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It seems like everywhere you look on food shelves today, from the baby food aisle to the dairy case, just about everything is fortified with iron.Excess Iron Far More Common Than Iron Deficiency
But is that really a good thing?
When most people think about dietary iron, they wonder if they're getting enough. This is an important consideration, but research shows you're more likely to have too much iron than not enough - and this can pose serious risks to your health.
Iron is essential for virtually every life form, including humans, where it is a key part of various proteins and enzymes, involved in the transport of oxygen and the regulation of cell growth and differentiation, among many other uses.
One of the most important roles of iron is to provide hemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells) a mechanism through which it can bind to oxygen and carry it throughout your tissues, as without proper oxygenation your cells quickly start dying.
If you have too little iron, you may experience fatigue, decreased immunity or iron-deficiency anemia, which can be serious if left untreated.
However, if you have more iron than your body needs to satisfy your hemoglobin requirement (for cell oxygenation), the excess becomes a dangerous surplus. This is an issue that deserves attention, as research examining iron levels in Americans shows that more people have iron levels that are considered too high, than levels that are deficient. In one study of more than 1,000 people, only 3 percent were iron deficient, but 13 percent had iron overload.1
"Dr. Duane Carr - Professor of Surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, said this: "Smoking does not discolor the lung."
Dr. Victor Buhler, Pathologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City: "I have examined thousands of lungs both grossly and microscopically. I cannot tell you from exmining a lung whether or not its former host had smoked."
Dr. Sheldon Sommers, Pathologist and Director of Laboratories at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York: "...it is not possible grossly or microscopically, or in any other way known to me, to distinguish between the lung of a smoker or a nonsmoker. Blackening of lungs is from carbon particles, and smoking tobacco does not introduce carbon particles into the lung."
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