron is low, but not so low as to cause serious symptoms, should intake be increased? Or is lower-than-average iron beneficial for long-term health, the same way that lower-than-average blood pressure, glucose, etc. are beneficial?

[lucid]

The body has no way of excreting iron from itself. The only way we lose iron is through the sloughing off of skin cells and turnover of cells in the GI tract and through bleeding. On average women lose alot more iron than men via menstruation.

1) If your iron level is "normal", should extra iron-containing foods or supplements be avoided?

That seems right to me.

2) If your iron is low, but not so low as to cause serious symptoms, should intake be increased? Or is lower-than-average iron beneficial for long-term health, the same way that lower-than-average blood pressure, glucose, etc. are beneficial?

I would prefer to have my iron at the lower end of the normal spectrum. I think the best option is to have lower end normal iron blood content and donate blood once or twice a year. There are other benefits to donating blood, though I can't find a study saying this... but I have heard that it also cleanses your blood of some chemicals, minerals, pesticides etc...

[Mind]

I probably get too much iron because my protein shake has 33% RDA Iron and I drink it 3 times a day. I eat a few ounces of dried meat a day and I eat chocolate. Thankfully AOR's Ortho-core does not have iron. Whew!

In the immortal words of Black Sabbath: "I AM IRON MAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!"

[bgwowk]

There are other benefits to donating blood, though I can't find a study saying this... but I have heard that it also cleanses your blood of some chemicals, minerals, pesticides etc...

Not very likely. Anything in your blood with a molecular weight less than 5000 will filter straight through your kidneys and end up in urine within a matter of hours. The way kidneys work is that they essentially throw out everything, and then grab back a few essential items like salt on the way out.

Not to say that blood donation isn't good for you, but chronic "detoxification" doesn't sound like a credible mechanism.

[eternaltraveler]

at some point in our evolutionary past iron must have been in dreadfully short supply, because there are tons of systems in place designed to hold on to every last bit of it that comes in. As a result it's very easy to end up with too much, especially for males.

[OutOfThyme]

at some point in our evolutionary past iron must have been in dreadfully short supply, because there are tons of systems in place designed to hold on to every last bit of it that comes in.  As a result it's very easy to end up with too much, especially for males.

...and postmenopausal women.

Also, a AJCN study showed Iron is important for cognitive functioning in nonanemic women.

Conclusions:Iron status is a significant factor in cognitive performance in women of reproductive age. Severity of anemia primarily affects processing speed, and severity of iron deficiency affects accuracy of cognitive function over a broad range of tasks. Thus, the effects of iron deficiency on cognition are not limited to the developing brain.

[chrisp2]

So if you aren't supposed to take Iron Sulfate... What iron should one take if you have low serum iron levels?

[ajnast4r]

So if you aren't supposed to take Iron Sulfate...  What iron should one take if you have low serum iron levels?

bisglycinate by albion labs
http://www.albion-an.com/home_H.htm

[bgwowk]

So if you aren't supposed to take Iron Sulfate...  What iron should one take if you have low serum iron levels?

bisglycinate by albion labs
http://www.albion-an.com/home_H.htm

Agreed.

[basho]

How do you know, without a blood test, that your iron levels are too high or too low?

[chrisp2]

So if you aren't supposed to take Iron Sulfate...  What iron should one take if you have low serum iron levels?

bisglycinate by albion labs
http://www.albion-an.com/home_H.htm

It doesn't seem to be listed on their products page?

[lucid]

Not very likely. Anything in your blood with a molecular weight less than 5000 will filter straight through your kidneys and end up in urine within a matter of hours. The way kidneys work is that they essentially throw out everything, and then grab back a few essential items like salt on the way out.

Not to say that blood donation isn't good for you, but chronic "detoxification" doesn't sound like a credible mechanism.

Good to know. I read the detox thing on wiki, but it didn't have a citation. It sounded like it was possible though... Good to know about how the kidney works.

Even if the entire 86% decreased risk of heart failure may be entirely from self-selection, Giving blood still helps other people. I'll take my chances though and choose to be in that 86% decreased risk group

[bgwowk]

Although it sounds like an oxymoron, studies have shown that altruism is good for you. That would be voluntary altruism, for Objectivist sticklers out there.

[stephen_b]

I can't for the life of me imagine how self-selection of being a blood donor could account for an 86% decreased risk of heart failure. I just looked up this study, A historical cohort study of the effect of lowering body iron through blood donation on incident cardiac events.:

BACKGROUND: Low body iron may protect against atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease through limiting oxidation of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Observational studies suggest that donation of whole blood might be associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular events. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, a total of 1508 adults who donated more than 1 unit of whole blood each year between 1988 and 1990 (frequent donors) and 1508 age- and sex-matched adults who donated only a single unit in that 3-year period (casual donors) were studied. A standardized questionnaire ascertained participant characteristics and occurrence of incident acute myocardial infarction, coronary angioplasty, coronary bypass surgery, and deaths between 1990 and 2000. Hospital records confirmed events. Cause of death was determined from death certificates. RESULTS: A total of 643 subjects were lost, 113 declined, 156 were deceased but were included in the analysis, and 2104 were surveyed a median of 10 years after the index donation. Frequent donors weighed less and were less likely to be currently taking antihypertensive and lipid-modifying drugs. Events occurred in 6.3 percent of frequent and 10.5 percent of casual donors. After adjustment for group differences, the OR was D.60 (85% CIs 0.43, 0.83; p < 0.001). Events were less frequent in female donors than in male donors and less frequent in subjects who had donated before 1988 than in those who had not donated before 1988. CONCLUSION: Frequent and long-term whole blood donation is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events.

So, there you have it.

Stephen