Micronutrient: Iron

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Micronutrient Project: Iron

What is the micronutrient?

Iron is classified as Fe on the table of elements. Your body uses iron to produce hemoglobin. Hemoglobin carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of your body via blood.
What organs benefit from its presence in the diet?
The entire body benefits from Iron because every portion of the body needs oxygen to function properly.
What are the dietary sources of this micronutrient?
There is iron in most meats and leafy greens. Extra iron is stored in bone marrow. Healthy men normally have enough iron stored in their bone marrow to live without experiencing any deficiency of iron.
Who may suffer most from its deficiency/toxicity?
The common dietary deficiency worldwide is iron, affecting half a billion persons. Mostly women and children have the greatest need of this micronutrient. A growing child is increasing the red blood cell mass and needs additional iron. A woman of reproductive age who is menstruating requires double the amount of iron that a man would need. When a woman becomes pregnant, the growing fetus receives iron from the mother, totaling 200 to 300 mg at full term so extra iron is highly important during pregnancy. Just as a developing fetus depends greatly on iron, small children are most at risk for iron poisoning to do accidental overdose. Another form of toxicity may be chronic iron overload, which occurs when patients receive multiple transfusions for anemias other than blood loss. Each unit a patient receives contains 250 mg of iron.
Iron is not excreted and the iron absorbed goes into storage except you can lose one milligram per day through hair, fingernails, and skin. This is where the overload occurs and the body is not able to rid the excess iron.
What diseases are caused by its deficiency or toxicity?
Anemia would be the most common disease or condition resulting from iron deficiency. This condition happens when red blood cells bec...