Iron Supplements Kidney Disease

Iron supplementation with kidney disease is key, especially if you have anemia. Anemia is a common issue that comes with kidney disease, it is a situation that takes place when your red blood cells are in short supply. Anemia with kidney disease can make you feel tired and weak. It’s a common issue faced by CKD patients. Checking your blood work is the easiest way to find out if you have anemia. However, iron supplementation with kidney disease can help manage anemia. Robert breaks down the importance of iron supplementation with kidney disease in this video.

Anemia is low red blood cells, low hemoglobin, and low hematocrit in your blood work and it’s very common in the later stages of kidney disease because the kidney is responsible for making a hormone called erythropoietin, which helps build those red blood cells. So when the kidney doesn’t work properly you don’t make that hormone you don’t have enough of those red blood cells and oftentimes your recommended iron because iron can be one of the causes of anemia. Now before you go out and take iron, make sure your doctor says it’s okay because a lot of times you don’t need the iron. For example, in kidney disease, you can check your iron stores and they’ll be good, you have plenty of iron in your body it’s just that your kidney isn’t making that hormone to use that iron so there are other medications. A lot of different ones if that’s the case just make sure to check with your doctor because you don’t want to take iron if you don’t need to because it actually can cause you some problems down the line.

Iron Supplement Doses

If you take iron when you don’t need to, so we’re assuming that you need iron and which iron is going to take most irons on the market are ferrous sulfate and the ones that your doctor will recommend from your primary to your nephrologist are almost always going to be ferrous sulfate. Now ferrous sulfate’s a very high dose, it’s 320 milligrams per pill generally the reason it’s so high is because you don’t absorb it well and so that’s why you need a really high dose, and also it’s very constipating. So there you are with kidney disease where a good portion of the time people have digestive issues and now you’re gonna take something that’s constipating and because it doesn’t absorbable you need such a high dose of it. So that’s the standard that almost everybody’s gonna tell you to take and Robert will tell you to not take that iron because it’s not that great of an iron.

There are much better irons out there and don’t worry that your doctor didn’t tell you because they didn’t go to school for nutrition, vitamins, or herbs so they’re not informed and will go with the standard of care which is anemic. Take this ferrous sulfate deal with constipation, take laxatives, or whatever else we don’t like that we like to use the best stuff out there because that’s what’s going to help you. So you go to the store, you’re looking at all these irons now which one do you get the one that you want to get is iron biz glycinate, Robert shows you a couple of bottles just so you can see that exact spelling right there that’s iron biz glycinate iron again iron bis glycine the reason you want to take iron bis-glycinate because it’s non-constipating it’s also called gentle iron.

 

Iron-glycinate Pills

And a couple of companies out there use that gentle iron trademark if you see gentle iron that’s an iron-based glycinate now the problem with iron is glycinate they make it a lower dose so you’re going to have to take more pills now the good thing is it’s a 2 1 absorption so where you might have needed 320-milligram pill of ferrous sulfate you only would need 160 milligrams of iron bis-glycinate because it absorbs that much better so meaning that 160 milligrams of iron bis-glycinate are equal to taking 320 milligrams of ferrous sulfate without constipation so that’s great that’s what you really want to take you can find some higher doses of bis-glycinate iron glycinate pills in the 35-40 area but it’s a much better option. If you need to take iron it’s gentler on your stomach it absorbs much better and you don’t have to worry about having so much excess iron in your system as opposed to the 320-milligram pill so if you’re anemic you’re told to take iron with kidney disease get the iron bis-glycinate iron bis glycinates to better form easily absorb not constipating. 

 

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