High Ferritin

[jupiterconjunct]

As part of my blood test results my Ferritin is exceptional high

344. ug/L. 13.00- 150.00

Iron 19.53. ug/L. 6.60-26.00

B12. 272. pmo1/L. 140.00-724.00

Medicheck reckon this is ok

25 OH Vitamin D. 73.4. nmol/L. 50.00. -200.00

Folate. 15.75. Ug/L 2.91-50.00

LIVER FUNCTION

Alkaline Phosphate

133. IU/L. 35.00-104

Alanine Transferase

39.5 IU/L 10.00-35.00

Medichecks say this is high and to check in 2 months. (none drinker)

TSH 3.57 mIU/L. 0.27-4.29

Medichecks say it's ok..... Back in May the TSH. Was 1.93 (With same company) at present I'm taking Thyroid S 1/2 grain.

Antibodies nice and low back in May.

The Medichecks team have advised me to stop dietary intake of Iron or taking supplements to exclude iron overload.

I don't take a multivitamin.....the vitamins I take are all separate ones.... I wonder if the high Ferritin is the reason for my massive HAIR loss since February!

Also my Diabetes levels are high

(HBA1. 75.00. mmo1/mo1. 20.00 -42.00. Insulin. 29.94. mIU/L 2.60-24.90

HIGH. CRP. 11.4. mg/1. 0.00-5-00

Medicheck advised me to have this re-done in 2 months and suggested I take the the Diabetes medication.

This has been high for the last 7 years. When I've checked my levels.....But the Dr has ignored it saying it might be cold or something

Cholesterol Status is excellent, and always has been.

In the past I have refused to accept that I have diabetes, as I felt it was due to my TSH levels fluctuating over the last 5/6 years. Because the test at the surgery always came up out of range.

Hashimotis been the main culprit... so I went gluten and dairy free ( and feel a lot better. Except my hair no weight)

Can anyone advise please....I do not know which Vitamins contain Iron. I don't eat liver.

[jupiterconjunct]

Also, I might add I eat about 14 eggs a wk and have done for years.... I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Always had high Haemoglobin. HCT 0.453. L/L. 0.33-0.45

Medichecks say they're not concerned about this. (I have copd)

[Fruitandnutcase]

If you don't believe you've got diabetes then buy a blood sugar monitor and test your own. Do it just before you eat and an hour and a half to two hours afterwards. You will find some food spike your blood sugar - in my case it's anything grain based, too much rice, jacket potatoes, parsnips and a few other things. I made myself a simple spreadsheet for each day with before and after readings and a little gap to write in what I ate. If you do that and your bs is high then you are probably diabetic, you can reverse T2 - I'm assuming it's T2 that your doctor means if it's T1 then that's different.

My ferritin is high, not as high as yours though, I've got arthritis and IBS which cause inflammation which is probably what is making it high. I also eat 14 eggs a week, my ferritin was hit before I started to eat eggs for breakfast though so in my case it's not that, I think eggs for breakfast is what is keeping my vitamin D at a good level as I'm not taking my vit D spray.

My hair is ok. It fell out like mad when I went from hyper (Graves) to hypo during my treatment. Once I stabilised it stopped falling out, it looks thick but I know it isn't as thick as it used to be before all that, maybe once you get stable it will settle down. Have to say, the hair loss drove me round the bend.

I also went totally GF two years ago, I don't 'not eat dairy' but I don't like milk or yoghurt so I don't have all that much anyway. I don't eat a lot of grains so although I love butter I don't have much to put itv on.

[jupiterconjunct in reply to Fruitandnutcase]

I am going to start the diabetes medication. But, I wouldn't say my readings for the were particularly high and in any case having diabetes doesn't cause hair to fall out.

I'm at a loss and can't seem to find any answers to all this.

[humanbean]

An excellent website for pre-diabetics and diabetics of all kinds is this one :

diabetes.co.uk/

It's a patient-run site rather than an NHS site.

It has a forum too :

diabetes.co.uk/forum/

Loads of cookbooks and recipes :

diabetes.co.uk/recipes/

A free Lowcarb course - you have to register :

diabetes.co.uk/lowcarb/

And a lot more worth poking around and reading.

[Fruitandnutcase in reply to humanbean]

Couldn't agree more HumanBean. I discovered Diabetes.co.uk while watching a BBC Doctor in the House programme where Dr Rangan Chattergee reversed the Diabetes of one lady and between that and a wonderful book by Dr David Cavan called Reverse your T2 Diabetes I was able to reduce my HbA1c and no longer have T2.

Obviously I need to stick with my new style of eating or I imagine my blood sugar would increase again but that's no problem and I'm happy to do that if it keeps me off diabetes medicines.

I did come across someone on the forum who said she'd "rather take the medicines and eat what she liked" but that's not for me, I think it's worth the effort to alter your eating patterns.

I lost about three stones as well as managing to lower my HbA1c - all without ever counting a single calorie, I simply found out what spiked my blood and stopped eating it, I did step up my exercise though and aim for 10000 steps a day. I don't always manage that, sometimes I'm way over and ometimes a bit under.

[humanbean in reply to Fruitandnutcase]

Fruitandnutcase

Congratulations! I'm very impressed with your weight loss and the reversal of your T2 diabetes!

One thing I was surprised about was discovering that different people discover their blood sugar is spiked by different things. So one person can eat carrots (for example) and have no problem, but someone else may have to cut down dramatically or stop eating them altogether. And the likelihood is that the different reactions are governed by gut bacteria. I heard this on a TV programme some time ago, but can't remember which one. I thought it was fascinating.

[Fruitandnutcase in reply to humanbean]

Thank you, I was so busy concentrating on keeping my blood sugar low that wasn't actually thinking about losing weight.

Believe it or not I can eat meringue and cream without spiking my blood! That totally amazed me but I've done it more than once and it never raises my blood sugar, yet I was totally shocked when a nice healthy jacket potato and salad - no bread or anything with it really spiked my blood sugar as did a bowl of parsnip soup - no bread again although I should probably have guessed that.

Try and get a hold of this book, I read it and did exactly what the guy said and what a difference it made. Unfortunately low carb, high fat which is what I did - carbs from vegetables etc and I wouldn't say I ate high fat because I don't love it, for example, I'd never eat the fat on meat like my other half does but I wasn't afraid of fat, unfortunately LCHF and its success hasn't filtered down to most doctors which is a shame because it works

Reverse Your Diabetes: The Step-by-Step Plan to Take Control of Type 2 Diabetes Paperback – 6 Nov 2014

by Dr David Cavan (Author)

[jupiterconjunct]

Thank you humanbean and fruitandnutcase for your info. I will certainly look up...

I do swim 150 front crawl a week though.

Medichecks have advised me to take the Diabetes meds for now to see if this brings down the HIGH Ferritin levels and the CRP marker.

Medichecks said to re-test in 2 months for the above and the liver enzymes.

But what I'm not sure about is, this hair loss which is quite excessive, someone on the foram said about My B12 been low.

[Fruitandnutcase in reply to jupiterconjunct]

I’m wondering how high your ferritin and CRP are. My ferritin is always high - always shown in red but my CRP is low, it came down along with my thyroid antibodies but it was never all that high anyway so although it gets a mention they never say all that much about it.

[humanbean]

Can anyone advise please....I do not know which Vitamins contain Iron

Iron is not a vitamin, it is a mineral. Any supplement will always tell you if it contains iron. You might see it referred to on the label in a couple of different ways, either as straightforward iron or as ferrous something e.g. ferrous bisglycinate.

Ferritin is the body's iron store.

As mentioned above by Fruitandnutcase, your body may store iron in ferritin when it is inflamed or infected. High blood sugar is one cause of lots of inflammation, so treating your diabetes seriously and altering your diet to lower your blood sugar should help.

When your body stores lots of your iron in ferritin your body can't make use of it. So the iron level in your bloodstream will be low, and as a result your haemoglobin will be low. Low iron and low haemoglobin can make people feel fairly awful - being tired and breathless would be very common symptoms.

I'm afraid that you are going to have to take your diabetes seriously if you want to have a good quality of life and feel well. Ignoring it will make you very sick.

[jupiterconjunct in reply to humanbean]

Thanks for that.... Started with Forxiga (Diabetes meds) yesterday.... In the meantime I shall see if the library has the book that you recommend. long term I would rather tackle this by diet as opposed to meds.

[Fruitandnutcase in reply to jupiterconjunct]

That's what I did. I think if you can do it with diet and exercise then that's best.

I was given three months to fix things with diet and exercise - I asked as I was leaving 'what happens if I can't reduce my HbA1c in that time? I was told 'well You'll go on the Diagetic Register!'

Unfortunately my diabetes nurse is still working on the 'carbs with every meal' system which I discovered by testing would have been a total disaster for me.

I found the book when I was googling, bought it and started to read it and wonder - like how would I know if anything was improving because I didn't know what my blood sugar was on a day to day basis and they didn't give people like me home blood sugar testing equipment, so I bought a blood sugar meter - I bought the AccuChek Mobile which was really simple to use.

The cassettes are quite expensive but I test much less nowadays because I know the sort of things I can and can't eat.