Low iron and infertility?

[soccerkt6]

Hi all

I'm just curious if anyone has been found to have low iron, fixed it and then gone on the conceive naturally or had better success with IVF.

A bit of background: We've spent the past 14 months or so focused on improving my husband's DNA fragmentation (which has gone well), but I still have this niggling feeling that something isn't 100% right with me. We've now had one natural chemical and three failed transfers (two fresh BFNs and one FET that was a chemical). All of the standard blood tests for me have always come back normal, but for the past year and a half I've felt constantly anxious and often a bit breathless, which I've attributed to the stress of going through IVF. Recently though, I started taking a supplement that contains freeze-dried beef organs (liver, heart and kidney) which is rich in iron and a whole bunch of other vitamins and minerals and strangely, pretty much all of the symptoms that I was attributing to stress/ anxiety have very suddenly gone away. So now I'm wondering if I've had an iron deficiency all along and it's been contributing to our issues. I eat plenty of meat so I never would have expected to be deficient, but I just got the results back from an iron blood panel and while my results are 'normal', they're on the low end of normal which is odd considering that I eat meat AND have been taking the organ supplement. And now I'm reading about how iron deficiency affects fertility and it can cause anovulation, low-quality eggs (interesting since we've struggled with low-quality embryos) and a whole host of other issues!

Anyways, sorry for rambling but I'm really just curious if anyone else has had this experience or if I'm looking for problems where they don't exist... xxx

[Solly-44]

Hi,No idea at all of it was linked but… I saw a dermatologist due to huge amounts of hair falling out after our 2nd transfer. She did a huge amount of blood tests and all came back fine expect for zinc and iron. Zinc I had a deficiency, iron I didn’t technically but was just 1 point within range - so say 1-12 is anaemic and 13-150 is normal, I was 13. I’ve made those numbers up btw, I can’t remember off the proper range off the top of my head. We did conceive my son on our next round about a month after I was given super strength zinc & iron pills. To be honest I don’t think that it was because of those things we didn’t conceive but if you had very low levels it certainly can only help to bring them up. Also I felt a million times better for taking them! X

[soccerkt6 in reply to Solly-44]

Hi lovely, thanks so much! That's interesting about the zinc because right before writing my original post I was going down a rabbit hole of information on iron deficiency and it seems also testing copper and zinc is important when it comes to iron issues. So I may pay privately to have those tested.

My iron level results are similar to what you describe...they're technically in the normal range but only just by a hair...and I suspect that they were probably lower a few months ago before I started this new supplement. I've also had really short, light periods for the past few years and now I'm wondering if my body was trying to conserve iron by making my periods lighter.

Like you, I don't think that iron deficiency has been the main cause of our difficulties - I think that prize goes to high sperm dna fragmentation! - but I'm certain it hasn't been helping. I'll be very interested during our next cycle to see if our embryo quality is any better once I've gotten my iron levels up.

Thanks for your response! xxx

[Barenina]

Hi! Sorry I can’t give you any answers about iron deficiency (but I will also look into that now!)

But I was just curious how you managed to get your man’s DNA fragmentation down?

We have the same issue, we are trying for a sibling and I have PCOS and my partner has low sperm count and high DNA damage.

For me, I tested low on testosterone and have had better embryo quality after supplementing with DHEA.

My partner is on high antioxidants supplements and we are also considering 50% TESE (again) for our next (and maybe last) egg collection coming up soon.

Good luck to you and baby dust 💫