Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today, I'm presenting ways to increase the absorption of iron through your diet. Iron is one of the most common metals on the Earth's crust, and every organism living on Earth needs it in order to function properly. Unfortunately, many people, especially women, suffer from iron deficiency, although their diet contains large amounts of iron. This happens because iron is absorbed very difficultly through our diet. We'll start by dividing the iron in our diet into two forms. The first form of iron is mainly found in animal products and it's called heme iron. It's contained in some plant-based foods too, such as soy. The other form of iron is non-heme iron, which is exclusively contained in plant-based foods. Of these two forms of iron, heme iron is absorbed more easily, namely, in a meal containing heme iron, it is estimated that 20-30% of the iron in it will be absorbed, while in a meal containing non-heme iron, only 1-2% of the iron in it will be absorbed. The iron that is not absorbed will be removed through the stools. This seems to make heme-iron the only choice for people that want to increase the iron in their blood. But this is not necessarily true. A series of factors can increase non-heme iron absorption, in order to guarantee iron sufficiency in our body. Today, I'm presenting these factors. But before I start, I want to point out something that's really important. As much iron as your diet contains, as many factors increasing iron absorption as you consume, as strictly as you avoid the factors that inhibit iron absorption, you won't be able to increase the iron in your blood, if your gastrointestinal system doesn't work properly. When I started this job, about 20 years ago, I used to have a lot of female patients that were mainly complaining about the difficulty of the absorption of iron in their blood, even if they ate meat daily. In most, or rather, in all of these cases, they were describing gastrointestinal symptoms. They typically mentioned bloating, constipation or loose stools. They often complained about stomach-ache and what's often mentioned as irritable bowel syndrome or spastic colitis. A person suffering from irritable bowel syndrome or spastic colitis should first deal with this problem, in order to properly absorb iron. Therefore, if you have any of these symptoms, you should deal with them through your diet, in order to absorb the iron already contained in your diet. But if you don't have such symptoms and the iron in your blood remains low, there's a series of foods that may help in iron absorption and some foods that you should avoid, because they inhibit iron absorption. Calcium. Foods containing much calcium as well as dietary supplements containing much calcium significantly inhibit the absorption of both forms of iron, namely of both heme iron and non-heme iron. Studies have estimated that iron absorption in a meal decreases by 50-60% when it contains milk, yoghurt, cheese or supplements with calcium. Fortunately, the inhibitory action lasts two hours at most. Therefore, if the meal containing iron and the meal or supplement containing calcium are two hours apart, the iron will be absorbed normally. Phytic acid. Plant-based foods, especially their hull, contain much phytic acid, which binds iron and doesn't allow it to be absorbed. However, it seems that vegetarians, namely people not eating enough heme iron, have developed a series of mechanisms and adjustments to the fact that their diet doesn't contain heme iron, and they can absorb non-heme iron much better than non-vegetarians. This usually suffices to guarantee satisfactory iron levels in their blood. But in case it doesn't, there's a series of tricks to reduce phytic acid in foods and better absorb iron. The simplest solution is the addition of organic acids to the meal that contains non-heme iron, namely acidic ingredients, such as vinegar, lemon, orange, salads rich in vitamin C, which is acidic, and fruit, which are acidic too. Moreover, the soaking of legumes and grains significantly reduces phytic acid and it's something someone can choose to do, as well as the production of sprouts. Sprouts contain much less phytic acids than the seed producing them. Finally, a method that's not very common in Greece, but it can help reduce phytic acid, is the fermentation of plant-based foods, like they do in Central Europe with sour cabbage and in Korea with the extraordinary kimchi. Before thinking that phytic acid is bad for your health, I'd like to point out that the exact opposite is true. Phytic acid inhibits the absorption of iron and other metals and trace elements, but it has strong anti-cancer and anti-oxidant activity. Therefore, it should be abundant in your diet. Phenols. Phenols are substances that are considered very good for our health, because of their strong anti-oxidant activity. But, unfortunately, they inhibit iron absorption to a large extent. Phenols are contained in coffee, tea, red wine, cocoa and some vegetables such as spinach and eggplant. Out of all these, the one inhibiting iron absorption the most is black tea, which should be consumed at least four hours after foods rich in iron or iron supplements, as should the other foods we mentioned. Herbal beverages are also rich in phenols and you shouldn't consume them near meals containing iron. Vitamin C. As we said earlier, vitamin C significantly increases iron absorption, therefore it's a great idea to add lemon juice to salad, because although vinegar also helps, it doesn't contain vitamin C, while lemon contains vitamin C too. So, lemon juice increases the absorption of the iron contained in plant-based foods for two reasons: because it's an acidic substance and it contains vitamin C. Therefore, if you want to maximise iron absorption in your diet, you should add lemon to your salad, in fact as much lemon as you can tolerate, because it has been proven that a larger quantity of vitamin C leads to even more increased absorption of iron. Of course, this doesn't mean that your stomach should be destroyed by the acids. Animal protein. Animal protein contained in meat increases the absorption of iron, both heme iron and non-heme iron. Therefore, it's a great idea to combine salads, which are rich in iron, with meat, in order to maximise iron absorption. Alcohol. Even saying this feels weird to me, but alcohol seems to increase iron absorption a bit. Taking account of the damage it causes to our health, especially to our nervous system, it's a bad idea to use it in order to increase iron absorption. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!