Iron and Hair Loss?

This article gives information regarding women, iron and hair loss.

Information
Iron deficiency anemia is a condition that afflicts 20% of women and about 50% of pregnant women. It is by far the most common form of any type of anemia.

Iron is a component of hemoglobin, the element through which oxygen is carried in the blood. Without iron, the oxygen is not carried through the blood effectively, therefore imparing your health, as oxygen is essential to the functioning of every cell within the body.

Usually, people develop iron deficiencies from too little exposure to iron within their diets, blood loss - such as heavy menstrual bleeding and blood donations, and inadequate iron absorption of iron within the body. When normal stores of iron have been depleted throughout the body and within the bone marrow, anemia develops.

Symptoms
How can you tell if you have anemia? The best way to check is to get bloodwork done, to check your TIBC (total iron binding capacity), serum iron, serum ferritin and CBC.

The symptoms of iron deficiency anemia include brittle nails, decreased appetite, headache, fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath and pallid skin.

Sometimes due to iron deficiency, people may progressively shed their hairs and experience telogen effluvium. The only way this can be confirmed is getting subsequent blood tests run.

Treatment

Usually the best way to bring up low ferritin/iron levels is to take oral iron tablets. There are also several other supplements that, when taken with iron, can help absorption such as Vitamin C or the amino acid L-Lysine. Avoid caffeine, dairy, and calcium when you are taking iron as these decrease absorption. Iron is also found in green leafy veggies, dried fruits and red and dark meets, such as beef and dark chicken or turkey meat.

Cooking vegetables also helps the body absorb iron, as opposed to eating them raw.

Be extremely careful when taking iron supplements, as overloading or megadosing is very dangerous and can cause toxicity as iron secretion is slow, therefore accumulating easily inside of the body. It has been established that a good "normal" level of ferritin for women is 70 micro g/L.

The Great Debate
But is there a direct association between low iron and hair loss? There seems to be two opinions on hair loss and iron, one generally more accepted than the other. Dr. Rushton highly promotes the idea that there is a correlation between hair loss and low iron levels, and has done several studies. But do the studies necessarily show that the hair loss is a direct effect from the cause of low iron? Another study conducted by an R. Sinclair at the University of Melbourne Department of Dermatology suggests that there is no clear association between low iron and chronic diffuse telogen effluvium.

Although this subject remains debatable, one thing still remains clear: iron is a necessary component for women's health regardless of it's association with hair.

Click here to read R. Sinclair's article entitled "There is no clear association between low serum ferritin and chronic diffuse telogen hair loss."

http://www.applesforhealth.com/cookveg1.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000584.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12190640&dopt=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12410711&dopt=Abstract