{"id":888,"date":"2005-07-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-28T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/888"},"modified":"2005-07-28T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-28T19:00:00","slug":"iron-y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/888","title":{"rendered":"Iron-y"},"content":{"rendered":"

So last winter Michael and I both did WVU’s health screening, and in addition to cholesterol (we both have excellent cholesterol levels) I paid extra and got the extra blood work done. When I got the results back, my blood counts were irregular, so I made an appointment with my doctor. After a lot of blood draws, the conclusion was that I was slightly anemic, which we should be able to correct with an iron supplement. So I started taking two iron pills a day, one in the morning, and one in the evening, which seemed to correct the problem.
\n
\nNow the interesting thing about all this is that I have had no symptoms of anemia, other than a regular inability to donate blood, due to low iron. No fatigue or weakness or any other symptoms<\/a>, just the off blood counts. (In fact, you could say that an excess of energy is more likely to be my problem.)<\/p>\n

So the spring semester ended up being rough for both of us, and I was pretty tired by the end, which I figure accounted for the fact that my weight had slowly been creeping higher than normal. Nothing much, except for the fact that despite the fact that I started being more careful about my diet, my weight seemed to remain about 7 to 10 pounds higher than it normally is. Which was frustrating, but I’ve been blessed with a fantastic metabolism for my whole life, so I guessed that maybe at 35 things started to slow down a little, and left it at that.<\/p>\n

Until we went to Cincinnati, and I forgot to take my second dose of iron every day we were there. And I came home to find that I’d lost two pounds, despite the fact that I’d eaten like a pig. And as soon as I started taking the second dose of iron, my weight crept right back up, even though I was back to eating salads and skipping desserts.<\/p>\n

So, two weeks ago I decided that I’d drop back to a single dose of iron a day, and see what happened.<\/p>\n

After a week I’d dropped a pound and a half, and, more surprisingly, woke up one morning with more energy than I’d had in ages. All summer I’ve been putting off projects, because I just didn’t feel up to them. Suddenly I had the energy to clean and organize the basement. Suddenly I felt like I had the energy to paint the bedroom and stain the entertainment center. And then I realized that when I was lifting weights at the Rec, I was actually regressing in the amount of weight I was able to lift. My brain and chalked it up to laziness combined with the fact that I have wuss genes, but in retrospect?<\/p>\n

So I talked to Michael about it, and asked him if he’d noticed a difference in me. “I just thought you weren’t feeling well,” he said. “For six months?” I replied. But, to give him credit, if I didn’t notice it, then I can hardly fault him for not doing so either.<\/p>\n

So, I’m going to continue this experiment for another week or two, see how things go. Then I’m going to call my doctor and see what he has to say. As I was asymptomatic in the first place, I’m hoping that he won’t be annoyed by my experimentation (he’s a great doctor, so I think I’m okay.)<\/p>\n

But I find it highly ironic that the treatment for an illness that causes fatigue and weakness, was actually causing fatigue and illness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So last winter Michael and I both did WVU’s health screening, and in addition to cholesterol (we both have excellent cholesterol levels) I paid extra and got the extra blood work done. When I got the results back, my blood counts were irregular, so I made an appointment with my doctor. After a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-health-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-ek","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}