The Nugent Report is hosted by Dr. Steve Nugent, a renowned psychologist, author, public speaker and expert on science, health, wellness and nutrition. Dr. Nugent’s mission with this podcast is to provide objective information about a variety of topics in wellness and nutrition, as well as to increase public awareness of health and nutrition in relation to the realities of the modern diet and dietary needs vs. 21st Century stresses and the environment. He got his start in radio during his days as a Marine and has trained in electronic journalism, television, technical direction and more.
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The Nugent Report is hosted by Dr. Steve Nugent, a renowned psychologist, author, public speaker and expert on science, health, wellness and nutrition. Dr. Nugent’s mission with this podcast is to provide objective information about a variety of topics in wellness and nutrition, as well as to increase public awareness of health and nutrition in relation to the realities of the modern diet and dietary needs vs. 21st Century stresses and the environment. He got his start in radio during his days as a Marine and has trained in electronic journalism, television, technical direction and more.
Welcome to the Nugent report, I’m Dr. Steve Nugent. On this podcast I’ll be addressing questions related to iron supplementation, including who should take iron supplements, food sources of iron, how much is required daily and how much is too much. I’ll also address pregnancy and prenatals as well as lactation. Finally, what are the risks of taking too much iron.
Several of my subscribers have written in to ask if they should take iron supplements. The short answer is yes if you need it and know if you don’t. Perhaps that sounds too simple, but there is much more you need to know. The fact is, iron is potentially lethal.
Iron is an essential nutrient and that means your body must have it, but your body is incapable of making it therefore it must be obtained from food or food supplements.
Unlike water-soluble vitamins that are flushed from the body if taken in excess, iron is a storable nutrient. If too much is stored (based on body weight), illness and death can result. For this reason, throughout my career I have always been cautious about iron supplementation and typically recommended against it in multis opting for proper diet recommendation or medical intervention where required. So, the answer is not as simple as it seems.
Most people have probably heard the phrase, “figures don’t lie, but liars use figures”. That’s a bit harsh perhaps for this subject because in many cases it’s not a question of a deliberate lie, but rather innocent misunderstanding or misinterpretations.
On the one hand, the most common mineral deficiency globally is iron, but that’s a bit misleading because in modern countries iron deficiency is not common. The total global figures take into account the populations of developing countries that may have insufficient food sources of iron.
According to the World Health Organization there are just over 1.6 billion people on planet Earth who are deficient in iron.(1)When that statistic was last updated by the WHO in 2008 there were fewer people on planet Earth, but the general averages remained the same today, because world food source conditions remain approximately the same.
According to the World Health Organization, preschool children make up 47.4% of the total and pregnant women make up 41.8% of the total, of people included in the total number of those deficient in iron. (1,2) Pregnancy is not a chronic condition and preschool children grow up. The other significant issue is menstruating females, which I’ll address shortly. When you examine the figures closely you see that less than 25% of people worldwide need iron supplementation in fact the World Health Organization says its 24.8%. Some need iron chronically but most do not. Turn that around and look at it from the other direction and it will tell you that just over 75% of the world’s population does not need iron supplementation daily and because iron in excess is extremely dangerous, that is the first and most important part of the argument against including iron in daily multiple vitamin mineral products.(1,2)
More is not always better. Too much iron poses a very serious danger. From 1980 to 1991 for example, iron in children’s dietary supplements was the leading cause of death by poisoning in the US for children six years of age or younger. Children’s chewable supplements were cute and tasty made with synthetic sweeteners. The childproof caps proved not to be childproof in all too many cases. (3) In 2020, the public was given a great deal of information about zinc and how important it is; however, the public was not told that too much iron can actually cause zinc anemia. I’ll come back to that idea shortly. For now, let’s examine the world health organization figures for better understanding.
If you break down the numbers according to age, gender, pregnancy,
The Nugent Report
The Nugent Report is hosted by Dr. Steve Nugent, a renowned psychologist, author, public speaker and expert on science, health, wellness and nutrition. Dr. Nugent’s mission with this podcast is to provide objective information about a variety of topics in wellness and nutrition, as well as to increase public awareness of health and nutrition in relation to the realities of the modern diet and dietary needs vs. 21st Century stresses and the environment. He got his start in radio during his days as a Marine and has trained in electronic journalism, television, technical direction and more.
