Hi everyone I'm so glad I found this forum im 8 months in from my gastric sleeve surgery and I've seen so many people talk about iron levels and ferritin it just seems to be so much confusion

How are your iron levels? Are they low? If they’re low, then you may need a supplement but if they’re okay, you don’t need anything. My iron levels were great & still are so I never took any iron after my surgery.

Many people, women especially of all ages, experience anemia and it seems there are many more cases now days than years ago. For some its lifestyle and dietary choices, for others there can be medical reasons behind it. If you are anaemic, ensure your doctor rules out any medical cause first.

If there isn’t any medical reason, check your dietary intake. Ensure you’re eating a lot of iron rich red meats, green leafy vegetables, etc. Avoid caffeine when consuming food especially iron rich foods. Caffeine reduces your body’s ability to absorb iron by 60+%. Also your body doesn’t absorb iron from fortified foods (like breads, cereals, oat milks & other milk alternatives., etc.) as well either. Iron supplements can cause constipation. Don’t take your iron supplements with calcium or iron with zinc. Your body can’t absorb these in combination so take say the calcium and zinc in the morning and your iron at night.

Remember too, excess iron isn’t good for you so avoid taking iron supplements if you don’t need them. Haemochromatosis can damage your liver, heart, pancreas & joints. Symptoms can include lethargy, weight loss, mood swings, depression, brain fog, irregular or no periods & joint pain. Interestingly, many of these symptoms are the same as with anaemia.

iron level is how much iron is currently in your blood

ferritin is your body's iron stores. Your body taps into this when the iron level in your blood is too low. It's when the ferritin gets too low that people need an iron infusion

however, this is more common in bypass patients than sleeve patients

Many team will just start you out on the vitamins that people tend to become low on to try and get ahead of it, but you should be getting labs every three months for a while and then at least once a year once you are on track. Your team should tell you what to change based on your labs.

Like most things, needing iron or not should be driven by data, not noise from social media. Your blood levels taken at the doctor’s office/lab will tell you what you need to do. Your data is specific to you and no one else, and it’s just a snapshot of your health at that time. Next year might look different and that’s ok too.

My bariatric multivitamin from pro care has 45g of iron and in my labs my iron levels are fine. I also went 2 months on a bari vitamin without iron and got labs done welp let's just say I have to have iron!

9 minutes ago, Mspretty86 said:

My bariatric Multivitamin from Pro Care has 45g of Iron and in my labs my iron levels are fine. I also went 2 months on a bari Vitamin without iron and got labs done welp let's just say I have to have iron!

Pro Care Health multi with 45mg iron is what I took after my sleeve and my levels were always good too. Now I had SADI revision so I take their SADI specific one with a little more iron. I haven’t done any labs yet but I feel fantastic so I’m expecting them to be good.