[Aerynne]

Originally Posted by RealLifeMama

I am not taking anything for my thyroid. If I remember, I use YL's Endoflex essential oil on my neck, but I am not hugely consistent. I do not officially have hypothyroid, so I am going to assume that my symptoms are vitamin/mineral deficiency related instead.

The thing I don't understand is that everything I am reading about anemia talks about low Red blood count or hemoglobin, or even ferritin levels, and all of that was normal.
I just had very low iron serum (19, with range bring 27-159) and very low iron saturation. (like, 5, and normal range is 15-55.) I don't read anything about just low blood iron. But, the lab report said "iron deficiency anemia", so I am going with that.

I have had green smoothies every morning for a couple of years. I bet I have gotten not iron from them because I always make them with unsweetened almond milk from a carton, which is high in calcium.

I wish they wouldn't put all that calcium in the almond milk! Most people don't realize that hyper supplementing with one mineral can mess with another, and I think they just put the calcium in there so people will buy it.

Two different ways to get around that would be a. blend up some real nuts and water into nut milk and then make your smoothie out of that or b. an OJ-based smoothie would really help you get the iron out of your spinach. OJ's sugar content can cause other problems, especially if you drink a lot of it, though.

Were your MCH and MCHC normal as well? Usually low serum iron is seen with other low numbers like hemoglobin. One thing I can currently think of that wouldn't do that is if your low iron status is recent. Iron reflects very current iron levels and if you had had a recent change, it wouldn't have had enough time to reflect in your hemoglobin and other levels like that yet. The other thing would be if it's just not a very severe deficiency- like I said the body preserves those red blood cells at all costs.

I did find this https://patient.info/doctor/non-anaemic-iron-deficiency

In either case my guess is you'd be on your way to anemia if you don't fix it, so I'm glad you're fixing it.