this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Let's stick with the iron in your hemoglobin for some more weirdness. The body knows iron is hard to uptake, so when you bleed a lot under your skin and get a bruise, the body re-uptakes everything it can. Those color changes as the bruise goes away is part of the synthesis of compounds to get the good stuff back into the body, and send the rest away as waste.
In the other direction, coronaviruses can denature the iron from your hemoglobin. So some covid patients end up with terrible oxygen levels because the virus is dumping iron product in the blood, no longer able to take in oxygen. I am a paramedic and didn't believe this second one either, but on researching it explained to me why these patients were having so much trouble breathing on low concentration oxygen... the oxygen was there, but the transport system had lost the ability to carry it.
I had to take iron supplements in the past because my periods were so bad that I would lose my vision and pass out from loss of blood.
I don't have iron issues so I haven't completely fact checked this, but I have read in various places that using cast iron skillets to cook with does add more iron to your foods to help supplement.
Before using cast iron daily, when I donated blood my iron levels were regularly at the lowest allowable limit or sometimes too low to donate. Once I started cooking with cast iron, I started getting comments about how great my iron levels are every time I donate.