Fast-5 Diet and Lifestyle: [fast5] Was: Fatty Liver NOW: Iron

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

[fast5] Was: Fatty Liver NOW: Iron

Yeah, iron is a really interesting subject. I think the heart condition you're thinking of may be hemocromatosis. ( http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/01/02/iron-overload-disorder-increases-heart-attack-risk.aspx ). Iron has been shown in many studies I've seen to cause heart disease in some men. I suppose, going back to the cultural norms idea, many men like to eat steaks and burgers, while ladies (stereotypically) relegate themselves to chicken and fish. I wonder how much this has to do with men having more heart attacks than women? Though, I'll grant ya, the ladies are catching up! ;)

There are lots of good vegetable sources of iron including broccoli, collard greens, spinach, kale, watermelon, and legumes. I was looking at one website that showed that a baked potato with the skin on contains more iron than a 3oz serving of steak ( http://www.bloodindex.org/Food.php#iron_rich_food_list ). And really, according to that site, a male my age only needs 8mg of iron a day. Seems like it's really easy to over-do it on the iron if we eat a well varied diet.

I used to donate blood regularly until I started riding my bicycle to work. Riding a bike on low iron is quite an experience. So then I started donating platelets so I could still help out but get to keep my iron and red blood cells... that is, until I passed out twice from the apheresis machine running too fast. I guess I should just suck it up and give it another try, eh?

-Rick

--- In fast5@yahoogroups.com, Heather Twist <HeatherTwist@...> wrote:
>
> That kind of diet, iron-ically enough, is also a low-iron diet. Whole
> grains prevent iron from being absorbed, and fish/seafood are low-iron
> too. My theory is that a lot of Northern Europeans are adapted to a
> low-iron diet ... a lot of the population lived on the coast and ate a
> whole lot of fish and seaweed, and in that group of people there are
> genes that hoard iron and also expel salt more than average (the
> salt-expelling gene also protects against cholera, which comes from
> water-snails).
>
> The populations that do well on a high-fat diet also tend to be
> seaside people. The Inuit ate whale and seal blubber, and the island
> people ate coconuts. There really has not been a population EVER
> before this one, that got most of it's fat from grain-fed beef (which
> is a very artificial form of fat).
>
> Anyway, the hoarded iron does cause liver damage, and heart damage.
> And fish oil is protective. One known way a guy can cut his chance of
> heart disease in half is to donate blood once a year.
>