Iron in the Blood Stream

Hello steemians and welcome to a new week. We’ll be kicking of the week with a little health education by your favorite health enthusiast, @scarletmedia. So join me as we Iron out a few things…

Let's start with the Minerals in your body:

Image of the cell structure: Pixabay

The minerals in your body have many important functions to perform. Calcium and phosphorus are needed for building strong bones and teeth. Without these the body would quickly collapse. Other minerals act somewhat like “sparking-plugs” for certain important chemical reactions. Still, others form intricate combinations with proteins, and thus are needed by the enzyme systems of the body.

Many different minerals are found within the body, most of them in extremely small amounts, known as “trace metals”. Some like cobalt and copper are important. Others are so rare, we are not even sure what some of them do. But there are four (4) minerals — Iron, Iodine, Calcium and Phosphorus — that are very important. We need more larger quantities of these, and so they must always be included in the diet; otherwise we would soon become weak and sick. So, In this post, the mineral in focus will be Iron. We shall discuss the rest one after the other in subsequent posts.

Iron in the Blood Stream

Image source: Pixabay

A very important mineral is iron, entering as it does into some of the most vital reactions of life. The actual amount of iron in your system is not very great, but what that iron does is almost fantastic. Nothing in all the discoveries of the space age can be compared with the marvellous reactions of iron in your body. Without this metal, you could not begin to live for even a moment.

Most of the iron is found in the red blood cells, where it forms part of that very complex protein known as haemoglobin. This is the red substance that gives color to the blood. It carries the oxygen to the tissues and keeps us alive.

Red blood cells are extremely small. Normally there are around 5,000,000 of them in a drop of blood no larger than the head of a pin! These tiny cells are rounded on the edges and hollow in the middle, something like a disc or plate. This provides a relatively large surface compared with the volume of the cell, making for an easier exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Each red blood cell contains 250,000,000 molecules of haemoglobin, and 1,000,000,000 atoms of iron! In the few seconds during which the tiny red cells is passing through the lung, it picks up 1,000,000,000 molecules of oxygen from the air in the lung. At the same time, it drops 1,000,000,000 molecules of carbon dioxide, which it has brought in from the tissues of the body. This unwanted carbon dioxide is then removed from the body as we exhale or breathe out. So we must keep breathing fresh air to supply the red cells with oxygen to replace the carbon dioxide. We call this respiration.

Most cells in the body live for many years, perhaps even for life. Not so for the red blood cells of the blood. They soon wear out from the strain of constantly whirling through the blood-vessells of the body. The red cells last only about four months, and the are destroyed. This means that new cells must be produced in large numbers to replace those that can no longer be used.

To meet this need, your body has to make many millions of new red blood cells every minute, just to keep up the normal supply. If you lose blood through hemorrhage or for any other reason, you must produce many more. Each tiny red cell carries its own little portion of iron, which the body measures out with such exactness that each cell has just enough iron for the work it has to do, and no more. So careful is nature not to waste anything.

How Red Blood Cells Work:

Image source: Pixabay

Everyone knows that iron rusts when it is exposed to the air. Rusting is even more rapid when the air is damp. This chemical reaction is known as oxidation. A molecule of iron attaches itself to a molecule of oxygen from the air, forming iron oxide. This is exactly what happens when the lungs is warm and damp, and the iron in the red cells are carried by the blood stream to the heart, and then pumped to all the distant parts of the body, always carrying their load of oxygen.

Out in the tissues, the reverse process takes place. The haemoglobin or pigment in the red cell readily gives up its load of oxygen and picks up a supply of carbon dioxide. These carbon dioxide-loaded cells are then carried back to the heart and pumped to the lungs, where they drop their load of carbon dioxide and pick up a fresh supply of oxygen. The whole remarkable process requires just the right conditions within the body to operate efficiently. Naturally anything that interferes with the flow of air, into the lungs will cut down the amount of oxygen reaching the cells, and will reduce the amount of work we can do. (Something similar to this happens when we go up into high altitudes where the oxygen is much less abundant. We then have t breathe harder to get the oxygen we need).

Thus, we see that iron is very important to the well-being of all parts of the body. Most of the iron from the worn-out cells is not discarded, but is separated from the haemoglobin in the liver and spleen and used over and over again. However, a certain amount of iron may be lost from the body for various reasons such as bleeding hemorrhoids, injuries, menstruation, hook-worm infestation or stomach ulcers. The latter often develop when a person uses aspririn too frequently, or when he smokes on an empty stomach.

Sources of Iron:

Image source: Pixabay

Many foods contain iron in one form or the other, although not all of the iron may be absorbed. Green leaves, eggs, apricots, raisins, potatoes, oatmeal, whole-grain cereals and liver are all good sources of iron. Any well-chosen diet probably contains enough iron for our needs, provided we are able to absorb it. If one tends to be anaemic, it may be wise to take some extra iron in the form of ferrous sulphate tablets, but these should be prescribed by one’s own physician.

I drop my pen here. Below are references for further read:

• Red Blood Cell count, purpose and symptoms

• Haemoglobin and Functions of Iron

• Iron Deficiency Anaemia

• 11 healthy foods that are high in Iron

• How to improve the absorption of Iron in foods

STEEMBULLS*