Experiencing anxious feelings? There might be something else causing you anxiety that you haven’t considered yet.
Internationally acclaimed nutritional biochemist, speaker and author Dr Libby sat down with More FM’s Sarah Gandy to chat about her latest book ‘Fix Iron First’ and all the ways iron deficiency may be affecting you.
Dr Libby said she initially started writing a book about perimenopause.
“I was about 65,000 words into that and went ‘hmm, no’. The first 11,000 words of this were all about iron, and I realised that was what I wanted to focus on.”
Women need 18 milligrams of iron per day during the years they are menstruating, Dr Libby explained.
“To put that into context from a food perspective, it’s just over half a kilogram of beef per day,” Dr Libby revealed.
“Now I’m not suggesting anyone does that, but just to point out we can eat enough from our food, but we’ve got to be incredibly focused.”
“Sadly, there are still too many people, particularly women, who are very focused on restricting food in some way,” she continued.
“They limit food, cut out food groups, have coffee for lunch, it’s really hard to meet our iron requirements through food when we’re doing that kind of thing.”
Dr Libby revealed that one of the implications that can come out of your body lacking iron is anxiety.
“When we talk about anxiety these days… the first place most of us go is down a psychological or psychiatric road.”
“That might be the best thing for a particular person, but anxiety is actually a symptom of iron deficiency,” she added.
“Particularly [for] teenage girls, my worry is that they have this increase in anxious feelings… but what if iron deficiency is contributing to 60 or 80% of how they’re feeling?”
“And because it’s not top of mind that anxiety is a symptom of iron deficiency, it’s not being addressed.”
“A lot of girls will say to me: ‘I feel like there’s something wrong with me’,” Dr Libby shared.
“When we grow up with a belief that there’s something wrong with us, it has such a huge impact on our belief in our own education.”
“Across those teenage years, if we don’t feel resilient and robust and we’re kind of just a little ball of anxious feelings… I just want iron deficiency to be considered.”
Listen to the full chat with Dr Libby here.
