 How iron deficiency can affect your hair, skin and nails? Well, guess what? It really doesn't most of the time. Iron, in fact, has very little to do with hair, skin and nails. And the truth is iron may not be as good for you as you think. What I'm about to tell you may come as a big surprise, but first of all, what is iron and why do we need it to some degree? Well, iron, of course, is one of the most common elements on earth. We need iron to make hemoglobin. And most of you know that hemoglobin is the molecule in our red blood cells that carries oxygen around to all of our tissue. So without iron, you don't have any hemoglobin. And obviously, without hemoglobin, you're not going to carry oxygen around your body efficiently. Now, iron has gotten a wrap since the 1950s as being far more important to your health than it actually is. And this is another example that I like to use for my patients and use for you listening, where advertising frequently is the initial driver of a belief system that actually has very little to do with the truth. And back in the 1950s, when television was first beginning, one of the biggest sponsors of television was a company called Geritol. And you can hop on YouTube and look at some old Geritol commercials. And the principle of Geritol was that most Americans were suffering from iron-poor blood. And the reason everybody was so tired was that we had iron-poor blood. And Geritol, which was basically an iron-containing tonic, was the solution for your tiredness. And if you got iron into you, then your tiredness would go away, and you'd feel much more energized. And quite frankly, Geritol did extremely well. It's very similar to the early 1900s when Americans discovered suddenly that they were profoundly deficient in breakfast cereal. And that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with a sliced banana was the perfect way to energize your body, which also was not true. But I digress. So this whole concept, that iron was incredibly important for your energy levels, really started with television commercials in the early days of television, iron-poor blood. In fact, most of us have plenty of iron in our diet. Iron is available in a large variety of sources. Certainly, we all have heard that red meat is rich in iron, and the redness, in fact, comes from the iron. Dark green leafy vegetables like spinach are full of iron. And interestingly enough, I have some women who really go on dark green leafy vegetable kicks, have spinach salads, have spinach smoothies, have kale salads, kale smoothies. And they actually have very elevated levels of iron in their blood. All right, so what's wrong with having high levels of iron? Well, here's the good news, bad news. It's one of those things can't live with it and can't live without it. Iron is essential to make hemoglobin, which carries oxygen. But iron rusts us. And in fact, iron oxidizing is one of the leading causes of aging faster than you should. And if you've read any of my books, you probably have noticed that iron has a bad reputation for aging us. Some of the most exciting studies have been that if you look at people who donate blood, people who donate blood on a regular basis in general live about seven years longer than age match controls who don't donate blood. And recently, a Danish study looked at people who were blood donors. And they worried that maybe the people who really, really, really donated a lot of blood, maybe they went too far and that all that blood donation, in fact, was harming them. So they looked at longevity of the people who donated the most blood most frequently versus people who donated on a more regular basis but not as much. And they really thought they'd find that the really big time blood donors, eh, there was a downside. In fact, just the opposite. The people who donated the most blood most of the time lived longer than the people who donated blood on a regular basis but not as much. So it's another example in humans that iron is not necessarily our friend. Now, let's specifically talk about women. Women in general live about seven years longer than men age match control. Why is that? Well, women for half of their lives donate blood on a monthly basis through menses. And so what seems to be a pain in the neck is actually a huge benefit in terms of longevity. And interestingly enough, one of the factors that people suspect that women begin to kind of catch up with men in mortality is after menopause when women in general no longer lose blood once a month. So iron poor blood is in general a myth. Number two, most of us get plenty of iron in our diet. And most of us have too many sources of iron. And we really want to get rid of iron. Now, back in the good old days, men got rid of iron by wrestling sabertooth tigers. And we would constantly get injured and bleed. And that would actually keep our iron under control. Most of us don't wrestle sabertooth tigers anymore. I wrestle with my dogs, sometimes my puppies win. But men don't get rid of iron anymore. Let's suppose you have heard that a cast iron skillet is one of the best ways of getting iron in your diet. Sadly, that's incredibly true. I measure iron in all of my patients. And one of the sad things is a vast majority of my patients who use the uncoated cast iron skillet have much too much iron in their body. And when we have them ditch their cast iron skillets, their iron levels thankfully go down. So please, there is no place in your home for a cast iron skillet. Now, I'm not talking about cast iron skillets that have a ceramic coating on the inside. Those are perfectly safe. We're talking about the bare metal cast iron skillets that you have to season. I spent half of my life in the South and the cast iron skillet was, you had to have two or three. Please don't use those. I see that all the time. Secondly, if you're having lots and lots and lots of dark green vegetables, particularly spinach, consider backing off on that. And lastly, next time you're checking, ask your doctor to order a serum iron. It's very easy to do. And just see where your iron levels are. You'll be amazed that the vast majority of people who believe that they're anemic, that they have iron poor blood, that their tiredness is from lack of iron, that their hair, skin and nails are poor because they lack iron. It's quite frankly, when we actually look at the data in human being, it's not true. And so you don't need geritol or any other form of iron. And just remember that iron is really one of our biggest enemies in our battle of aging. So for the most part, stay away from iron. Final thoughts on the subject. There are a few of us who carry a gene that makes us avidly grab on to iron. And it's the hemosteterosis genes and there won't be a test on this. So if you've done everything and you still are told, oh my gosh, you have a lot of iron, it's a fairly easy test for your doctor to order whether you carry these genes for hemosteterosis. Now, the good news is the treatment for this is blood donation. And number of my patients have to donate blood on a fairly routine basis because they carry this gene. But we found in my practice that the practice of drinking tea, whether it's green tea, whether it's black tea, whether it's matcha tea from Japan, two to three cups a day or two to three glasses of iced tea a day will actually help bring down iron levels. And we have a number of patients with hemosteterosis that we've been able to control their iron levels just by having them drink tea. In fact, as many of you know, I drink about four to five cups of green tea every day for the main purpose of keeping my iron levels under control. I don't carry the hemosteterosis gene, but again, iron ages us and I don't want to age. Thank you very much. Make sure to check out the next one here. Number one, the vast majority of people, even in sunny climates, don't get enough vitamin D. In fact, studies in Southern California showed that 80% of Southern Californians were deficient in vitamin D.