138m no fins

Red Meat

Liver has the most iron, but it has too much vitamin A, so if you ate lots, you would develop vitamin A toxicity. Red meat has absorbable iron, but again you would have to eat an enormous (unhealthy) amount in order to get what you need! Plus, you would be exposed to all the hormones & chemicals that the animals are exposed to, etc...

The iron in red meat and liver is about 10% absorbed.

I made a small mistake in my last calculation: the 28mg of iron (from veggies & supplements) is 1% absorbed, so you get 0.28mg of iron actually absorbed, which means that it would take even longer than I predicted...




Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

How much red meat do the Andean people eat? In other words how do they get their iron?

Hydro

iron absorption

I once tried taking liquid iron supplements to raise my hemoglobin level, which I understand has a much higher rate of absorption (vs. pill form). I quit after a couple of months after not really noticing a difference. However, at the time it was for UW hockey. Now that I freedive I would have a more object means determining its effectiveness. I tried to find information on exactly how much higher, but could only find biased manufactures claims of 25-75%. Anyone have any unbiased information on this? One further disadvantage of liquid iron is it tends to discolour your teeth, however it’s nothing a trip to the dentist doesn’t fix.

Eric – with your increased hemoglobin level, have you noticed any improvement in your breath hold?

This is some very interesting stuff about Iron - I thought I would add a couple of bits of info that may be of help.

Myoglobin needs iron too - which makes matters worse

Iron is reused constantly rather than excreted - which helps.

The body stores it (chelated) so that it can be mobilised - which is good, because it means you can increase your haemoglobin without taking any supplements.

Ben

This has nowt to do with 138m no fins though does it? It is a shame that discussions like this don't get split off into new threads so that people could learn more - thoughts stephen/cliff?

hemoglobin build up

Eric, your explanation of hemoglobin build up is not very encouraging...

Are you sure that the build up can't go faster than 550 days or more? I mean, cyclists and speed-skaters often do altitude training for a couple of weeks and this really seems to help for most of them.

Or do you have a smart way to fix this problem??

Fred