Episode Summary
Anemia is discussed in this episode as a broad category of red blood cell dysfunction rather than a single condition, with emphasis on how different anemias vary by red blood cell size, hemoglobin concentration, and underlying cause. The conversation breaks down the major classifications—microcytic, normocytic, and macrocytic—and explains how markers like MCV, MCHC, hemoglobin, hematocrit, ferritin, and iron studies help differentiate types. Iron deficiency anemia is highlighted as the most common form, often linked not only to blood loss but also to infections that consume iron and other nutrients. The episode also explores B vitamin deficiencies (especially B6, B9, and B12), gut infections, acetaldehyde toxicity, methylation demands (including from caffeine), and autoimmune or hemolytic processes as additional contributors. Overall, the discussion connects anemia to broader metabolic, digestive, and lifestyle factors rather than viewing it as an isolated nutrient deficiency, and emphasizes addressing root causes like infections, blood sugar dysregulation, and nutrient depletion patterns.
Key Takeaways
Topics Covered in This Episode
Transcript
What’s going on, everybody?
Welcome to the Freedom to Flourish podcast.
We’ve got a great episode for you, episode 77.
And today we’re going to be talking about anemias.
We’re calling it Anemias, the complete guide.
So what we’re going to be talking about today is well, but our anemias, everybody hears anemia and I think it’s just this one condition.
But in all reality, a lot of different things with a lot of different causes, a lot of different symptoms, a lot of different classifications and a lot of different findings on last.
So break down and tell you guys what defines each different type, what causes it?
And you know, based on what you have going on, what you know, what are the main things that you need to keep your eyes out for or what are the things that you need to change in order to fix your anemia?
It was a great episode.
I’m really looking forward to it.
But Doctor Joel, how are things going today?
Things are well, things are well.
I’m excited to be here as always with you, Doctor Tim, I appreciate you.
I know a lot of patients comment on the podcast, on the episode, on the episodes fairly often.
So I’m thankful for, for both of us, just taking a little bit of time out on our, on our busy, busy week to, to make this happen for people.
So yeah, when it comes to anemias, I think the biggest thing that I see is there’s like two different categories.
There’s like more of the benign anemias where patients are told by their doctors, your blood work came back, you have an anemia, you have and, and sometimes that’s specific.
Sometimes it’s not as specific.
Sometimes it’s just like your hemoglobin is low or your, you know, mean corpuscular volume is high or whatever it is.
But I think there’s a lot of lack of education from doctors as far as what’s actually happening here.
And I think there’s just a lack of knowledge as far as what actually causes these issues, Iron deficiencies, B12 deficiencies, as we talked about so often, they don’t just happen for no reason.
And so we’ll get into what causes them today.
But there’s also like, like I said, the more benign areas and then there’s the more specific conditions, right, where we get into, you know, more of the clinical issues, which are usually much more specific, like the thalassemias and, and things like that.
So we’ll talk about the more like kind of regular, benign, kind of not benign, but more regular, less intense anemias.
And then we’ll talk about some of the more specific conditions as well.
So Doctor Tim to start, and it looks like you’re muted, just FYI to start here.
Let’s jump into like, what is anemia?
What, what are anemias?
And you know, what does it mean?
Because most people, I think, think that anemia just means you have low iron.
But what does anemia actually mean?
Well, it could be, it could be that you have low iron and that’s that’s your problem.
But that is just such a small little piece of the pie chart that makes up classification of anemias.
But what anemias are is they are disruptions in your red blood cell.
It can be disruption from hemoglobin.
It can be disruptions in just production of red blood cells.
They can be shaped funny.
They can be too big, too small, they can lack hemoglobin too much.
And it all just depends on, on what you have going on and what each thing kind of goes together.
So there are, well, I guess the overarching theme is poor oxygen carrying capacity to your tissues and therefore oxygen starvation in your tissues attributed to poor red blood cell and hemoglobin concentration.
Whether it’s too much, too little, you name it, all that stuff.
Usually the too little hemoglobin and, and iron and all those things or too few red blood cells is really going to be the main driver of fatigue and tired being just tired in general or athletic output, things like that.
In the classical, you know, typical anemia type symptoms, but there are anemias that swing the opposite direction that are macrocytic where you have two, two or two large red blood cells and they have too much hemoglobin, all those things.
But it all just all just so there are six major terms that we’re going to use to classify anemias and they kind of are divided into two different categories. 1 is the size of the red blood cell and two, the concentration of hemoglobin.
So the most common type of anemias that are going to lead to fatigue, poor oxygen carrying capacity, all that stuff are going to be your microcytic, which means they are small red cells and then hypochromic which means they have not enough hemoglobin.
So we have microcytic, normal, macrocytic which have either small size and volume, normal size and volume or high size and volume of red blood cells.
And then your, your chromic or your hypochromic means low hemoglobin concentration that’s defined by your MCHC on, on labs and your, your, your microcytic normalcytic, all that stuff is defined by your MCV or mean corpuscular volume on blood work.
And anyway the, the, so the hypochromic normalchromic hyperchromic classifications are used to define what hemoglobin you have.
So with things like iron deficiency anemia, the most common one that we tend to see and, and talk about and, and it’s just most common, especially with young girls and, and all that stuff that tends to have a lot of health issues.
It ends up being a result of physiologic blood loss, which every month, menstruation, all that stuff.
But then also it can come about because of gastric bleeding and various other clotting disorders, stuff like that, where you’re just bleeding too much and losing too much iron and hemoglobin and all those things.
So that’s going to be more so the microcytic hypochromic classification, but there’s plenty more that goes on beyond that.
The main thing that we like to keep eyes out for and, and I think that we like to talk about is it’s a factor of how much oxygen you can carry through hemoglobin and it’s a factor of how big or how voluminous your red blood cells are.
That was what defines the different types of anemias.
With that said, there’s, I mean, there’s quite a few different kinds.
So we’re going to do our best to get through them without being too complex with things.
So Joel, do you want to take us through iron deficiency anemia as well as some of the other microcytic ones?
Yeah, so microcytic remember micro meaning small and then critical referring to the size of the cell.
So these are the most common ones here.
So hypo microcytic, so iron deficiency anemia, which is probably one of the most common ones, that one’s also going to be hypochromic, which means again that low hemoglobin concentration, you have sideroblastic where the iron’s not necessarily incorporated into the hemoglobin.
That one’s going to be again micro acidic.
You have the thalassemias, which are more hypochromic like genetic conditions, and then those can also cause just irregular cellular production with things.
And then you have things like B6 deficiencies and that’s usually going to cause hypochromic issues as well.
Doctor Tim, one of the things that I want to go through here as well as just kind of talking about the different nutrients that help your cells to carry oxygen.
We have the microcytic list here.
We have the macrocytic list, which is where the cells are going to be large.
That’s where the MCV is going to be large.
This is usually going to happen because the red blood cells as they are created, they’re very, they’re, they’re on the larger side of things.
And then as they mature, they’re going to essentially get smaller.
And so when you have a large mean corpuscular volume, a high amount in that number, that’s usually going to indicate AB12 deficiency most commonly, but can also be related with B9 folates and that’s probably the most common macrocytic one.
All these other ones are going to fall under the norm acidic, which means like the cells are actually a normal size, but the overall level of oxygenation and iron and so forth is going to be off.
So you have the acute post hemorrhagic anemia, which is obviously where you’re just losing blood.
You have hemolytic anemias where your immune system is actually killing the red blood cells or the red blood cells are simply just dying off.
Lupus, autoimmune stuff, leukemia, those are some of the big ones.
And then that’s, that’s I think really the majority of our list without spending too, too, too, too much time on these things.
Doctor Tim, do we have anything else we want to add to this list?
I think it would also be great.
Of course, we’ll get into talking about the different markers that you may also see off with some of this blood stuff.
Talk about the different nutrients that are also important with carrying oxygen with the cells that the nutrients that most doctors either don’t even know about or they’re just not talking about it.
And then the last thing is like, how do we what, what usually causes these issues and how do we fix them?
Yeah, absolutely.
So just want to talk about how, you know, there’s different kinds of anemias and if you haven’t kind of noticed a bit of a path here, there are three major kinds that can come about that are pretty common outside of iron deficiency anemia.
So that obviously is going to be the biggest one.
And whenever you’re iron deficient, you’re not going to carry oxygen, you’re not going to make enough hemoglobin and all that stuff.
Lead poisoning can cause that big time sideroblastic anemia.
So when it comes to iron deficiency, iron deficiency anemia, you can also have sideroblastic.
So with sideroblastic, all that is, is that you are not able to use iron properly in your hemoglobin.
And so iron is a, is a necessary component of hemoglobin to combine oxygen and carry it to your tissues.
If you do not have enough B6, what’s going to happen is you are not going to produce hemoglobin properly.
And so that’s why it’s hypochromic.
And so these things can go hand in hand.
You can have not enough hemoglobin to bind the iron, therefore you’ll have an iron deficiency anemia, sideroblastic anemia, or you just don’t have enough iron for binding to hemoglobin and therefore you have sideroblastic anemia.
It’s just all about that, the joining of the two things.
Thalassemia, you just have weird, weird red blood cells.
That’s, that’s essentially all of it.
Your production is funny.
They’re, they’re more likely to break down, and burst and all that stuff.
And what’s interesting is it actually has the opposite effect as iron deficiency anemia in regards to iron binding capacity, all that stuff.
So whenever you have iron deficiency anemia, typically you’ll have O serum iron, low ferritin, all that stuff, but your total iron binding capacity is super high, meaning your body can hold on more.
It’s the opposite with thalassemia.
So you have high iron, high ferritin, but then low total iron binding capacity.
So it’s just kind of an inverse thing.
But when it comes to the B6 deficiency, B6B9B12 for those who have been our long time listeners or they just are pretty, pretty well versed in the natural health realm and, and the importance of B vitamins, all that stuff.
Those are all super necessary nutrients for methylation.
They’re super necessary nutrients for hormone breakdown, super necessary for antioxidant production, histamine breakdown, you name it, all kinds of.
And so if you have chronic insulin issues, chronic cortisol issues, chronic hormone issues, you’re going to be very, very likely or maybe very, very, but much more likely to have some sort of B6 anemia.
You’re going to be more likely to have B9B12 anemias.
You’re going to be more likely to have all sorts of these problems.
So with how we’re going to talk about how to fix these things, we’re also going to talk about what are the things that are going to fuel the fire that’s going to deplete you of these resources required to keep you from getting these anemias?
What, what depletes you of resources to produce sufficient right size, right concentration of hemoglobin and red blood cells?
So anyway, with that being said, let’s get into the more clinical stuff.
So when it comes to iron deficiency anemia, we just had a good conversation about this before we started.
What do you find to be the most common things that will contribute to that?
Yeah, I would say #1 by far is going to be infections.
And this is where I think so many doctors really missed the mark.
And it’s really unfortunate actually.
So when you have an iron deficiency or AB12 deficiency or B2 deficiency or copper deficiency, all of those things help your cells to carry oxygen and they’re usually going to be deficient because of infections.
So those infections could be bacterial infection, could be fungus or Candida, could be parasites.
And so no matter what it is, whether it’s one of those or two of those or three of those, those things will generally feed on those nutrients and cause deficiencies.
And what’s the number one treatment or recommendation when you have low iron, They give iron.
And so what it actually does is it actually ends up feeding those infections, usually making things worse.
And that’s why Doctor Tim, as I’m sure we’ve both seen patients come in with these different anemic conditions.
They’ve taken iron forever.
And guess what?
The numbers haven’t changed.
And part of me is like the, the, the common sense side of me wants to say like, OK, if it’s not changing and it’s been like 6 months, maybe it’s not helping.
And then, you know, one of the biggest questions I’ll ask patients too, is, OK, since you started on this, like, how do you feel?
Do you feel better?
You know, our function and how we feel, our energy, our sleep, our stress, all these things functionally should be improving if our body is healing itself and if we’re doing the right things for our body.
And so when it comes to infections, we talk about infections all the time.
You know, we talk about how a lot of infections are in the gut.
Sometimes they can just kind of be throughout the body and in different ways.
I’ve seen a number of times where, you know, someone’s SIBO or CFO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, small intestine fungal overgrowth is causing these issues.
I’ve seen parasites quite a bit ’cause these issues.
I’ve also had some patients that had some chronic oral dental infections and those infections were causing a significant amount of issues.
In which case we’ve done some different things to help, whether it’s oil pooling or using specific oils with oil pooling, not just coconut oil and think of different herbs and things like that, which at times have actually gotten rid of the infections.
But otherwise, I’m usually recommending they see a biological dentist that really helps take care of those things.
I would say outside of infections, occasionally if someone’s not eating red meat, I’ll see that I’ll see that be an issue.
But I would say most of the people I’m seeing they, they’re eating red meat.
So that’s not usually, that’s not usually a thing.
Super interesting side note though, Doctor Tim, we haven’t actually talked about this before, but I’ll have AI have a number of different just Indian patients here in Texas.
And a lot of them don’t eat red meat.
A lot of them don’t eat red meat.
And so, you know, what’s interesting though is like they, I see a lot of people that are maybe vegan, vegetarian, and they actually don’t have low iron or low ferritin in their labs, which I’ve always found to be super interesting.
Now, have I lab tested all of them?
No, I haven’t, but I have seen enough where I’m like, you would think for as little as they eat that their body would be just starving for iron and things like that.
But I have some different thoughts on that.
I think some of it might go back to like just different genetic predispositions where their body tends to hold on to it.
I know, I know some people say that, oh, we get iron through spinach and things like that.
I think that’s kind of a bit of BSII. I don’t think you’re, I think there are different forms of iron in those, you know, vegetables and what not, but it’s, it’s not, they’re not super bioavailable forms, I would say.
But Doctor Tim, what I’ll I’ll throw back to you.
What thoughts on adding to that either green or adding in other things as well that you found as far as being at the root of a lot of these different anemic issues and and different deficiencies?
Well, I think you, you really just hit everything that needed to be hit with, with iron deficiency anemia, infections, the most common cause of that.
So infections will feed off of iron.
They’ll, you know, eat up all our iron.
That’s why a lot of times it’ll cause constipation.
It’ll make you feel worse if you take it.
But another important thing that I think is important to mention is so whatever we have various parasitic, bacterial, fungal infections, whether it’s SIBO or other issues, you’re, you’re going to have fermentation that occurs in the gut.
You’re always going to have production of a seed aldehyde as there’s alcohol breakdown, all stuff.
And it’s also a byproduct of just the microbes being killed off in the gut.
And so as the immune system kills that stuff off, it’ll produce that as a byproduct of that reaction.
So what is a seed aldehyde?
It is the next step in alcohol breakdown.
That’s why if there’s fermentation occurring in the gut, you’re going to have to break that down.
But that also, it’s just a nasty chemical that is used to kill off things in the gut.
And so with that being said, it’s a nasty chemical that we have to break down and there’s four necessary cofactors that are used to break it down from acetaldehyde into acetic acid. 4 cofactors are vitamin B2, riboflavin, vitamin B3, niacinamide, iron and molybdenum. Here is also on that list.
And so if you have a ton of acetaldehyde that’s being produced and it’s breaking down, all four of those go factors are going to start to go lower and lower and lower as time goes up.
Well, iron and B2 can both feed microbes in the gut and that’s why those who have infections are often deficient in these things.
The B2 deficiency can cause dry, cracked lips and then almost like an orange crusty stuff that happens in the corners of the mouth.
All that is textbook riboflavin B2 deficiency, totally independent from what we’re talking about today.
But there are certain signs of symptoms, including iron deficiency anemia that tend to go hand in hand with gut infections or just various fungal, parasitic and bacterial infections.
So anyway, I think it’s important to talk about how you’re also demanding more iron to break that stuff down too.
Yeah, in addition to that now.
I’m sorry.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I was just going to add, it’s kind of a nasty cycle, right, where you have the infections feeding on the iron and then they give off these toxic acetaldehydes, you know, by products which need iron to break it down.
And so that just leads to all kinds of brain fog, all kinds of gut issues, all kinds of all kinds of problems there.
Yeah, and if you don’t deal with the acetaldehyde toxicity that’s present, it’s going to down regulate the immune system and you won’t be able to kill like Marge in the gut.
And so if you require iron to fix this, it can be kind of an alcohol battle because you don’t want to feed the microbes with iron, but you need iron to help clear out the acetylide.
And that’s where red meat is so important.
You know, a lot of people are like, oh, red meat, you know, it’s going to make your cholesterol high and all this stuff and it’s not good for you.
You get iron from red meat in order to deal with a lot of this stuff because if you just supplement iron, your body’s just going to the microbes and are just going to eat it super, super quickly.
Whereas if it’s bound and and.
Within your food, it doesn’t happen so readily and it’s not going to irritate things quite as much, so your body can actually absorb more of it.
So anyway, but with the B6B9B12, all that stuff, all B6, conscious anemia and and the B9 and B12 are different.
They still kind of boil down to the same nutrients.
So B6 is the textbook female hormone detox nutrient and you know I’ve said that time and time again, it is necessary in almost every reaction in production of glutathione, cysteine, methylation, all kinds of stuff to package and prepare for the phenomenal liver for their individual detached pathways.
So if you are, you know, having an estrogen surge numerous times throughout, because you have a cycle every month, you’re going to require a lot of B6B9B12 to break down all of those hormones.
So in addition to that, if you have blood sugar issues, if you have insulin issues, if you have cortisol issues, all sorts of hormone issues are centered around poor blood sugar regulation, you’re going to demand a lot of B6B9B12.
So that’s why we always harp on to fix your blood sugar, fix your blood sugar, do the dysglycemia diet, three meals a day, five hours apart, all that stuff.
It’s so incredibly important because it’s not just how it is, it’s health in other ways.
A lot of times fatigue and anemias, all that stuff are rooted in just not having enough nutrients to make good bloods.
And where are those depleted from?
A lot of times it’s blood sugar dysregulation and inability to tax 5 hormones that’ll make things worse.
But in addition to that, I think something that needs to be said too is B6B9B12.
Anything that’s going to demand methyl donors, anything that methylation does to detoxify things, you’re going to deplete BC9B12.
Well, one of the most common things that people have every day that is going to deplete these resources is very, I would say, addictive.
And people are super, super tied to it.
Doctor Joel, can you take a stab and guess getting there?
So addictive messes with, we’re talking about methylating nutrients, dopamine, all these things.
I’m going to guess it’s either related to food or it’s related to entertainment.
Food.
Drink.
Coffee.
Coffee, caffeine, there we go.
You got it.
All right, so caffeine.
So what causes us to detoxify caffeine is methylation.
So if you are not methyl properly, you’re more sensitive to caffeine.
But two, you’re going to demand more of these resources to break down caffeine.
Well, if you just hammer yourself with caffeine, blood sugar, juice, bullshang, you’re going to run out of resources to make red blood cells properly.
And so that’s where enemies can develop there.
So I would argue that if you have a serious, serious caffeine problem and you’re down the road of just insanely fatigued, I just feel good out there for work, all this stuff.
Not only are you messing up your hormones, but I would be able to bet that your anemic markers are suboptimal as well as a result of caffeine addiction, all those things.
So digit caffeine, it’s not that hard.
It might be I, I, I totally understand it is not super easy.
Also, I’m just kidding, it can be difficult, but most of the time when patients have come in and they’re like, all right, I got to feel better.
I’m so fatigued.
I have all these problems.
If I say stay away from caffeine, they do a whole lot better and they do a whole lot better.
And it makes it easier once you gain some traction and start feeling better.
Just stay away from that.
And a lot of times people, people they’ll, they’ll drink it as a Band-Aid because they, they just feel so tired all the time.
Well, if you deal with the underlying issues contributing to why you’re tired in the 1st place, you’re going to feel better and you’re not going to require it.
So hey, just just your caffeine.
So beyond that, I mean, that’s all I would really have a big time.
Regarding nutrients that are tied to anemia, A lot of the other stuff is like you said, post hemorrhagic.
So just from essentially bleeding out, if you got the carpet in or, you know, God forbid you got stabbed or shot or something, or some sort of serious accident where you’re just bleeding profusely, you’re going to have a normal, normal chronic anemia just from losing too much blood.
So there’s nothing wrong with your red blood cells.
There’s just not enough because you’re just bleeding out.
Versus like hemolytic anemias, autoimmune stuff.
Yeah, there’s a whole lot that we could get into there, but it’s not, it’s not like it’s just one nutrient thing that we can talk about.
It’s everything that we talk about with the immune system in a TH 17 cell production and autoimmunity that it’s just, this is not the episode for that.
Just know that there are autoimmune conditions that can cause you to break down the red blood cells.
And if you’re more interested in listening to our autoimmune podcast.
But beyond that, what I think is super important to mention is what sort of lab markers say somebody has labs and they want to know how they can identify these things in labs?
What are the big things that you are looking for?
And what are the big things that you tell patients, hey, this is what this means in labs?
Yeah.
So I’d say when it comes to the different anemias, you want to run a, your CBC, your complete blood count and you want to get that of course with differential, right, so that the differential part is more so referring to the immune system, but it’s still important.
And as far as cost, I think it’s like a $2.00 difference in cost.
But when it comes to the CBC, you’re looking at overall red blood cells in the amount of red blood cells, you’re looking at hemoglobin, you’re looking at the MC, the mean corpuscular volume like we discussed, you’re looking at hematocrit, you’re looking at the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration.
You’re looking at all these guys.
There are, there’s a huge, and we probably should have mentioned this earlier, but there’s a huge difference between the lab range that you’re going to have on your standard or traditional test results on the very right.
It usually says reference interval, and that’s the range that they want to see this.
Those numbers in those ranges are really too large if we’re talking about optimal ranges and being as healthy as possible.
And so what we want to do is we want to use optimal ranges or functional ranges, which are usually much tighter.
And it’s going to show us if your body is functioning healthy or if your body is just suboptimal.
The way I kind of explained it is that the standard ranges, also called pathological ranges will tell you basically is something way, way off or are you, you know, quote, UN quote healthy, whereas the functional ranges are going to show you if you’re actually functioning healthy and optimal or if something is off.
So with that said, there’s a list of functional ranges.
Dr. Tim, should we go through this?
Let’s maybe just hit some highlights on those real quick.
I haven’t pulled up here, so I’ll just kind of get through real quick.
Red blood cells for a minute.
Cool.
For men and women, they’re a little bit different, but for the red blood cells for men, we usually want to see those be 4.4 to 4.9.
For women, 3.9 to 4.5.
For hemoglobin, we usually want to see about 13 1/2 to 14 1/2 for women.
For men, we usually want to see it at about 14 to 15.
That’s grams per deciliter.
Then we’re just going to go down the list.
The hematocrit, we want to see about 37 to 44% for females.
For men, 39 to 55%, the mean corpuscular volume, which is the size of the cells, we want to see about 85 to 92%.
Remember when that gets larger, that indicates that the cells are more immature and that’s essentially going to indicate usually B12 deficiency or B9.
We have the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration and that number is going to usually be about 32 to 36 grams per deciliter and then we have oops, where did that go?
OK, perfect.
Then we have the mean corpuscular hemoglobin level there that we want to see roughly 27.7 to 32.
The last couple things, red blood cell distribution with that’s kind of like the average size of the cells because the cell size can vary 11.7 to 15% is where you want to see that optimally.
And then platelets, usually we want to see there’s about 155,000 to 379,000 without going into a lecture on all of these numbers and so forth, maybe maybe at some point we’ll do that.
But that’s kind of the functional range.
That’s kind of the functional range.
So if you, if you have labs and you’re not sure that your doctor’s really getting to the bottom of things and you want to understand the labs better, look at it with those ranges And you’ll generally see that, oh, there’s actually some things that are off here that we we are, you know, maybe seeing it’s not off massively in the way that you’re going to die soon, but it’s definitely off in the way that, hey, there’s something going on here.
Doctor Tim kind of lost track here.
What does that kind of cover some of those things?
And then where?
Where are we going next year?
Yeah, so that covered, you know, CBC, all that stuff, big things there, things to keep out for other things we can look at to assess B vitamin status, homocysteine, stuff like that.
So if homocysteine goes high, all that’s telling us is we’re not convincing homocysteine back into methionine through methylation or we’re not converting it to cysteine to then we use in other pathways gluten production, all kinds.
And so homocysteine goes high.
That’s a, that’s a direct 100% marker that you are low in B6B9B12 and just those would be a good idea.
You can just directly measure B vitamins in labs too.
So it doesn’t necessarily need to be through other things beyond that your CV, you know, say it goes, say it goes high.
Well, you know that there’s an AB9B12 deficiency that goes low.
Well, that’s a good indication that you have AV6 efficiency.
Even if it goes high, it could mean that you’re low on V6.
It all depends on the bigger picture.
It’s not like a steadfast thing.
If it goes high though, you are definitely low on B9 and B12.
Absolutely.
Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re low on B6.
It’s not an absolute thing.
Could be, but not 100% B 6 can go both ways.
So it’s just that it all depends.
Yeah, for sure.
On that I’m not top of my head, not really not really too sure what other things that we can measure.
Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, the other thing that we’ve talked about, but we haven’t mentioned here in the last minute or so, it’s just the iron panel, right.
So, you have iron and you have ferrets and iron being the iron in your blood and then ferrets and being more of the iron stored in your tissues.
Most doctors run one or two of them.
You really want to run both as we both do, but in those levels, your iron, you want to usually see about 85 to 130 ferritin optimally.
There’s, there’s different thoughts on it from some of our mentors.
Dr. Kessinger, he says he likes to see it from 50 to 100 for ferritin.
Usually when ferritin spikes up, it’s due to inflammation.
When it spikes down, usually due to some kind of anemic issue.
But it’s good to check both of those because you want to see, you know, things.
You want to see the levels in the blood be good.
You want to see the stores of iron be good as well.
And sometimes you’ll see that the actual iron level itself looks fine, but the stores are low.
And usually that’s an indication that you’re basically in the early stages of anemia in your body like shifting and pivoting to try to get the iron out into the blood and things like that.
So, but I think that I think that pretty much wraps up the list of labs.
So Doctor Tim, we’re, we’re running out of time here.
We need to wrap up.
Let’s do this.
Let’s kind of quickly walk through what are some of the top points that you would recommend?
Hey, someone has an iron deficiency issue.
How would you consider going about that?
And I’m going to grab my charger as you do that.
Well, so I’ll just chunk it all together.
If you have any of these anemias, most common ones are going to be B6B9B12 deficiencies or iron deficiency anemia.
You have any of those ones, fix your hormones, fix your blood sugar.
So we always recommend what we call the dysglycemia diet.
Basically that just entails eating three meals a day, five hours apart, enough protein, fat in each meal to cure you from one meal to the next without feeling hungry, hangry, jittery, all that stuff.
Get that all sorted out and then don’t eat a carb.
If you’re tired after you eat, that’s too many and you’re going to cause insulin issues.
So get those things sorted out and start supplementing with B6B9B12.
Methyl Guard Born is a great methylated B complex.
It doesn’t contain B2, so you’re not going to have to worry about feeding any microbes in the gut.
I would keep my eyes out for that.
If you think of methylated B complexes, avoid ones that have B2.
If you haven’t knowingly cleaned up your gut, you haven’t talked to a doc who’s been able to examine you and figure out that’s a problem, that’s going to be the best possible thing that you can do to fix B6B9B12 deficiencies.
Beyond that, with the iron deficiency mania to clean up your gut, find if there’s any infections going on that are depleting yourself of iron.
The most common reason that I will see that anemia in the office is you have some sort of infection somewhere that’s feeding off of those or that iron fixes that, you’ll be good to go.
So in the meantime though, don’t take iron because it is going to make those microbes worse.
So it sounds counterintuitive, but the reason that it usually causes gut issues, constipation, diarrhea, you know, that kind of stuff is because it’s not doing you any good because microbes in your gut are eating it.
So yeah, pick up your gut, fix your hormones, you’ll be good to go.
Yeah, yeah, no, I agreed, agreed.
And that’s essentially what I’m emphasizing with patients is and and is that is that most of the time these deficiencies are coming from infection.
So we got to get to the bottom of those.
A lot of times in our visits, of course, we’re jumping in with the systems healthcare and figuring those things out.
And I’m usually very early on either the first or second visit recommending, hey, I know this iron supplement you’ve been told you need to be on for forever and you and you know, all these different things.
But number one, most of the time people are saying, hey, they didn’t even notice a difference in their function when they started it.
And then #2 the labs really haven’t changed.
And so that plus I’m usually finding some infections feeding on these things.
I’m usually recommending they stop the iron and then we go in with herbs and address things.
Doctor Tim, we talk a lot about herbs and different treatments.
You know, we talked, of course. I think it’s important to mention here that usually when we find infections, there’s usually one or two herbs specifically needed.
Let’s say, let’s say there’s a bacterial issue and overgrowth in the gut.
There’s probably about 25 to 30 different nutrients, different herbs that will check for patients and usually they’re needing one or two.
And the crazy thing is it’s different for every person.
You can try different herbs and herbal blends kind of as a shotgun approach, but usually we don’t find that to be super efficient and super effective.
But generally following a low FODMAP diet to prevent feeding the fungus and bacteria can be helpful for a time.
And then also having the right herbs can be super helpful with a specific as that is, you know, obviously if you can find someone that does muscle testing and can check those herbs and things on you, that’s awesome and definitely recommended.
Otherwise, there’s so many things you can do to support your overall gut balancing.
Things like getting plenty of movement, managing stress well, obviously eating well-being careful of what you’re eating and drinking, you know, the more processed foods and junk foods that you eat, the more your gut is going to be disturbed and, and imbalanced.
And so that’s where really honing in on nutrition can be huge.
Limiting fermented foods like probiotics, kefir, kombucha, all those things can be helpful as well.
And just again, another reminder, if you are showing either in labs or with muscle testing that there’s a deficiency in iron, B12, cysteine, copper, any of these things, chances are there’s an infection feeding on it.
And that’s what you really want to get to the bottom of, to fix with that.
All right, Doctor Tim, any last comments?
Otherwise, let’s go ahead and wrap up.
Last comment is we said this is going to be a 25 minute episode and here we are at 37 1/2.
Like usual, this is better.
This is better than most.
Usually we’re pushing 45.
Well, usually we are, but let’s not push any further.
Let’s wrap things up.
So I’m Doctor Tim Augustiniak here at Function Center Down Bentonville, AR if you want to find me online.
My website is doctoraugustiniak.com DRAUGUSTYNIA k.com links to all the socials and contact info on the front page.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for future episodes, reach out.
Let us know.
Yep, likewise, and I’m Doctor Joel Miller.
You can find me online at Dr. joelmiller.com.
You can find me on Instagram fairly easily.
Guys, thank you so much for tuning in.
Thanks for listening, and we hope you guys have enjoyed this.
Reach out if you have any questions, if there’s any other topics you want us to cover like Doctor Tim mentioned, and we’ll plan on seeing you guys next week in the next one.
