Increasing hemoglobin levels

[Jesse H]

I inherited Thalassemia from my dad and I've never been an extremely athletic person my entire life. I was fairly sedentary until college, where I started doing lots of intramural sports and taking weight lifting classes and being active. I've always been thin. Currently I'm 5' 9" and 168lbs. I've never had issues in my LE career passing our patrol and SWAT PT standards, needless to say they aren't difficult.

Our SWAT team recently teamed up with Ironman Sports Medicine and offered us workouts, trainers, blood screening and doctors. Most of our training is geared towards core strength and conditioning. In the last 5 months I've managed to gain 5 lbs which is difficult for me. My bloodwork came back with low hemoglobin levels, 12.2 gm/decileter (normal according to the Doc is 14-18).

During my normal workouts and 3 mile runs I'm fine. When we're really pushing things in the Ironman workouts I can get lightheaded frequently when the rest of the guys, although are getting fatigued, I can tell I'm out of gas.

Doc advised me to take iron daily and so I'm doing 65 mg every morning on an empty stomach. I feel like it's helping some and I've been doing the iron for a couple months. But I still don't feel like I can keep up with the rest of the guys. I feel like I've got decent cardio and conditioning as when it comes to long distance running I'm one of the faster guys on the team; but when we're lifting heavy, then super setting things with box jumps, and back into lifting without breaks, then moving on to plyometric stuff I get gassed quick.

I haven't had a chance to get with the doc yet, but other than iron supplements and a heavy iron diet (I mostly eat proteins), are there any other effective methods to increase my hemoglobin levels?

[Hmac]

Dietary iron ("heme" iron) will have better absorption than supplements, usually be a substantial margin. Of the supplements, ferrous succinate on an empty stomach is probably best, followed by ferrious fumarate. You don't mention your serum iron levels, nor your iron saturation. You also need to optimize your folic acid levels and your vitamin C intake.

You don't mention your serum iron levels, nor your iron saturation. I can't tell from your post whether you've actually had a complaint workup. I have the impression that your doctor isn't really working you up for potential iron deficiency anemia, he's just noting that you are anemic and telling you to take some kind of OTC supplement. I'm hoping that he's actually taking your Thallasemia minor diagnosis seriously, especially since you are symptomatically iron-deficient. You also need to optimize your folic acid levels and your vitamin C intake.

[joffe]

Get really anal about your diet. Track your micronutrients with cronometer.com.