iron deficiency anemia

Iron deficiency anemia affects millions of people around the globe, and it can become very serious and have lots of health consequences.

So to prevent iron deficiency anemia, or to help you if you already have that, pay careful attention to what I'm gonna talk about in this video, because it will help you greatly.

I'm Dr. Ken Berry, a family physician.

Let's talk about the one thing to avoid if you have iron deficiency anemia.

First, let's talk about the two different kinds of iron that you can get in your diet.

So let's go ahead and get that out of the way.

So there is heme iron that you find in meat, and there is non-heme iron that you find in plants.

Now, it is well-established in the nutrition literature that, uh, heme iron is much more bio-absorbable and usable by your body than non-heme iron.

The storage vault is empty.

But, well, why? We have identified a severe iron deficiency anemia, but diagnosing IDA is never the end of the puzzle, is it?

Never.

It is always a symptom of another process.

Iron deficiency anemia affects millions of people around the globe, and it can become very serious and have lots of health consequences.

So to prevent iron deficiency anemia, or to help you if you already have that, pay careful attention to what I'm going to talk about in this video, because it will help you greatly.

I'm Dr. Ken Berry, a family physician.

Let's talk about the one thing to avoid if you have iron deficiency anemia.

First, let's talk about the two different kinds of iron that you can get in your diet.

So let's go ahead and get that out of the way.

So there is heme iron that you find in meat, and there is non-heme iron that you find in plants.

Now it is well established in the nutrition literature that heme iron is much more bioabsorbable and usable by your body than non-heme iron.

Iron is required for hemoglobin, the protein inside red blood cells that helps carry oxygen around your body.

When iron deficiency becomes severe enough to reduce hemoglobin, we call this iron deficiency anemia.

But iron has jobs long before anemia appears.

Iron participates in cellular energy production, in mitochondrial function, in brain development, and in the metabolism of several neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers used by your nervous system.

But it does not yet prove that low iron causes migraines.

And the distinction matters.

So one of the more important recent analyses was published in 2025, and researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis examining iron deficiency anemia and chronic headache disorders, and they included 13 observational studies.

And their pooled analysis found that chronic headaches occurred... frequently among people with iron deficiency anemia, while iron deficiency anemia was also found relatively often among people with chronic headache disorders.