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On the other side of the Iron coin. Men, and post menopausal women need to be extra careful about iron. Having periods helps the body get rid of excess iron which is toxic, and is stored in your organs over, and above what is needed. Without periods the body only loses about 1 mg of iron a day, and the rest is stored. Have your serum ferritin tested first before taking any supplements with iron, or even using cast iron cookware. Also certain bad bacteria LOVE iron, and consume it adoringly. Which is another reason the body can store it away from the baddies.
There is also a genetic condition called Hemochromatosis which is very common, approx 1 in 200, where we store iron at 4X the normal rate. Even carriers can load iron. People of celtic, and northern european heritage are prone to it. Aka iron overload, it can make you exhausted also, and even kill you. Most people have never heard of it before, thus the gentle warning. Blacks can have a different type of Hemochromatosis.
Wow! Thanks for sharing this! My ex-sister-in-law had this and was very ill. Reading through the risk factors and symptoms, I am now worried as I have many! Time for my annual check up anyway....thanks again for alerting us to this...something I'm sure many have never heard of.
Thank you for creating this thread. I am tired a lot, have talked to my doctor about it but she never really seems to put any importance on it. I'm 77, life has not always been easy, but have been retired since about 2010 so not working, no real reason to get up early. By the time I get into bed, I'm ready to sleep. I've had a couple of times when extreme tiredness took over and I had to go to bed before my normal time and wasn't able to do the few chores I do before going to bed.
So I had a complete bloodwork done for a surgery I'm having August 2 and the one thing I noticed and don't really understand is high monocyte (11.5, normal range 2.0-10.0). Checked it out on Google and still do not know what this means.
Anybody have any familiarity with this?
"Monocytes: High levels of monocytes may indicate the presence of chronic infection, an autoimmune or blood disorder, cancer, or other medical conditions."
I'm the OP and today I picked up my Atorvastatin, Ive been taking it for 2 years. I read the side affects and muscle pain, tenderness, weakness, and unusual tiredness stood out to me. I believe some of it is a side affect of this. I'll ask my dr. next time I see him. The benefits may be greater than the risk. I got a stent 2 years ago and try to eat heart healthy and I like to eat and I go to a lot of church events with snack tables with bad for you stuff that I take a little of.
Statins are associated with apoptosis, or programmed cell death, and myopathy, or muscle pain. Statins can also interfere with our mitochondria which produce energy. Here are several links on it for you.
This is what I was wondering. I changed my diet and went off of statins and blood pressure meds and all of those types of meds and I felt so much better. I had no idea how much of my "old age" was caused by these medications.
Sorry you aren't feeling well, OP. Hope you get it sorted out.
And by the way, after not eating any meat products whatsoever or even oil for a year and a half, my cholesterol was still in the 200's. I've decided they don't know what they're talking about regarding cholesterol numbers. My body just makes a lot of it, and it's not clogging up my arteries, so I'm going to assume it's keeping my brain and cells healthy, and I'm not going to worry about it.
I agree with you. Statins cause more problems than they help. Of course the drug companies will tell us differently. Our bodies need cholesterol, we make our hormones out of it, and other important things. As your experiment shows, if we don't get cholesterol from our diets, our livers will make it on their own. There have been studies showing that people with higher levels of cholesterol are healthier than those with lower levels. It's been quite awhile since I read that, so I don't have a link for it, but it's something to look into. Statins do make a lot of money for the drug companies though. But if it keeps people from exercising due to pain, then what good is it. Just my thoughts on the matter. I wouldn't take statins if they paid me to.
Wow! Thanks for sharing this! My ex-sister-in-law had this and was very ill. Reading through the risk factors and symptoms, I am now worried as I have many! Time for my annual check up anyway....thanks again for alerting us to this...something I'm sure many have never heard of.
You are very welcome. I hope I can be of help to even just one person. I found out about mine by accident when I was working up in Wyoming for a short while. I was so sick. The small town sponsored some tests, and one of them was serum ferritin. The range was 10-291, and mine was 1100 +, and flagged as high. Giving blood draws out the iron from storage to make new blood, and can lower iron levels that way.
But I would get tested to get a baseline to see where you are. That link said that giving blood just once a year can lower your chance of a heart attack by 50%. That's pretty amazing. But if your levels are very high the doctor would have you go much more often. Or if your doc won't help, you could donate every 52 days, or whatever it is. But I wouldn't mention high iron levels to the blood takers. There is nothing wrong with the blood at all. But they want you to give blood because of altruistic reasons, not for better health. That's stupid, but they can be funny that way. I've given about 2 gallons so far. Best regards.
P.S. Many docs think that hemochromatosis is an old white man's disease. They don't realize that it can hit anyone of any age including kids.
"Monocytes: High levels of monocytes may indicate the presence of chronic infection, an autoimmune or blood disorder, cancer, or other medical conditions."
Thank you for this information. I found something that makes perfect sense to me. Steroids can cause the problem and I have been using steroid eye-drops for a very long time for glaucoma.
Thank you for this information. I found something that makes perfect sense to me. Steroids can cause the problem and I have been using steroid eye-drops for a very long time for glaucoma.
That's great, I'm so glad you found a clue to the mystery.
There have been studies showing that people with higher levels of cholesterol are healthier than those with lower levels.
Absolutely. That's why doctors and other medical authorities always recommend that you eat a lot of saturated and trans fats and drug companies are all pushing medications that help you raise your cholesterol level.
We retire because working all day is too exhausting.
No, we retire because we can.
And we retire because we don't need or want someone or some entity to tell us where we have to be for 40 hours/week; what we have to do when we're there; when we can go home; and when we can take a week or two off to do what we want. Instead, we do what we want and when we want 24/7/365.
Absolutely. That's why doctors and other medical authorities always recommend that you eat a lot of saturated and trans fats and drug companies are all pushing medications that help you raise your cholesterol level.
I sense thinly veiled sarcasm. The drug companies are profit driven, and even give perks to doctors when they prescribe their products, trips, bonuses, and other goodies. Trans fats are horrible for anybody to eat. Hydrogen gas is forced through vegetable oil to thicken it making it more akin to plastic. Not good to put in your body. Eat as close to the way God created it instead of processed foods. Saturated fats are used to make the outer layer of each cell, and are vitally important to health. But eat grass fed animal products, not feedlot animal products pumped full of antibiotics forced into unnatural living conditions, and diets of soy, and corn instead of green grass. Even pigs can be organically raised on pasture.
The "health" industry has been very wrong many times before. This wouldn't be the first time, lol. They were wrong about eggs, they were wrong about salt. Sea salt is good because of the minerals in it. Table salt is terrible because all the minerals that balance sodium have been removed, and aluminum added for anti caking. Anyway, I've got to get ready to walk the neighbors dog so can't look around for research on it. But it's not cholesterol that is the problem. It's that the veins have been damaged, and the body applies cholesterol like putty to try to fix the damaged veins.
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