Iron

[donna495]

What iron is best to take.iron tabs off gp or one I can buy

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

The ones off your GP will be either Ferrous Fumarate or Ferrous Sulphate and contain 65mg elemental iron per tablet. You can buy the same thing off Amazon.

Some people find they get constipated and/or get stomach upset with those and find Iron Bisglycinate more gentle. Solgar do Gentle Iron which is Iron Bisglycinate and has 20mg or 25mg iron per tablet. It is much more expensive than FF or FS. There are other brands of Iron Bisglycinate but if you get that make sure it says 'Albion Chelated Ferrochel' somewhere in the description.

Each iron tablet should be taken with 1000mg Vit C to aid absorption and help prevent constipation.

A surefire way of raising ferritin is to eat liver once a week. I couldn't get on with iron supplements but approx 120g liver once a week has raised mine really well.

[donna495 in reply to SeasideSusie]

Thankyou I will have a look at those.

Would spatone raise levels x

[SeasideSusie Remembering in reply to donna495]

Some people find Spatone helps but the general consensus is that it has very low iron content.

"One sachet contains 5mg of iron in solution. Scientifically shown bioavailability, as high as 40%, means one sachet can provide up to 2mg of iron."

So from one sachet you will get 2mg iron, compared to 65mg from 1 x Ferrous Fumarate or 20/25mg from 1 x Gentle Iron.

As someone who has tried them all, liver is the winner, plus you don't have the problem of trying to fit an iron supplement around other supplements and Levo - you need to leave 4 hours with a supplement as iron affects absorption of other supplements and medication.

[Angel_of_the_North in reply to donna495]

I took 2 x spatone a day for 6 months (very expensive) and ended up with lower ferritin than when I started.

[Angel_of_the_North]

If you get free prescriptions, take what the GP prescribes. If not, you can get the same stuff at half the cost of a prescription either online or at a pharmacy (eg Tesco). It's usually Mercury Pharma ferrous fumarate 210mg one tablet twice a day (with vit C).

[donna495 in reply to Angel_of_the_North]

Ok thankyou x

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If you have normocytic anaemia iron supplements are dangerous, optimum meds needed to counteract chronic disease i.e. hypothyroidism.