US RDA age 19+ is 8 mg / day. Maybe if the iron bar is really rusty. Or, pills are cents a day. OR you could eat breakfast cereal or liver, lentils or spinach, Popeye.
A little cat iron puck was introduced in an Asian region with high iron-deficiecy in the poorer population, but nobody used it. So they did some research and changed it to resemble a fish instead and it took right off. Turns out the local culture considered fish lucky or something.
I actually teach my students about this strategy that the WHO employee in Micronesia in my sport nutrition class. It’s less about the iron fish, and more about that dietary iron can come from cast iron cooking sources instead of supplementation (as the latter often causes digestive distress).
Not necessarily licking (I mean, if you do it enough…), but this is a thing
Cool story with interesting social, cultural, and scientific interactions.
It may have been discredited outside of simple iron deficiency since I last read about it, but dietary studies on humans are notoriously difficult to do.
We used one of these with our daughter when she had a concerning iron deficiency. I’m not super sure if it helped since we also started feeding her more iron containing foods, but it didn’t hurt 🤷♂️
This specific thing? Or just an iron chunk of some type?
The reason I know about this is the social aspect of trying to get people with endemic iron deficiency to use a supplement. If you’re from the more industrialized would, I’d figure you’d take supplements that, while more expensive, may or may not be more effective.
Our daughter was less than 12 months old and had a cow milk protein allergy that was causing her to throw up most of the formula we were giving her (the allergy took us a while to figure out). We opted for trying to improve iron intake before going to pills, though if she was still deficient at her next check up that would have been what we did.
You should change your thought process and listen to the experts.
They also would have recommended dietary changes if they actually were applicable. It is this kind of belief that leads to increased harm and is solely the reason why so many children are being harmed and killed by extremely preventable causes.
I’m not accusing you of being someone as heinous as an antivaxxer, but this is the thought process that leads people down that path.
Trust me, I’m nowhere near an antivaxxer, if the pediatrician pushed even slightly harder for medicine as the solution then we’d have gone that way from the start. They were fine with us trying diet adjustments first and doing another visit soon after to see if the issue was resolved (it was).
Im pretty sure the doctor gave them the thumbs up on trying dietary first, and Im pretty sure the doctor knows better than the guy trying to historically lecture that doctor retroactively.
The doctor is unable to stop them from their behavior.
Imagine yourself as a doctor. The patient has the plague. You say, “Take this antibiotic. It will go away.” They say, “We prefer quarantine and chicken noodle soup”.
Do you say ok? Or do you admonish them and risk they get angry and do nothing? Or do you say, that is better than nothing. It is their body.
The only ethical behavior for a physician in this situation is to say, “sure, try dietary modifications”.
They were trying to prevent long term brain development issues by resolving the anemia the fastest evidence-based way, but the patient refused expert advice.
A doctor suggests a solution, via direct supplements.
The parents ask if they can try dietary first, because they are correctly nervous about direct supplementation for an infant even if it is needed, and want to go for a safer option first if possible.
The doctor sees that the situation could also be solved via dietary supplementation, and is not so severe as to require direct supplements only, and says yes. Lets start with dietary.
The baby gets better, because dietary solved the problem.
Decades later, an internet troll tries to pretend that asking for alternatives and discussing your options with your doctor is akin to anti vax mentality, while drinking heartily from a solid lead mug.
Here, real medicine was practiced, and then someone who doesnt actually know what they are talking about tried to shame a parent for doing the completely normal thing of discussing options with their doctor
I do. I also have a PhD from a medical school. That’s why I know if eating less milk were the best solution for this individual, they would have said that.
Managing parents’ anxieties is a major part of being a pediatrician. You don’t suggest things that might scare parents when they are not necessary.
I’ve read once that eating iron won’t do anything for your iron intake, but for example sticking some rusty nails through an apple for a while and then eating the apple would.
I saw someone do a demonstration once, they took a box of "iron-fortified" breakfast cereal, dumped it into a bowl, then ran a magnet through it. The magnet picked up some of the dust from the bottom of the bowl, that dust being the tiny iron particles that were added to the cereal to "fortify" it.
put the ‘‘words’’ in quotes because in context it’s definitely ‘‘absurd bullshit’’ and this is how i know that key on my keyboard doesn’t work i have to use a different key so thanks
How is it “absurd bullshit”? Do you think it’s somehow a different element? At worst, it’s as bullshit as any other vitamin supplement, in that it’s technically helpful, but just far more than your body can make use of.
Tiny amounts of iron distributed throughout a piece of cereal don’t have enough of a magnetic charge to lift the weight of a piece of cereal. Pieces of cereal dust with higher concentrations of iron very much could. Those results aren’t especially surprising
I put them in quotes as the word has no objective meaning as applied to a breakfast cereal, it's simply a marketing term. I did not intend to imply that ingested iron particles are not a valid source of iron for human biology.
When my wife was pregnant, a buddy gave her an old cast iron pan and told her to heat applesauce in it. Said it should help her iron deficiency, too bad we're to add to have remembered....
Tetanus is a bacteria that lives in soil. It’s only associated with rust because rust gives more surface area to allow dirt to accumulate on which bacteria can survive, and because iron objects are often sharp enough to pierce the skin. If you were cut with a gleaming razer that had just had soil smeared on it you’d have a good chance of contracting tetanus!
It's also because the bacterium in question is anaerobic, so it dies in an oxygen environment; rusting consumes oxygen, so it helps preserve the bacterium longer out of soil.
Edit: I had always been told this, but evidently it isn't true. The rust does not seem to have any effect on the bacterium that causes tetanus. Apologies for spreading misinformation.
Yeah, this is a strange mix of information being conveyed. Tetanus is indeed caused by an anaerobe, and it’s caused by a puncturing wound. The depth of the wound is what causes the oxygen-free environment. The correlation with iron, from my understanding, is solely because a nail can easily cause such a puncture. A nail stepped on in the general environment can easily innoculate the wound with with the relatively common Clostridium tetani bacteria, which causes tetanus. I don’t think rust is a factor, though I’ve been wrong before.
Yeah, you're right. This is something I was taught at one point, and I guess I never questioned it because it sounded plausible. Sorry! I have updated my comment to reflect this.
This is the reason prisoners are so healthy and full of vim and vitality. (right........)
UMMM I don't think you can get iron in your diet this way. First off, it's unlikely you're going to find a bar of pure iron anyway, since most metal bars are composites of many minerals.
Also, the iron has to specifically be in an ingestible form so the liver can process it. An iron bar ain't a lollipop. (maybe that should be a slogan for something).
When they say that cereal has added iron, they really mean that actual bits of iron are added (very tiny particles). You can use a magnet to pull some of them out, they're little iron filings.
So if you file the bar down first and eat the filings, MAYBE it would contribute to your iron intake. But - why not just grab some milk and eat the cereal instead?
Quick Google search suggests that using cast iron cookware increases your iron intake. I’d imagine the heat process has something to do with it though, so still incredulous that licking an iron bar would be effective, though I’m at a very minor maybe.
I saw that also but I have my doubts that you'd get much iron intake from cooking in iron pans. People used to get lead poisoning from using lead pots and pans, so - maybe it's possible. I'm not sure how much iron frying pans, for example, are pure iron.
Huh. So there IS some reason to think cooking in iron pots will increase levels of iron in your blood. Interesting! I know metal can leach out of cooking vessels and into food, so that's not too surprising. Thanks for the information!
It’s not that simple. Cast iron pans when properly seasoned won’t leach much iron into the food. However, I recall reading about a group who brewed their beer in iron kettles. And it was found to be a significant source of iron, as a result.
And beer itself for various reasons enhances iron absorption.
Japan has traditional iron kettles (that are stupidly expensive) and they're often mentioned by doctors for use in people who have iron deficiency here. That or iron pans. They even make an iron ball to put in normal kettles and such, but that weirds me out a bit.
You can get all the iron you need from vegetables and certain meat or even taking supplements. There's no need to go about eating rusty metal. In fact, my doctor has advised me not to eat nails. I have to trust what he says, he's printed out several impressive medical degrees.
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