Anemia and Iron Deficiency

[KellyLovesPV]

I just got home from a cross country training camp. While I was there we had lectures every night but one lecture in particular really stuck with me. We spent a great deal of time learning about anemia, more specifically anemia from iron deficiency . Now I have known quite a few people who have told me they were anemic but I never really understood what it was or how common it was. For athletes, especially female but both gender are affected, anemia is very common and usually undiagnosed. Iron is critical to athletic performance. It carries oxygen to the cells and carbon dioxide away.

Now a lot of factors contribute to becoming anemia and there are several factors that make athletes more susceptible. First off iron is one of the hardest mineral to absorb. It won't absorb if taken with calcium or caffeine. That means even with a multivitamin that includes iron it probably isn't absorbed into the blood stream. On the same note athletes that don't eat any or enough red meat might also have an inadequate supply of dietary iron. Athletes also have an increased demand for iron. Hard training increases red blood cell and blood vessel production. Therefore athletes training at a high intensity need more iron than your average Joe. Athletes also lose a great deal amount of iron. Blood lose through injury and menstruation are two big factors in losing iron. Another way we lose iron is repeat "foot strike". Feet hitting hard surface in shoes that are poor quality damage red blood cells therefore losing iron. Lastly if you sweat you are losing iron. Heavy sweating leads to an increased risk of deficiency.

Have you ever had it where you bump up the intensity in your training in hope to get better but start getting worse? You feel like you have lost all of your endurance, you feel chronic fatigue, you have a high exercise heart rate, and low power? Are you getting frequently injuries, having a recurring and persistence illness, and loss of interest in exercise and irritability? These are all signs of anemia and iron deficiency. However you must understand low iron isn't a blame all and it can be dangerous to drastically increase iron intake or to start taking iron supplements with out taking to your doctor first. If you feel you may be affected by lack of iron talk to a doctor, get some blood work down. And when getting a complete blood cell count make sure you are getting your ferritin levels checked. This shows how much iron you have stored in your liver and spleen. There isn't a magic number for your ferritin level to be at but if it is below 20 are anemic. If this is the case talk with your doctor about starting a new high iron diet or starting iron supplementation.

Phil English, the instructor giving this lecture, provided many example from his own team of athletes who started off promising only to start falling behind and get injured. They all how low ferritin levels when they got their blood check, started iron supplementation and began to run much faster. Now this was a cross country camp so all the examples dealt with distance running but I could easily see how it could effect the pole vault community as well. Mr. English made sure we understood the importance of iron but we also have to understand it isn't a cure-all or blame-all.