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Are You Getting Enough Iron?

Or too much?

Alexandra Iulia Soare
3 min readMar 18, 2020

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Whenever you are a banker of Braavos or a normal human being, you should always take care of your iron bank. After all, who do you think will be helping you distributing oxygen in your body?

Most articles on iron focus on what happens when you have too little iron, but I will start first by showing you what happens when you have too much iron. Follow me on this alternative journey.

Why no supplements are better?

Since we are in the Game of Thrones references, if you are a fan of the show, you have seen iron under two forms: As the metal part of the blades or.. as blood. Yes, because iron is a component of hemoglobin and the reason why our blood cells are red.

What happens when you have too much iron? The same chemical reaction that turns an old blade rusty can occur with the iron in your blood vessels. Which doesn’t sound like a good idea if it happens inside your body. In the process, iron releases free radicals that are linked to aging, cancer, and heart disease. While your body has a good defense system of antioxidants, too many free radicals can unbalance it.

That’s why, unless your doctor prescribed you, you shouldn’t supplement it.

The experiment with bacteria

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Alexandra Iulia Soare
Alexandra Iulia Soare

Written by Alexandra Iulia Soare

Hi 🙋I am a food scientist! Do you want to eat healthier, but you don’t know where to start? Begin here: https://food-on-mars.com/work

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