Living With Iron Deficiency Anemia

It has come to my attention not to long ago that most people do NOT know anything about anemia and how difficult it can actually be to live with it on the daily basis. According to the Mayo Clinic definition anemia is a condition where the blood doesn't have enough red cells, dysfunctional red blood cells, which leads to the flow of oxygen to the organs to be reduced. You are probably thinking about how these people are even alive and functioning in society, right? Well, we are some what perfectly fine, just very tired. The truth is, if you don't get your blood tested chances are you won't even know you are anemic. The symptoms you get from this disease seem almost normal if you have a full time job, go to school, lack sleep, or simply don't always have scheduled meal times. Though there are different types of anemia, for the sake of my brain, we are simply going to stick to iron deficiency anemia, its symptoms and ways to combat it.

It's wonderful, isn't it? One day you're perfectly fine and the next you can't even make it out of it without feeling your world spinning out of control. Anemia comes with subtle symptoms like dizziness, light headedness, fatigue, racing heart, and believe it or not breathless. Crazy enough out of these five symptoms fatigue is probably the most common. I was a senior in high school when I first started coming down with anemia. I would miss many school days just to sleep more and when I did go to school all I wanted was to go home and sleep. There was so many things I needed and wanted to do but I could never bring myself to build up enough energy to do it all at once. With all the stress that comes with being a senior and graduation I thought everything was normal, until I started noticing more changes.

One of the biggest things, besides fatigue, that I noticed had changed was most definitely my skin tone. I always had a nice tan skin tone, I was a sun lover, but one my low iron deficiency started kicking in I started looking super pale. At some point it was so bad I started using foundation two shades darker. I know it was awful, like seriously you could tell the difference, embarrassing. However, I didn't find out I had anemia until a week after my graduation , when I ended up in the hospital on my birthday, so memorable. After three days of hanging out in the hospital I was finally sent home with a list of foods I had to eat to build my iron and medication.

Foods to boost your iron will mainly be found in the vegetable section. These consist of: Lentils, beans, spinach, tofu, liver, bread, fish, broccoli, sprouts, and just about every green leafy vegetables. These are just a few food to fuel yourselves and the recipes to these healthy things are just endless. Your doctor or whomever you go to can prescribe ferrous sulfate.

Unfortunately, just like there are foods to that you can eat to boost your iron there are also foods that can prevent you from getting it! According to www.dailyiron.net these drinks prevent you from absorbing the iron: coffee, red wine, milk and black tea. Then according to www.natureworld.com these foods can keep you from absorbing iron: calcium rich foods, egg yolk, tannins ( such as strawberries, cinnamon, and cloves), and those are just a few of the many.