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Unusual Dietary Cravings

Iron deficiency can cause a condition called pica, which is the compulsive eating of almost anything, including dirt or clay (geophagia), starch (amylophagia), and ice (pagoph-agia). Not just an occasional zany impulse, pica is the continuous obsessive craving for the unconventional dietary experience.

A case reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine (94:660) illustrates a potential complication. A 74-year-old woman with iron deficiency had a craving for magnesium carbonate, which she ate several times a day. In quantity, magnesium acts as a laxative and causes the too rapid transit of food through the intestines, with failure of absorption of dietary ingredients, including iron. So, in this case, as in many others, iron deficiency caused pica and thereby made itself worse.

Pica and its complications usually respond rapidly to an injection of iron.

Tea Drinking as a Cause of Anemia?

Many things can influence the amount of iron we absorb and retain from our food. If we lose blood or become anemic for any reason, iron absorption usually increases, so that when iron is in short supply, we compensate by absorbing it more efficiently. Our ability to absorb increased amounts of iron when necessary, however, is variable, a human inconsistency which has always puzzled hematologists.

Now, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, tea-drinking may help to explain some of these differences in iron absorption. It has been found, for instance, that tea reduces iron absorption from food by as much as 95 percent. Whereas in some diseases this could be helpful because there is already too much iron in the body, if you have a problem absorbing iron, or there is inadequate iron in your diet (most vegetarians need to take iron), you may want to limit the amount of tea you drink.

Iron Deficiency Correction

Anemic nomads in Africa suddenly came down with tuberculosis and other infections when iron was added to their food. Iron deficiency, it seems, had been protecting them by preventing bacterial growth in their tissues.

Now, according to Pediatrics, the same sort of thing has been observed in the United States. Adding extra iron to infant formula, it has been found, encourages growth of contaminant bacteria in the milk. Fortunately, the iron in human milk, unlike that in cow’s milk, is bound to a special protein and is not available to bacteria. If mothers nurse their babies and take sufficient iron in their food, their babies will get all the iron they need in the safest possible way.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under General health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.