Anemia of Pregnancy and Ferrous Iron Supplements (part 3 of 3)

Welcome back for the final episode in this three part series on Anemia of Pregnancy.  We began by talking about how our bodies make an extra three to four quarts of blood during the first 30 weeks of pregnancy, and how that naturally results in mid-pregnancy anemia for many women.  We talked about boosting iron levels using food and herbal iron supplements.  Last week we talked about using exercise to stimulate hemoglobin production.  This week we will discuss some supplements to avoid and why they are not helpful.

Sometimes women transfer to my care after several visits with a physician.  Inevitably, they have been prescribed iron pills to cure their Anemia of Pregnancy.  These prescription or over-the-counter pills contain ferrous sources of iron.  Just look at the label.  You will find ferrous sulfate or ferrous gluconate or many other ferrous form of iron.  Taking these pills is like swallowing rust.  They slow the bowel transit time and cause constipation.  They are hard for the liver to process, creating a back-log of work for the liver.  The liver has a lot of work to do during pregnancy and it doesn’t need to be bogged down with ferrous iron processing!  Also, the liver dumps waste into to bowel for removal.  But the constipation caused by the ferrous iron slows the bowel so much that the waste is re-absorbed into the bloodstream where it ends up back in the liver.  The poor liver is already taxed by the extra work due to pregnancy, ferrous iron, and now it has to re-process the same waste over and over.  The result can be liver problems like cholestasis of pregnancy, jaundice or persistent or slow-to-resolve anemia!  Please don’t tax your liver by ingesting ferrous iron.  Check the label of your prenatal vitamins.  If you see the word ferrous on the label throw them away and get something better!  

If you have already been taking ferrous iron and you are constipated, follow these steps to get your bowel moving!  You don’t want those toxins to be re-absorbed into your bloodstream, you want to move them OUT!

• Stop taking the ferrous iron!  If you are anemic, see part 1 for the list of iron-rich foods that you should be eating every day.  If you must have an iron supplement, choose from the natural supplements listed in part 1.
• Increase clear water intake to three quarts per day (not counting teas, soups or other liquids).
• Make sure you are eating a minimum of a large salad with dark leafy greens every day, plus three raw fruits or vegetables.  
• Do a minimum of 20 minutes of brisk walking per day.  This is to get your bowel moving, not just for raising the hemoglobin (see part 2).
• If you are still constipated, you can use magnesium to temporarily get things moving - but you MUST continue to do the steps above or you will return to constipation in the end.  Get some magnesium tablets or powder (like Natural Calm).  Take one tablet (or ½ t powder) at bedtime the first night.  You should have a bowel movement the next morning.  If not, increase the magnesium by one tablet (or ½ t powder) per night until you have a bowel movement first thing in the morning.  Use that dosage for a week, then slowly decrease the magnesium over the next week or two until you are not taking any.  If you ever have a random day of constipation in the future, you can quickly remedy it with magnesium.  WARNING: Magnesium works by slightly irritating the lining of the bowel, causing the body to flood water backwards through the system (from bloodstream to bowel, the reverse of the way it is supposed to flow).  This robs your body of water and can cause dehydration.  Do not take magnesium unless you are drinking at least  three quarts of water each day.

I hope you have enjoyed learning about Anemia of Pregnancy over these past three weeks!  In summary, a drop in hemoglobin in early to mid-pregnancy is a good sign the blood volume is expanding as it should.  It is not an illness or disease.  You can support your body as it builds the extra three to four quarts of blood by eating a diet high in organic iron-rich foods.  If you need an iron supplement, choose one containing organic plant-based natural iron sources instead of the rust found in ferrous sources of iron.  Go for a brisk walk at least twice a week.  By the third trimester, your blood volume will be expanded  to just the right amount and your hemoglobin reading will show that you are not anemic.  This will lead to a healthier baby and an easier labor, birth and postpartum.

Blessings!

:) Deborah

Anemia of Pregnancy and Exercise (part 2 of 3)

Welcome back to our three-part discussion about anemia of pregnancy.  Last week we talked about the natural expansion of blood volume, anemia, hemoglobin, iron-rich foods and supplements.

In addition to increasing iron-rich foods in your diet and taking herbal iron supplements, you can also boost your hemoglobin with exercise.

Now, I am NOT the exercise police!  I am a couch potato.  I don’t enjoy exercising.  I don’t even like thinking about exercising.  

Studies show that only 20 minutes of exercise twice a week results in an increase in hemoglobin!  This information that gets me off the couch and moving!  The exercise must be enough to get you breathing heavy.  When your muscles need more oxygen to work, the body responds by increasing the heart rate and breathing to supply more oxygen more quickly.  But the body doesn’t want to work that hard, so it also builds more hemoglobin so the next time you exercise it doesn’t have to raise the heart rate and respiration rate as much.  Amazing!  This is why when you first begin to exercise you are exhausted very quickly, but after a couple weeks of regular exercise you can do so much more with ease.  Your body has increased the hemoglobin to carry oxygen to the body more quickly and efficiently.

Swimming is also a fantastic exercise to raise your hemoglobin! It is easy on your body and fun to do.  When swimming make sure to only do the freestyle or breaststroke, if you’re feeling adventurous you can do the butterfly, but that stroke is hard enough when you’re not pregnant! Avoid scuba-diving because the pressure changes can be too much for the bag of water to withstand.  Doing any inverted underwater moves, like handstands or somersaults, has been shown to cause baby to flip to breech, so I would avoid that as well (unless your baby is breech already and you want to turn him back to head-down!)  Also, make sure to drink plenty of water after any sort of exercise to keep you and baby hydrated!

Another great effect of exercise and the resulting hemoglobin increase is that labor will be easier.  Oxygen will be more abundantly supplied to your uterus (a large muscle doing a lot of work) and your baby!  This means the baby will fare better during labor, your contractions will hurt less and your birth will be easier.

Hopefully this information will inspire you to get out a walk today.  At a minimum, walk briskly away from home for 10 minutes, then turn around and walk briskly back.  That’s all it takes to signal your body to build more hemoglobin.

I’ll meet you back here next week when we will discuss iron supplements to avoid during pregnancy and why.

I’m going for a walk now!

Blessings!

:) Deborah

Anemia of Pregnancy and Iron Foods (part 1 of 3)

Why do we stereotype pregnant women as tired and dizzy?  Why are pregnant women more likely to become anemic?  What is hemoglobin and why should I care about having it checked during pregnancy?  The answer may be “anemia.”  I will discuss these questions and more in this three-part series on Anemia of Pregnancy.

Every cell in the body needs oxygen, which is delivered on the red blood cells.  They contain a lot of iron, and oxygen sticks to iron like a magnet.  The hemoglobin check is one way to measure the body’s oxygen delivery system.

During pregnancy, the body must make three to four quarts of extra blood to support the growing baby and protect the mother from hemorrhage after the birth.  Almost a gallon of extra blood is created in the first 30 weeks of pregnancy!  First the body adds more “water” to the blood to expand the volume of blood.  Like adding water to a pot of chili thins out the soup, this extra fluid thins out the red blood cells.  When the blood becomes thinner, there are fewer red blood cells per drop of blood.  If it becomes too thin, the person has anemia.  

Because the body naturally adds fluid to the blood before it starts filling it up with new red blood cells, a dip in hemoglobin in early to mid pregnancy is a good sign the blood volume is expanding as it should.  This should be considered a normal condition that we want to see during pregnancy and not an illness that needs to be cured.

If the hemoglobin is checked, normal hemoglobin is around 11.0 to 13.0.  Less than 10 indicates anemia, higher than 13.5 can indicate other problems.  Symptoms of anemia include tiredness, exhaustion, dizziness or blacking out when standing up too quickly or for too long, paleness, and pale nail beds.  The lower the hemoglobin goes, the worse the symptoms.

The best iron to support the body’s efforts in creating new red blood cells comes from organic iron sources.  The word “organic” in this sense does not mean the food is stamped with a government-approved “organic” label!  Organic means it comes from living organisms.  It is living iron!  The chlorophyll of plants contains this living iron.  Plants are the best at taking the iron salts (ferrous iron) from the soil and changing them into living organic iron.  

A chlorophyll molecule differs from a hemoglobin molecule by only one atom!  When a person is eating plenty of dark leafy green vegetables or taking herbal supplements containing chlorophyll, the hemoglobin number rises in just a couple of weeks.  This quick increase in hemoglobin cannot be explained by the weeks-long process of forming red blood cells from bone marrow.     My theory is that the quick increase in hemoglobin using organic iron supplements is because the chlorophyll molecules are transformed into hemoglobin.  I am not a scientist, but I bet the liver pops the magnesium atom off of the chlorophyll molecule and sticks on an iron atom in its place, quickly forming hemoglobin from chlorophyll!

Foods that raise the hemoglobin include:

• All the dark green vegetables like broccoli, green peppers and asparagus
• Leafy salad greens like romaine lettuce, spinach and kale
• Dried apricots (containing the most easily assimilated form of dietary iron!),
• Raisins, prunes, dried black cherries
• Sea vegetables,
• Molasses, especially black-strap molasses (careful, it is sweet!),
• Nutritional yeast - sprinkle on food (delicious on popcorn!)
• Egg yolks, and
• Organ meats like organic liver.

If the woman is already consuming these foods and is still anemic, she can supplement with concentrated herbal iron sources like:

• Alfalfa tablets or capsules - up to 2 or 3 with each meal.  I think of these as a compressed salad!
• Liquid chlorophyll - Liquid chlorophyll comes in plain and spearmint flavored.  I think the plain tastes like grass clippings pulled them fresh off the lawn mower blade!  But some people prefer the plain to the spearmint.  They both work great.  Put a tablespoon in a glass of water once or twice a day.
• Chlor-Oxygen drops, follow the label for dosage because it is much more concentrated than regular liquid chlorophyll
• Nettles tea - high in iron and many other minerals, drink at least a cup a day
• Red Raspberry leaf tea - also high in minerals, good for pregnancy and all times of life
• Vitamin C - 500 mg per day, helps with iron assimilation
• Hemaplex capsules, 1 per day
• Floradix liquid iron, up to 2 teaspoons, twice a day
• Ferrofood from Standard Process, follow label instructions
• Homeopathic ferrum phos - a homeopathic cell salt that enhances iron absorption, once or twice a day
• Spirulina
• Chlorella
• Dandelion leaf (good for the liver, too), up to 3 capsules per day
• Yellow doc tincture - up to 3 dropperful three times per day (high in iron and supports the liver)

Hopefully this discussion has whet your appetite for iron rich foods!  Come back next week to hear more you can do to boost hemoglobin levels in pregnancy using simple exercises!  

Blessings!

:) Deborah