Hi folks!
I'm working on improving My ferritin levels (8, then 14, then 20). I've been taking iron supplements for the last 4 months but it seems i'm improving REALLY slowly. I'm worried, though, because my TIBC has always been low (240 on a 245-450 range). Does that mean I should take lactoferrin together with my iron? Is taking iron pills dangerous if you have low TIBC? My GP sent me the pills but said nothing about TIBC.
Thanks!
A17,
TIBC should correlate with serum iron, ie transferrin increases with raising iron levels to transport & prevent excess free.
Iron mechanisms all work to prevent toxicity and you might find once you reach a certain level, TIBC results suddenly starts improving. A frequent cause of low transferrin is bodily inflammation common in auto-immune disease, so it may be something like optimising Vit D levels (which is a huge immune modulator) helps iron to work better.
I replied re your last post regarding iron and although was your only reply you failed even to acknowledge.
Thanks! The thing is, I don't have autoinmune diseases, and my inflammation markers are all OK. My serum iron is low after 3 months of supplementing (75 in a 60-170 range), but TIBC never raised with iron defficiency. My liver values are all ok.
Iron panel is strange!
A17,
You don't have to have autoimmune disease to hold inflammation. There's loads of drivers such as toxins, chemicals, intolerances, maybe you have unknown gut infection such as H.Pylori or SIBO.
But even if you don't (lucky you), back to the low transferrin, as I said it correlates with your low iron levels. It is to be expected & should rise with serum iron. Measuring transferrin is useful to determine how iron is working but you need to have adequate serum levels there in the first place.
" Does that mean I should take lactoferrin together with my iron?' I don’t know, as you haven’t much serum iron for it to bind to and it might inhibit the proliferation of transferrin. It works differently to transferrin & in different areas of the body. You should also have adequate secreted from your immune cells anyway.
I have heamochromotosis and have investigated lactoferrin as a measure of controlling iron-generated free radicals but as there is intestinal receptors there is thought it encourages better iron absorption, so might work better for you.
It has received great reviews for treating unknown gut infections such as H. Pylori or SIBO🤣, by withholding iron.
Is taking iron pills dangerous if you have low TIBC? No, it should encourage transferrin levels to raise.
My GP sent me the pills but said nothing about TIBC. Because levels should follow suit.
This reply is all based on my personal experience. Whether you follow my example is entirely up to you.
Back in May 2013 a test showed I had low-in-range ferritin. I didn't know it then but I later found that my serum iron and TIBC had shown up as being below range in 2010 but nobody had told me or re-tested. Because of the low (but still in range) ferritin my doctor, very reluctantly, provided me with a prescription for two months supplemental iron in June 2013. (I had to beg and plead.)
I accidentally found out, thanks to an idle comment from the pharmacist who filled the prescription, that I could buy prescription-strength iron supplements from pharmacies in the UK without a prescription so I didn't have to beg and plead any more, I bought my own (and still do if/when necessary). I don't involve doctors in my iron treatment any longer.
I obviously also had to do private testing at my own expense because there was no way my doctor would do a full iron panel for me.
After five or six months on maximum dose iron supplements (ferrous fumarate 210mg, one tablet three times a day) I did private testing and found out the following :
Serum iron was 14% of the way through the range.
TIBC was below range.
Transferrin saturation was 13% of the way through the range.
Ferritin was 14% of the way through the range.
My research showed that TIBC is supposed to be high when iron is low and transferrin saturation is low. It took me ages to find out and be convinced that the most likely cause of my low TIBC was likely a poorly functioning, probably fatty, liver which just wasn't showing up in liver function tests (everything was in range). So I decided to risk continuing to supplement iron at max dose to see what happened, despite the contradictory results for TIBC and other iron-related levels.
I continued to supplement my own iron (and do a private iron panel every few months) until I'd been on the maximum dose for roughly 22 months. That is how long it took for my ferritin to reach mid-range or slightly over. At that point my other results were :
Serum iron was 25% of the way through the range. (Up from 14%.) Still well below optimal.
TIBC was 20% of the way through the range. (Up from below range.) It has never been mid-range, which is what I consider to be a reasonable level, and has never been better than 30% of the way through the range. It did drop below range again once (in 2016), but then improved again.
Transferrin saturation was 37% of the way through the range. (Up from 13%.) This is the first optimal result I have ever had for anything iron related.
Ferritin was just above mid-range. (Up from 14%.)
Optimal levels for various iron related tests are given on this link :
rt3-adrenals.org/Iron_test_...
And lots of options for supplementing iron in the UK are given in this reply to another member :
healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...
After I got my ferritin just above mid-range I stopped taking max dose of ferrous fumarate 210mg and started trying to find my maintenance dose. It took a long time but I eventually found that one tablet, three or four times a week, kept my ferritin as close to optimal as I could manage. Any attempts to optimise the other tests resulted in my ferritin going slightly over range, so nowadays I always determine my iron dose by my ferritin level and let the other iron results stay lower than optimal.
Good luck.
But is it possible to have liver problems with all its markers being OK? The liver enzymogram is perfect.
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