Fitness

I cannot see how any intelligent person could let himself be deficient in either of the two nutrients, iron and iodine. The need for both has been known for decades. Iron is found in almost every natural food, whereas iodized salt has been sold at no extra cost for years. The fact that deficiencies of both iron and iodine are still widespread gives me a depressing you’re-butting-your-head-against-a-brick-wall feeling. But then I remind myself, more logically, that people will never apply sound nutrition until convinced it has personal value for them.

Not long ago a physician referred to me a man suffering from a fatal disease in which iron is held in the body in the form of a pigment. This man’s identical twin had already died of the disease. My problem, supposedly, was to plan a diet which could maintain maximum health but which supplied no iron, meaning no meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, yeast, wheat germ, or whole-grain breads or cereals. If you can plan such a diet, let me know. I could not.

Anemia can result from inadequate protein, iodine, cobalt, copper, ascorbic acid, or ahnost anyone of the B vitamins, particularly folic acid, vitamin B12, niacin, or pyridoxin. Approximately half of all persons suffering from anemia have abnormal or sore tongues, indicating a lack of B vitamins. Probably every nutrient plays some role in building healthy blood. Much anemia does exist, however, which can be corrected by nothing more than iron.

Red blood cells, or corpuscles, are made in the bone marrow. It is estimated that approximately one billion per minute are produced by a healthy adult. In a cubic millimeter of blood, an imaginary cube about 0.04 inch on every side, there are normally about 5,000,000 red corpuscles. This number is spoken of as the blood count.

Each corpuscle must contain a certain amount of red coloring material, or hemoglobin, which carries oxygen by combining chemically with it. An easy method of estimating the amount of hemoglobin in the corpuscles is by comparing the color of blood with that of a standard series of colors. Blood which matches the brightest red of the standard is considered to have 100 per cent hemoglobin. If your blood matched the color marked 80 per cent, it would indicate that you have 80 per cent of the total amount of hemoglobin you should have.

Iron-deficiency anemia is a childish or feminine disease rare in men; the chief reason is that children grow and women menstruate. Men, however, may produce anemia in themselves through hemorrhage from stomach ulcers. Severe anemia often occurs in blood donors whose admirable generosity is not matched by an intelligent replacement of iron. Anemia in general means that the body does not produce enough red corpuscles or enough hemoglobin or enough of both. If the only deficiency is one of iron, the number of red blood cells is only slightly below normal; the hemoglobin, however, lacks color. The body of an anemic person cannot be supplied with sufficient oxygen; energy production is interfered with. The chief complaints are weakness, perhaps dizziness, shortness of breath on exertion and consciousness of a pounding heartbeat, or palpitation; fatigue amounts to a continuous dead-tiredness. The fingernails are often brittle and show longitudinal ridging. Such persons are literally and figuratively colorless, listlessly lacking in vitality. Since too little oxygen reaches the brain, they cannot think as clearly or quickly as is normal, and they forget easily. Yet when an adequate diet is adhered to and well absorbed, the amount of hemoglobin and the number of red corpuscles quickly become normal.

Aside from the iron needed for hemoglobin, iron is in the nuclei, or business center, of all body cells. It is part of substances known as cytochrome, important in energy production, and myohemoglobin, or hemoglobin of the muscles. During iron deficiency, iron for the production of cytochrome and myohemoglobin has priority over that of hemoglobin.