Posted by Jaynee on December 5, 2002, at 19:23:26
In reply to Re: My healthy body=healthy mind supplement regime - » Jaynee, posted by bluedog on December 3, 2002, at 11:18:19
Wilsons Disease, causes you to absorb too much copper. Unless you have Wilsons Disease, the copper shouldn't bother you. No-one should take extra iron unless they have been diagnosed with low iron, and that can only be found by a ferritin or transferrin saturation test, not hemoglobin. Hemochromatosis is the most common hereditary disorder in North America and Northern Europe. 1 in 200 in North America has it and 1 in 8 people carry the gene. Irish people have a very high rate. 1 in 36 have hemochromatosis. It is a sad state of affairs that not many people have even heard of it. Doctors are just starting to pay attention. It is misdiagnosed 90% of the time.
This is from the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society.
What are the symptoms
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Symptoms vary, but many Hemochromatotics experience chronic fatigue, joint and abdominal pains, diminished memory and disorientation for many years before diagnosis. In later years there could be some degree of hearing loss. Frequently, HHC is not identified as the underlying cause of disorders such as hepatitis, diabetes, gall bladder, menstrual and thyroid problems, polycythemia and iron deficiency.
As some sufferers exhibit pronounced mood swings and other personality changes such as severe depression or anger, they can be incorrectly treated for mental illness. In some cases Alzheimer's has been suspected. ONLY THE CORRECT TESTS will provide the key!
Frequently one of the earliest symptoms is arthritis of the knuckles of the first and second fingers.
The liver, heart, endocrine glands (glands of internal secretion, such as the pancreas), skin and joints are principally affected, and liver cirrhosis, cardiomyopathy (disease of the heart muscle), diabetes mellitus, hypogonadism (deficient activity of testis or ovary) and arthritis are the usual manifestations.(iii) Common causes of death are cardiac failure, arrhythmia (irregularity in the beating of the heart), hepatic (liver) failure, hepatoma (tumour of the liver) or other malignancy, or the complications of diabetes.(iii) Before the advent of insulin, diabetes topped the list; today victims who are not discovered in the pre-cirrhotic stage, invariably die of hepatoma. Perhaps one of the most tragic affects is that of testicular atrophy in men and premature menopause in woman. Loss of libido may often antedate the other clinical manifestations of the disease.(iv)
Jul-01This is from PUBMED. Although the results say 1% in this study had too much iron, other studies have yeilded higher results.
Iron overload among a psychiatric outpatient population.
Feifel D, Young CW.
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-8620, USA.
BACKGROUND: Iron overload has been suggested to be an unrecognized cause of psychiatric morbidity. This study sought to estimate the prevalence of iron overload in a large outpatient psychiatric clinic. METHOD: A retrospective review of screening blood chemistries was conducted on 661 active outpatients at a large, university outpatient psychiatric clinic to identify elevated iron status results (plasma iron, percentage of iron saturation) suggestive of iron overload. Patients with positive profiles were asked to undergo a subsequent blood chemistry to confirm positive results (plasma iron, percentage of iron saturation, plus plasma ferritin). Patients with positive repeated iron chemistry results were considered likely candidates for iron overload. RESULTS: Twenty-one patients (3.2%) were identified as meeting one of the criteria suggestive of iron overload on initial screening reports. Thirty-one percent of those who underwent subsequent, confirmatory testing (5/16) continued to meet one of the criteria. On the basis of these results, we estimated a 1% (3.2 x 0.31) prevalence rate of likely candidates for iron overload. A review of these patients' charts indicated that they carried an unexpectedly high rate of bipolar affective disorder (80%) as a diagnosis and were, without exception, atypical in that they were resistant to conventional psychiatric treatment and lacked a family history for this disorder. The prevalence of positive iron overload profiles on a routine blood chemistry was similar to the prevalence of positive thyroid abnormalities based on TSH results in this population. CONCLUSION: Blood chemistry profiles suggestive of iron overload may be associated with a small portion of treatment-resistant psychiatric patients. Routine screening for iron abnormalities, especially in treatment-resistant patients, should be considered. Further studies are required to determine the causal association, if any, between iron excess and primary psychiatric illnesses.
PMID: 9062376 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
poster:Jaynee
thread:129993
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021203/msgs/130698.html