Iron alternative?

[keralei 0]

1 week out from rny - I've been taking my Multivitamin w/ Iron (45) twice a day, but it hurts my tummy and makes me sooooo nauseous!! I want to make sure I get my Vitamins, but does anyone have any alternatives or tips with iron?

Sent from my Pixel 5 using BariatricPal mobile app

[catwoman7 10,846]

carbonyl Iron is easy on the stomach. Chelated iron supposedly is as well.

you're probably getting ferrous sulfate - that stuff gives a lot of people stomach issues.

UPDATED to add - be aware of how much iron is actually absorbable from the different types ("elemental iron" is the part of the tablet that's absorbed by your body). Ferrous sulfate is 20% absorbable, so you'd take a lot more milligrams of that than you would carbonyl iron, which is 100% absorbable. Here's the percentages of each type:

• Carbonyl has 100% elemental iron.
• Ferrous fumarate has approximately 33% elemental iron.
• Ferrous sulfate has 20% elemental iron.
• Ferrous gluconate has 12% elemental iron.

Edited March 3, 2021 by catwoman7

[punte 8]

9 hours ago, keralei said:

1 week out from rny - I've been taking my Multivitamin w/ Iron (45) twice a day, but it hurts my tummy and makes me sooooo nauseous!! I want to make sure I get my Vitamins, but does anyone have any alternatives or tips with Iron?

Sent from my Pixel 5 using BariatricPal mobile app

[punte 8]

i was having the same issues ,I now take all my Vitamins and Iron via vitiamin and iron Patches which you can get from the bariatric store and find them great

[GreenTealael 24,852]

I like Floradix Iron and Herbs for fast absorption and bioavailability (ask doctor first)

[Creekimp13 5,838]

Coco Wheats. One 120 calorie serving....has a whopping 10mg of Iron. My mom actually suggested this...when she was a kid, Cream of Wheat's ad campaign was something like.... "If your family is large and you can't always buy meat, protect their iron stores with Cream of Wheat" And..."a bowl of Cream of Wheat has more iron than a steak!" It was actually marketed to fight anemia for a while back in the day. Lots of references to eating it during your period, too...to keep your iron from depleting.

And it's still true. Cream of Wheat and Coco Wheats are iron powerhouses. Very gentle. too.

Spinach and apricots in smoothies are great, too.

[Creekimp13 5,838]

Many of the Breakfast cereals are super fortified, but few are tolerated in volume by us until later. Kellogg's Rice Crispies has 11mg per serving, General Mill's Total Cereal has 18mg!!! and I love both with almond milk.

They'd be tough to tolerate early, hoever, due to volume.

I do love me some Snap, Crackle, Pop.

I'm not a big fan of red meat anymore and try really hard to find any alternative dietary sources of Iron I can.

Shellfish is good, clams, octopus. Seeds and nuts. Sneak spinich into everything.

Light liverwurst, if you can stand it...is pretty good. Organ meats. Bleh. LOL

Edited March 3, 2021 by Creekimp13