What Is Iron?

Essential to Healthy Body

Iron (Fe) is a metallic element that is readily found in nature. Compound of iron exist in two forms: ferrous and ferric. Iron is essential to the formation of hemoglobin in the blood and to chlorophyll formation in plants. Hemoglobin is a combination of the iron containing pigment called heme and a simple protein called globins. Its primary function as a blood-building component is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. Iron is stored in the liver,spleen and bone marrow.

Iron Uptake and Stores

On average, the body is capable of absorbing as much 3.6 miligrams of iron every sixteen hour or so. During pregnancy, this uptake capacity increases to nearly twelve milligrams. Iron is absorbed into blood stream in the upper part of the small intestine, where the pH is between five and seven.

The body normally contains between two and four grams of iron,mostly contained as a part of hemoglobin,up to seventy per cent.Four per cent is "functional iron (myglobin,enzymes containing iron) and about twenty five per cent is deposited iron (ferritin,hemosiderin)".

Helathy Blood adds Natural Colour

Hemoglobin levels in the blood are measured by the colour brightness of blood containing sixteen grams per one hundred millilitres.Most people have fourteen grams or less of hemoglobin-which is eighty-seven per cent of what they should have,or less.

A person without healthy blood is listless, tires easily, laks of energy, looks pale, is often forgetful and cannot think quickly or clearly. However, *healthy blood always show under the skin, giving it under layers of skin are crisscrossed with millions of capillaries.

Consequently,when the blood stream is healthy,the lips are red,the fingernails are light pink in colour;and the cheeks have the slightly colour and a healthy glow.*