Extremely Low Ferritin Level of 6 (Iron 18 when 42 is low)...other than iron pills and red meat, what else should I do?

I had anemia too. Just get on iron pills ASAP. I know I felt better after I started to take them. Eat red meat as much as you can now.

When I had anemia my poop was also never hard, it was ALWAYS liquidy. Seriously, how does your crap look?

YOU should take some time off too from running - just a couple of days will help you bounce a bit. BUT 6 is SO BAD!!!!!!!! And when you run, you bleed through your feet from the pounding, so you need to avoid pounding to let your body recover a bit. If you push through this, you could get worse even with the iron or get something else (like mono) and have no season at all. So a week off would do wonders in the long run (no pun intended) - you could go in the pool though because there is no pounding.

Liquid Iron is the quickest way for it to absorb but tastes gross, but worth it. Make sure you have Vit C to help the absorption and avoid calcium when you take the iron (it inhibits the absorption). I would take it 3xs a day but not with meals so it hits you good.

Then also stock up on greens too with iron in them (spinach being the best) and of course red meat is key.

BUT TIME OFF IS KEY!!! Your body is sending you a message - also get your nutrition under control - oh, and no soda, it robs your body of iron.

my nutrition is good and i never drink soda...im very meticulous with all of my recovery stuff and try to do everything right. i've backed off considerably and hardly ran the last two weeks so im not gonna take a week off now. i will load up on the meat and spinach.

IS LIQUID IRON better than the feosol pills...that is a very important question? Please someone answer!

Liquid Fe is much better than pills. I have had athletes take both and the performance turn-around from pills is about 5-6 weeks. With liquid and some rest, as mentioned above, it can be as quick as 3-4 weeks. Rest should include some time off. Iron is lost during foot-strike. Not enough in a healhty runner to matter, but you are not a healthy runner. Best of luck, plenty of time before the real meets start for you to get ready to roll.

Is liquid iron better than pill form?

Heres what you need to do:

Get an Iron Drip. I struggled with the same problem as you last year with ferritin around 12. I took Iron pills and the recovery to feeling good was very slow. The iron pills boosted me up to about 30 after several months and I sometimes felt good but I still raced like shit. The best solution if you can is to get and Iron Drip or IV. I went to the OHSU hospital in oregon and they gave me an Iron IV on 3 different Occasions and when i was tested after a few months my Ferritin was at 100 or something. I felt a lot better and had a good track season. Its pointless to train through anemia because you wont improve your fitness. I suggest you just run easy run for the next few weeks until you get it figured out. Dont bother with tempos or intervals. Just stay generally fit.

And Yes. for the mean time take LIQUID IRON, not the pills.

about 300 mg a day i would suggest. (ferrous sulfate)

I concur with the other posters to take at least a little time off, as since you are SO low, it will go a long way to kickstarting your recovery. When you do get running again, try to stay on soft surfaces as much as possible and wear good shoes. That should help decrease your iron lossess from the pounding. And, if you cook for yourself, try an iron cast skillet.

Go with ferrous sulfate 3 times a day...stay away from the time release stuff or caplets which have a lot of other shit in them.

Can We Get Too Much Iron?

A less common though often serious dietary iron problem, found more often in men, is caused by excessive absorption and retention of iron. Men who have this problem have an inherited genetic defect in their ability to regulate the absorption of iron into the body. The result of an iron overload condition can be fatal. This disease often goes undiagnosed because this iron overload condition shows up on a Blood test as low hemoglobin, just like iron depletion. Here is an example of a good reason to not self diagnose health problems. This condition is known as Hemochromatosis.

Normally, there is no great danger in ingesting a toxic amount of iron from food. Intakes of 25 to 75 mg. a day are not going to cause a problem in a healthy and active adult. Too much iron supplement, however, can be lethal and the younger the person who ingests the extreme dose of iron supplements, the higher the possibility of a lethal dose. Thousands of children in the United States are accidentally poisoned each year by swallowing too many iron tablets. In fact, iron is the most frequent cause of poisoning deaths among children in the United States.

drip it, 300mg sounds like a lot. my feosol pills have 45 mg and that would be like 6 of those. dang, i thought 130 was what was recommended. is 300 to much anyone? and where can i get the liquid iron? they didn't have it where i went tonight?.

Grape Nuts...1/2 cup has 90% DRV.

anyone else agree with doing an iron drip?

300mg sounds like way too much to me too. When I figured out I was low, I took (and still take) ferrous sulfate elixir (liquid iron). The recommended dose on the bottle is 1 teaspoon per day, which is 44mg. I think somewhere around 50mg is a normal recommended dose, but since you are so low, you should probably take that dose twice a day for awhile to get it up and then once a day to maintain and avoid having the problem in the future. But don't take people advice on a message board, ask your doctor to be sure!!

Also, you can order ferrous sulfate elixir online at americanrx.com. The link to actually view/purchase the elixir is below. It is only $4.99 on this site, and when I bought it at Walgreens in the past (the same size bottle), it was $10.95. It is a 16 oz bottle, which ends up being about 94 servings, so get a few and they'll last you for awhile.

Also: as mentioned above, lots of cereals are fortified with iron and have 80-90% the RDA. I know Frosted Mini Wheats do and some of the Smart Start cereals, but I'm sure there are others. Also, red meat (duh), egg yolk, and dark leafy greens. I'm sure there are others, those are just off the top of my head. Take Vitamin C and a B-Complex vitamin with your iron supplement (I mix my liquid stuff with orange juice) and avoid dairy or any vitamin or supplement with Calcium in it for a few hours, as calcium inhibits iron absorption. ALSO: Drinking coffee and/or tea with your iron will cause you to only absorb 1/3 of what you would absorb without drinking those beverages with it.

Bloodwork,

Just so you know -- I visited some of the best sports docs in NYC and had a ferritin level of 9 and iron level around 50. And the docs told me to take approx. 100mg (3 x 27 mg plus my multi which has 18mg) per day.

Re: recovery, I felt better within a couple of weeks and actually PR'ed in a 5K road race in about 6 week's time.

I think taking elixir is probably the best thing. I took pills and they worked, but my season was over at the time. A liquid form will be absorbed faster and you will regain your strength faster.

Good luck on your recovery.

300 mgs is a lot of iron but not too much in my opinion. I took that much iron for 3 months and didnt feel any effects off two much iron. Several guys on my team took that much when they had low ferritin and my sports doctor recomended that I take that much. I saw several expert doctors throughout the process and each agreed with 300 mgs. Can anyone agree with this dose?

....

And about the Iron Drip. I can pretty much guarantee no more than a few people on this board if any have ever had an iron drip. The drip is very simple but not that many doctors that i have seen have even heard of it. You might try researching on google or something. I'll try and find out exactly what it is called. Its very safe and I can assure you it will help. Just try and find the right doctors too guide you. You can not rely on a general physician to guide you through problems like these in my opinion (at least not my general physician).

Drip It: Good Point. Find a sports medicine doctor, preferable one with experience with distance runners. Distance runners, esp women, have different needs than the average person so their range of "normal" levels are different from the average relatively sedentary person.

Another thing: while you are still really low, don't go "lactic" in your workouts--it will make your problem worse. That is, don't run hard/fast enough to get lactic acid built up in your legs to the point where you are faltering because of it. In the meantime, do lots of lactate threshold pace runs and workouts with short rest between repeats so that you are still working hard without running fast enough to get lactic.

When your iron is getting back up you will notice that your complexion will brighten, you will feel less sluggish and need less sleep to feel rested, and you will feel good on your easy days instead of felling like you are always dragging. After some more time, your actual hard workouts will feel better. After even more time, your races will start to show improvement. Try not to get frustrated when you are starting to feel a lot better but you still can't produce a good race, that is how it goes for some reason! And the silver lining to all this is that until you get your levels back up, in the meantime you are training your body to work with less iron, meaning when your levels get back up, you're going to feel goooood! But patience, patience! Diligence and patience.

You should take time off! I had the exact same problem you did. My iron levels were very comparable to yours. I tried pills, but that didn't help. I had one of the worst seasons in my life when there was a lot expected of me. I finally went on liquid iron (1 tsp of 220mg ferrous sulfate elixir). When I went on that, I felt a little better, but was still tired and worn down. I had been training for so long on low iron that I had dug myself in a hole. I finally called it quits and took over 2 weeks off. No running at all! It was really hard not to run, since it was such a normal part of life, but it was necessary. When I got back to running, I felt 100 times better. I have improved my diet to include more red meat and spinach and I'm taking my iron every night. Running is going well. I built up slowly after the break and didn't do any workouts for a couple of months. I did have to be patient. All of the important XC races don't happen until late october or november. You could totally take a few weeks off now and be back and ready to peak for those late season races. It will be worth it over time.