The #1 Most Common Mineral Deficiency in the World

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so I have a very interesting video today on the most common mineral deficiency in the world but before I dive in I just wanted to say thank you for subscribing just today I counted up the total number of subscribers on all languages because now my YouTube channel is translated into Arabic Russian Taiwanese and many other languages the total number of subscriptions is over 18 million subscribers 18 million I’m blown away so thank you for subscribing all right now that that’s out of the way what is the most common mineral deficiency on the planet well the answer is iron deficiency and this is a very interesting topic because it’s very common um it’s a bit confusing I’m going to try to simplify it and it’s extremely easy to fix let me run down first the symptoms if you’re a deficient in Iron so number one you can have hair loss or hair thinning you can get arrhythmias your heart goes out of rhythm that could be an iron deficiency you become fatigue weakened you can get dark circles underneath your eyes restless leg syndrome okay I used to have that difficulty sleeping in fact the arrhythmias could keep you up as well you’re on the cold side your tolerance for coal old is very low your nails can become split very easily your concentration is terrible you can’t focus and you may experience a fibromyalgia or achiness in muscles or joints these set of symptoms can also mimic other problems like hypothyroidism a B12 deficiency a vitamin D deficiency low testosterone and even sleep apnea now one of the challenges that people run into when they’re trying to evaluate if they have iron deficiency is they go to the doctor and sometimes their values their numbers are normal it shows normal iron it shows normal hemoglobin and the doctor might say well you’re fine it could be something else but uh it’s definitely not an iron deficiency when it could be so the thing you need to know about iron deficiency is there’s another condition called non-anemic iron deficiency so that could be like a pre-anemia type state so you might not have a severe deficiency of iron just it could be down somewhat so they call that subclinical now there’s one thing that can actually help diagnose an iron deficiency and that’s ferritin okay so let me just explain that what is ferritin ferritin is a group of proteins okay a lot of different proteins that help bind with iron and store and release iron so ferritin acts as a buffer if you have too much iron which is very very dangerous or you don’t have enough iron so if your ferritin level is low that can definitely be more of an indicator that you’re iron deficient however there’s other things that might create this false sense of higher levels of ferritin for example if you have an infection okay or you have inflammation in the body your ferritin levels will be higher than they should be so that can really complicate things and make things very difficult to diagnose anytime you’re looking at a deficiency we should also talk about an excessive iron so I’m going to touch on what to do if you have too much iron in the problems that could be associated with that as well as we go through this now I want to run into this next very interesting area which is why you might be deficient in the first place and there’s a lot of different reasons but I just want to say that it’s more common to have non-anemic iron deficiency than to have anemia so it’s very common that this iron did not affect the blood yet but in fact a lot of other parts of your body and we need iron for other things than just building hemoglobin iron is needed to build thyroid hormones iron is needed to make dopamine iron is also needed for nerve impulses to work correctly that’s why you would have arrhythmias if you were deficient and so there’s many different reasons why you need iron but I will say though I’ve talked to quite a few patients who unfortunately did not find a doctor that can evaluate deep enough especially this iron problem and the worst thing a doctor can do is tell you it’s all in your head that is the wrong diagnosis when people have these symptoms and you’re told it’s all in your head wow talk about something that can really elevate your cortisol and piss you off but I hear it all the time so you really need to find a doctor that’s a good evaluator that can dig deep and to help assess different levels of this problem but I want to give you a lot of information to think with so you can sometimes even help your doctor guide them into a certain area especially the reason why you’re deficient in the first place so number one is that you’re not consuming enough iron from your diet that can occur if you’re a vegan or even a vegetarian because the most available form of iron is the heme iron okay and that’s in animal products like red meat liver seafood Etc the type of iron you get from plants is non-heme and that is not easily absorbed in fact you’re going to absorb 10 times less iron from plants like spinach but iron is also high in oxalates which can block the absorption of iron so let me go through the list so number one it could come from not consuming enough iron in your diet okay number two having inflammation in the body inflammation in any part of your digestive system whether it’s in the stomach is gastritis or in the intestines okay because if there’s inflammation in those parts your ability to absorb iron goes down significantly all right the next one would be stress The more stress you have the more trauma that you have surgeries for example which is a trauma all these things can inhibit your ability to absorb iron also a loss of blood whether you’re bleeding or you donate blood or you have an ulcer or let’s say for example you have I don’t know some type of polyp in your colon that you’re bleeding from and you’re experiencing a loss of blood another common cause of low iron in your blood especially if you’re aging is low stomach acids okay if you don’t have enough acid in your stomach you’re not going to absorb iron and other minerals which is very very common it’s called either hypochlorhydria or a or hydria and the way that you would know that you have low stomach acid is you have indigestion gas or even gerd heartburn or acid reflux or even menstruation another reason why you might be deficient in iron is you had a gastric bypass surgery okay that can cause the deficiency because you’re having less digestive organs to absorb iron also athletes or people who exercise a lot can be deficient in Iron because some of the iron that you have is stored in the muscle and as you use your muscle you use up the iron and that could be one reason as well all right next one is antacids any medication that suppresses acids could cause an iron deficiency because we need that hydrochloric acid in the stomach to be able to absorb iron fibroids okay if you have fibroids that could be another reason why you’re deficient in Iron also having a greater need for iron like when you’re pregnant or your breastfeeding or even a young child in the development needs and requires more iron also people with eating disorders usually have an iron deficiency another thing that’s very very common as far as blocking iron is phytic acid now that is in all the grains the soils the bread the pasta the cereal crackers biscuits waffles all of these grain carbohydrates have phytic acid especially the whole grains Okay so if you consume those foods that could be the reason why you’re a deficient in Iron but phytic acid is also in lagoons beans as well as like I said grains now there’s another compound called tannins in tea and coffee that can block iron as well so if you’re drinking tea all day long and a lot of coffee you could be low in iron chocolate has certain polyphenols which are phytonutrients that can block iron and of course polyphenols are also i