High Iron Levels
How Can High Iron Levels Affect You?
Hemochromatosis is a disease characterized by high iron levels in your organs, which can lead to toxicity in those organs. It is a fairly common liver disease that is usually inherited.
Hemochromatosis that is hereditary usually does not start until you are an adult. The disease has symptoms of over-absorption and eventually, iron overload. The organs affected include the skin, joints, pituitary glands, pancreas, heart and liver.
Most adults have a maintained level of iron in the body by conserving it and by controlling absorption in order that it evenly balances losses. A male adult loses about a mg of iron every day. During the years after becoming an adult, and before menopause, women lose about 2 mg a day. This is due to pregnancies and menstruation. Some iron is eliminated in fecal matter, but very little is lost in the urine.
If you are a healthy adult, any losses of iron that you experience are leveled out by absorbing iron to maintain a healthy balance. If your body absorbs more than you need or store, you will have high iron levels. If you suffer from hemochromatosis, your iron will be absorbed but not functionally utilized, which results in an elevated iron level.
Having more iron than is needed in your body, is dangerous. It produces more formation of free radicals which are responsible for much disease. This can cause high iron levels and can lead to injury to cells, and fibrosis.
In the United States, about one person of every three hundred has hemochromatosis. The cases are more numerous in northern Europe, in addition to Ireland and Australia. Africans are less likely to get hemochromatosis, as are African-Americans.
Hemochromatosis causes heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver, arthritis, impotence and diabetes. If you don't treat your high iron levels, they can lead to death. The rate of death is about one person per each million people, which includes people who don't have the disease.
Men are more likely candidates for high iron levels than are women, at a rate of almost two to one. Men over 40 years old are more likely to develop it, as are women over the age of 50. Symptoms usually begin between the ages of 30 and 50, but they can occur earlier. Symptoms include arthralgia, impotence, severe fatigue, heart enlargement, diabetes, skin pigmentation and liver disease.
Later on in the process of high iron levels, you might experience hepatocellular carcinoma, cirrhosis, diabetes and hyperpigmentation. By the later stages, your iron levels may be twenty TIMES the recommended levels.
The best way to detect these high iron levels is an ultrasound. Patients with extensive liver damage may be candidates for transplants. Other symptoms are arthralgia and fatigue. These are the symptoms that usually drive patients to their physicians to find out what is wrong.