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Iron: One of the most essential mineral your body needs

One of the most essential mineral for our life is Iron. It is a part of enzymes and proteins that are present all over the body, including myoglobin and hemoglobin, both of them assist in carrying oxygen in blood. One of the important components for your muscle is iron, which helps greatly to regulate cell growth. It is generated from the food that you eat and if there is excess iron, then it is amassed for future use.

Food consists of a lot of iron content and it comes in two forms: nonheme and heme. You get Heme iron coming from animal food, which formerly included myoglobin and hemoglobin like fish, meat and poultry. From plants, you obtain Nonheme iron derived chiefly from lentils and beans. Nonheme iron is one form of iron, which is added to iron-fortified and iron-enriched foods.

Adults, who are healthy, absorb around 10 – 15% of iron from food itself, but there are other factors, which can affect the actual amount of absorption. One very important factor is the type of iron. Heme iron has the tendency of getting absorbed more effectively than nonheme (up to 35%). Its absorption in no way is affected by the other nutrients that are already present in food. Nonheme iron gets absorbed from around 2 to 20 percent from food. These nutrients have the tendency to deduct the percentage of nonheme absorbed: calcium, tannins found from tea, from whole grains and legumes you get phytates and few others from soyabean proteins. If you intake meat and Vitamin C to your food, there would be improvement in the absorption of nonheme iron.

The amount of iron that is stored in your system also affects the overall absorption of iron from the meal that you are in taking. If you already have ample of iron stored, your system will absorb a lesser amount of it. This actually helps to save you from dire toxic effects, as, too much of iron is also not good for your body.

The point is how much iron?

DRI or better known as the dietary reference states that intake of iron for an average healthy adult depends on their age and gender. Women who are menstruating are in need of more amount of iron as a lot of iron gets lost due to cyclic menstrual periods. In addition, women who are undergoing breastfeeding need to absorb a slightly bigger amount of iron. A pregnant woman must absorb twice the amount more of calcium than non-pregnant woman. In case you are pregnant, it is essential for you to follow a properly made diet plan by your nutritionist so that your body gets the correct and ample percentage of iron intake.

DRI for iron for both adults and children:

If you are unable to get the right amount of iron from the food that you are eating, the system will start using the stored iron. If your diet still has deficient iron content, your system will end up using all the little bit of iron that is stored in your body. In addition, it will be unable to maintain proper normal hemoglobin level required by your body.  This will lead to iron deficiency. Several other factors can also in due course lead you towards iron deficiency anemia. Some of them are excessive menstrual blood flow, deficiency of vitamin A as it helps to extract the stored iron from your body, failure of kidney, and certain gastrointestinal disorders which tend to make obstruction of iron absorption from food.