Iron on Low

DIY healthcare

Just before my last newsletter, a man kindly dumped a 4 foot tall pile of mulch in our driveway. Since then, I have spent most days doing something with mulch: shoveling into a wheelbarrow, shoveling it into buckets, or spreading it around. Today, the driveway is clear and the yard looks the best it ever has, even if the bloom season has passed. The truly fantastic thing is that I was able to do all this work. For most of the year, I have been struggling with low energy.

Low energy snuck up on me because it was hard to differentiate from my usual resistance to starting normal tasks or my frequent need to recharge. When I finally got blood work, I appeared to be in really good health. Was this just the famous perimenopause? Would the rest of my life be spent moving between various seated positions with breaks only for forced physical movement?

Before I diagnosed myself with the vapors, I decided to go over my lab numbers with a fine tooth comb. I remembered that when I was one point away from pre-diabetic, I was considered medically healthy. At that time, I was coming off of gestational diabetes, so I knew about the numbers. Today, I am not close to pre-diabetic, but I wondered if something else might be in that “normal” range, but close to the edge.

I went through the blood work. Thyroid was fine. But, iron levels were mostly borderline. I looked back at my previous bloodwork. I had actually been anemic in 2023, but no one had mentioned it.

I decided to watch my iron intake on my own for a few months to see if I felt better. I learned that caffeine and calcium block iron absorption. It’s possible all the coffee I had begun to drink since I’d become permanently fatigued was actually making it worse.

So I got off coffee. I started taking my multivitamin long after my morning tea. I avoided dairy with high iron meals, and I started a calcium supplement at night. This had the surprising effect of making me sleep much deeper, which probably didn’t hurt.

3 months after being mindful of iron absorption, I am able to do physical labor for hours, go to sleep, and do it all again the next day. I had missed working in my garden, and now I’m beginning the process of helping others with theirs.