Tips for anemia?

[Sunny]

How does a vegetarian raise the iron levels without red meat? Our daughter couldn't give blood yesterday as her iron levels too low.... she's a raw foods vegan and has given blood for the past 10 years, and often been low in iron, but with the raw diet, it was still down .... any tips? She is helping her Dh do the 6WC ( he eats meat) ..... Thanx

[maxlharris]

Delurk:
Rare problem among protein powered people, but:
take a multivitamin with iron. Somewhat easier to find than one without.
Relurk

[mcsblues]

You could always tell her to come to her senses and stop being a raw food vegan ...

... I'm sure that wouldn't start an argument!:p:nod:

[S Bear]

I've been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for about 40 years, and I've never had that problem. Much the opposite, in fact.

A good multimineral supplement will probably do the trick, but many of them have their iron in a form that is poorly available (usually just iron sulfate).

If you go to a decent health food store, they will have chelated iron (iron bound to an amino acid). These are 10-20 times better absorbed by the body than iron sulfate and it's relatives. A nice thing about this is that you can add just iron in the amounts needed, instead of a wide-spectrum supplement, which might not be needed.

As maxlharris says, the usual problem is finding a mulitmineral supplement WITHOUT iron. I've only been able to find two, and those are the ones I take.

[S Bear]

PS. If she's really a raw-food vegan, she should also start watching her iodine levels. I love broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and their pals, but in their raw form they (and soy) are goiterogens--the lock up iodine and dump it from the body. Not a good thing in large quantities.

Cooking is universal in human societies for some very good reasons other than just palatability.

[fun guy]

I think it is great that she is a blood donor. People like her saved the life of my wife when she was a baby. It is never fun to go and get ready to donate just to find out your iron is to low. I would agree that the best think would be to take a vitamin for iron. I know my wife had to be on a Rx for her iron at one time. Now she can take an over the counter one. You may have to get her checked out by a dr.

[Roadstr]

I wanted to emphasis how important your post is by adding those good reasons... one thing I recently learned was that our (human) digestive system is different than apes. We learned to use fire to cook foods a long, long time ago and our intestines changed to accomidate absorbsion.
There are so many other things about absorbtion of nutrition, especially when we age and using stuff like Alli and fiber that may absorb or prevent nutrients being absorbed. Maybe not what your were refering to when talking about locking up iodine... but cooking veggies is a GOOD THING!:D
Thanks for bringing that up Bear.

PS. If she's really a raw-food vegan, she should also start watching her iodine levels. I love broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and their pals, but in their raw form they (and soy) are goiterogens--the lock up iodine and dump it from the body. Not a good thing in large quantities.

Cooking is universal in human societies for some very good reasons other than just palatability.