I had low iron for 11 years.
Yes, even when I ate meat, my ferritin was low and averaged 38 ng/mL.
I’ve finally boosted it back to healthy levels. You can see my protocol below.
On the surface, my low ferritin was easy to dismiss by most standards of care. Most doctors miss this or don't investigate it deeply enough, including mine during those years. I get it. The human body is complicated and the science is constantly evolving.
My hemoglobin and hematocrit were normal. Ferritin measures stored iron, while hemoglobin measures circulating iron, and because the body drains its reserves first to keep hemoglobin normal, you can be fully iron deficient with a perfectly normal hemoglobin and hematocrit.
This is why my low ferritin kept getting dismissed: the numbers that define anemia looked fine, so no one asked why my iron reserves wouldn't refill.
During these 11 years, before doing health stuff and when on my longevity protocol, I sadly did not fully understand how important iron was to my body. Now, everywhere I look, I see iron playing a central role.
Still, during those 11 years, I tried everything to fix it, including eating meat and every type of oral iron supplementation, using every timing trick and every formulation. None of the iron would stick and we couldn’t figure out why.
I overhauled my medical team earlier this year.
With greater capacity, we revisited everything.
Then we discovered my autoimmune gastritis (AIG). With AIG, my stomach doesn't make enough acid to absorb iron.
The only route left was to bypass the gut and deliver it intravenously.
Most people treat anemia as the threshold to watch. But long before hemoglobin drops, low iron starves the enzymes your cells depend on: the ones your mitochondria use to make energy, synthesize DNA, build dopamine and other neurotransmitters, and power immune defense. That is why you can feel fatigue, brain fog, and worse endurance even with normal hemoglobin and an otherwise "normal" iron panel.
We did a deep dive on possible iron infusion therapies.
I ended up getting a 1000mg monoferric infusion.
Why we chose Monoferric:
> Monoferric is more tolerable, allowing a higher dose of up to 1000 mg
> a complete replenishment dose in one infusion
> other IV irons require multiple infusions (3-5)
> head-to-head randomized trials show it causes hypophosphatemia in only about 8% of patients compared to 74% with Injectafer
> its most common side effects are mild nausea and rash occurring in roughly 1% of patients
> other options, including Iron dextran (INFeD), carries a black-box FDA warning for potentially life-threatening allergic reactions and requires a mandatory test dose before each new treatment course
> it's very expensive. Your doctor can write a letter to your insurance company to justify medical necessity.
Ferritin levels post infusion:
+ 205 ng/mL 2 weeks post infusion
+ 195 ng/mL 4 weeks post infusion
Our target is 80 ng/mL.
We will continue to monitor. Levels are expected to settle around 6-8 weeks post-infusion.
The lessons I’ve learned:
+ don’t mess with low iron
+ don’t accept it as ok
+ it could be pointing to a more serious problem
+ try your preferred method to correct: meat, supplements, etc.
+ and if it doesn’t correct, investigate why, and consider an infusion
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