Serum Ferritin is 1430 ng/ml - Going to have to give tons of blood, who wants to guess what it'll do to my ability to run?

in hindsight can you think of any other telltale symptoms?

when you say foot pain, what kind of foot pain?

surprised you can recover from this, I thought iron saturation stays in your body and organs even if blood removed, hope you are okay

I can’t really. But that’s why I asked the last poster what his were.

Foot pain may or may not have been related...it’s hard to know with the off trail stuff. But it was between my heel and ankle mid foot. That’s the best I can describe it. Just for like 3 days though.

Update:

Got labs back after first donation.

Serum Ferritin: 963 (down 467 from 1430) ng/mL

New - Iron Total: 241 mcg/dL

New - % Saturation: 96

New - Iron Binding Capacity: 251 mcg/dL

Hematocrit down to 42.6 from 48.4.

Hemoglobin down to 15 from 16.8

The big surprise for me is how much my serum ferritin dropped. I was under the impression it would only drop ~30 ng/mL per donation. On its face this seems like great news though as I'm already under the 1000 ng/mL danger line and it seems like I'll get down to ~75 ng/mL much more quickly than i anticipated.

Will be interested to see if progress continues to go as quickly as this. I have another donation scheduled for this Friday and I'll get another lab pulled next Monday to keep the data coming in.

psychlown wrote:

Update:

Got labs back after first donation.

Serum Ferritin: 963 (down 467 from 1430) ng/mL

New - Iron Total: 241 mcg/dL

New - % Saturation: 96

New - Iron Binding Capacity: 251 mcg/dL

Hematocrit down to 42.6 from 48.4.

Hemoglobin down to 15 from 16.8

The big surprise for me is how much my serum ferritin dropped. I was under the impression it would only drop ~30 ng/mL per donation. On its face this seems like great news though as I'm already under the 1000 ng/mL danger line and it seems like I'll get down to ~75 ng/mL much more quickly than i anticipated.

Will be interested to see if progress continues to go as quickly as this. I have another donation scheduled for this Friday and I'll get another lab pulled next Monday to keep the data coming in.

96% saturation. You don’t see that everyday!

Congrats on getting below 1000. I wonder why it dropped so significantly. Maybe you had a lot of inflammation before your previous test that was 1430. I can’t imagine it’ll drop 40% again after your next blood donation, but will be interested to see. Keep updating.

OP, This thread is indeed a great combo of entertaining and educational. Please keep the updates going!

psychlown wrote:

Update:

Got labs back after first donation.

Serum Ferritin: 963 (down 467 from 1430) ng/mL

New - Iron Total: 241 mcg/dL

New - % Saturation: 96

New - Iron Binding Capacity: 251 mcg/dL

Hematocrit down to 42.6 from 48.4.

Hemoglobin down to 15 from 16.8

The big surprise for me is how much my serum ferritin dropped. I was under the impression it would only drop ~30 ng/mL per donation. On its face this seems like great news though as I'm already under the 1000 ng/mL danger line and it seems like I'll get down to ~75 ng/mL much more quickly than i anticipated.

Will be interested to see if progress continues to go as quickly as this. I have another donation scheduled for this Friday and I'll get another lab pulled next Monday to keep the data coming in.

Thanks for the positive feedback. I for sure will.

I feel like an idiot for having supplemented and setting myself up for this near miss and I kinda feel like it's my duty to spread the word a bit. Also it's great hearing the perspective from others who have gone through similar things.

psychlown wrote:

Thanks for the positive feedback. I for sure will.

I feel like an idiot for having supplemented and setting myself up for this near miss and I kinda feel like it's my duty to spread the word a bit. Also it's great hearing the perspective from others who have gone through similar things.

Your ability to be humble and post about your mistakes will undoubtedly help other people. I plan on forwarding this to people that have decided to take iron supplements without testing.

I know a few. It's crazy to think that via an anonymous post you are possibly helping people you will never meet.

Less educational and more just sharing update.

Had my second donation on Friday, as scheduled. Did this after a 3.5 hour hike/run (11 miles, 5100 feet vert). Felt decent on that run, which continues the trend of not feeling like the donations are messing w/ me. Did 3 laps on a big mountain and my third lap was my fastest.

Donating was easy. Noticed how big the needle was this time and got a tip from the phlebotomist that after i heal up to really rub the area vigorously w/ coconut oil to try to break up scar tissue that may begin to accumulate. Anyways, in and out of there in about 20 minutes and on my way.

One interesting thing, before you donate they check your hemaglobin, which I believe needs to be above 13.5 to allow you to donate. My hemaglobin was 15 on Monday in my CBC, but on Friday when they used what seemed like a little microfluidic hemaglobin tester from a drop of blood i only tested at 13.9. This could be measurement precision related. I also wonder as this place has on multiple occasions told me that HCT is simply hemaglobin x 3 if they are really measuring HCT and dividing by 3. This is a decent rule of thumb, but not really true. For example last monday my hemaglobin was 15 and my HCT only 42.6. If you divided 42.6 by 3 you get 14.2...still not 13.9, but closer. Anyways, this is something to keep an eye on as I don't want to get turned away. Also, want to make sure nothing else is going on.

I definitely felt a bit worn out that evening, but who's to say that was from donating and not the run or just the week.

Took saturday off and then went for AM family hike (3 miles w/ 40 pound kid in backback for 500 feet of vert) and then afternoon run where I got in 1500 feet in 4.5 miles. Felt really solid on the uphills and for the only segment I've done an honest effort on before on this run I gave it a go and ran a new best only 4 minutes of flat jogging after really giving it on the 10 minute climb that opens the run. Another datapoint suggesting that whatever changes my body is going through combined do not seem to be slowing me down.

Anyways, today i go back in for real lab work and hopefully will have some updates for tomorrow.

Thanks!

quick update:

After 2 donations my SF is down to 741, this is a decrease of 222 from last week. Still wayyyy bigger than the anticipated decrease of 30 per donation. My % saturation is still up at 96 and my total iron is at 234 down from 241 last week. Hematocrit down to 41.6, which is a drop of 0.8 from last week (compared to 6 from the first donation). Hemoglobin is down to 13.9 from 15. A drop of 1.1 vs a drop of 1.8 on the first one. These smaller drops make me think my body is starting to respond quicker...probably getting my natural EPO engine revved up and making RBCs more quickly.

Feel free to comment or give me any insights i've missed.

Got my ass kicked by 40 second hill repeats today...but that's probably b/c i suck at that type of workout.

thanks!

In addition to the donations you're doing, another way to rapidly reduce your ferritin would be to do EPO. That eats up iron stores very quickly. No danger of your blood getting too thick since you're donating anyway. Why not?

Brief Update:

After 3rd donation:

SF: 668 (1430-963-741-668)

Hematocrit: 39.4 (48.4-42.4-41.6-39.4)

Hemoglobin: 13.3 (16.8-15-13.9-13.3)

Saturation: Stagnant at 96%

SF drop is slowing, as to be expected. I'm now "anemic" even though my iron levels are still high, but that was Monday, so probably my hemoglobin is back up.

Observations: SF drop is slowing. So are both Hematocrit and hemoglobin...you might think that they should be, so why is this interesting? But hematocrit and hemoglobin would only be slowing by the "slope" of hemoglobin/volume and hematocrit/volume if something else weren't also happening. What I suspect is happening is that iron stored in my liver/other organs is being used up more quickly to create more red blood cells/hemoglobin. This is good news, and i wouldn't expect my saturation to really drop until whatever iron is stored gets closer to depletion. Looking forward to that. I am also starting to feel a bit slower (but not much) at high effort levels but still feel easy when running easy...so that's good news.

Seems like your hemoglobin will go to about 12.8-13.0 after the next donation, SF around 630-640. So now you will be getting the SF drops you expected of closer to 30. Thank god those initial decrease in values were huge. Good to hear you aren't feeling fatigued. Keep us updated. This is interesting.

Seems like your genetics are perfect to live an extremely active life while avoiding meat. Getting your ferritin down to about 300-400 (upper normal) and then testing every few months to keep an eye on it seems a lot more manageable than getting down to 75.

Down to 590 with saturation down to 68, which had stagnated at 96 since beginning. Also had largest total iron drop from 229 to 187. Iron binding capacity up from 239 to 273. Feels like my body has turned a corner in chewing up iron stores.

Sitting in hematologist’s office now. Had liver ultrasound this morning, echo on my heart tomorrow. Will be happy if/when I get to put all of these just in case appointments behind me. So far I’ve just had people comment how my hr is way low at like 47 but no other significant input.

Running related, I ran a trail marathon on Saturday. I definitely felt slowed on uphill stretches where I felt like my threshold was way lower. I felt like I could move fine downhill and opened it up and definitely beat my legs up to the point where I struggled the last few miles to just keep moving well. I wanted a tough day since I’m doing a crazy hard 100 next year. I can at this point recommend running marathons at depleted hematocrit and hemoglobin as a good way to make a race miserably hard :).

Interested to see if this is an inflection point in any other measurements...will update next week. Moving blood removals to Monday’s and tests to Tuesdays at this point.

Further update: Liver ultrasound, echocardiogram complete and awaiting results. I'm a bit nervous they'll say my heart looks damaged just from years of hard running/cycling.

Also, had first appointment w/ hematologist today, they will be taking over the management of my phlebotomies. It was crazy refreshing to talk to a doctor who clearly knew more about what I'm going through than I do...for the first time. My PCP was doing okay, but wasn't checking all of the right boxes or ordering all of the right labs on my blood. Also, my SF was 398.2 on my first blood test at the hematologist...it was the same day as one of my donations, so i'm not sure if that makes sense or not. It was also 2 days after my trail marathon. Maybe big ass bonky days are good ways to drop SF quickly too...who knows. I go in for fasting labs next monday, so we'll see if these results make sense then.

How you holding up @psychlown? I'm recently diagnosed and have homogeneous on the gene mutation. I signed up to ask you. I hope all is well!

This is exactly why I have my athletes go through testing before and during supplementation because some like yourself absorb it very easily.

Best of luck. I hope you get well. Take your physician’s advice from here on out. If you are giving a lot of blood so that your serum ferritin is used to produce new blood, my guess is you should not be running at all through this period. But again, consult your physician.