What Is Anemia?
Anemia is “the condition marked by a deficiency of red blood cells or of hemoglobin in the blood.” Hemoglobin is an iron-rich protein that gives your blood its red color. It helps cells bring oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. If you have anemia, your body simply doesn’t receive enough oxygen-rich blood, leaving you tired and weak. Red blood cells contain hemoglobin. They are also important for immunity, including fighting infections, as well as clotting blood and preventing too much bleeding.
Anemia is closely related to iron deficiency. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency in the U.S. Iron helps produce hemoglobin, and therefore the CDC estimates that almost 10 percent of women are iron deficient. This is alarming considering the essential roles that iron, including facilitating with oxygen distribution. Your body needs iron to perform many functions throughout every single day. But it’s common for many people to live with low iron levels due to factors like blood loss (such as from menstruation), a poor diet, or an inability to absorb enough iron from food sources.
Common Symptoms of Anemia
Without enough oxygen-carrying red blood cells in your body, it’s impossible to transport adequate amounts of oxygen to your brain, tissues, muscles and cells. Feeling a little “out of it” and tired is pretty common for many adults, due to compounding reasons. These can include: stress, lack of sleep, battling a virus, and a busy work schedule, among others. Therefore, when it comes to knowing whether or not you should be checked for anemia, it’s important to understand how anemia symptoms usually manifest, and what makes them different than simply feeling exhausted due to other life circumstances.
Here are some of the most common anemia symptoms adults tend to experience:
- Fatigue
- Weakness
- Pale skin
- A fast or irregular heartbeat
- Shortness of breath, trouble breathing, low stamina and reduced endurance
- Chest pains
- Dizziness or loss of stability
- Cognitive problems, including brain fog, difficulty concentrating and trouble getting work done
- Cold hands and feet or other signs of body temperature changes
- Headaches
5 Natural Treatments for Anemia Symptoms
Below is my five-step process to treat anemia symptoms naturally, along with advice for avoiding anemia risk factors/triggers that can worsen the condition and sometimes lead to complications:
1. Nourish Your Spleen
The first natural treatment for anemia is really nourishing your spleen. Your spleen is an organ that is responsible for red blood cell production, as well as keeping fluids together in your system. If your spleen isn’t healthy, that’s one of the first factors that’s going to cause anemia.
There are specific foods that will actually help nourish your spleen, helping you overcome anemia symptoms naturally. That first food group is squash, specifically pumpkin, acorn squash, butternut squash, spaghetti squash and those bright orange-colored foods. Think fall harvest! Those sorts of foods are fantastic for nourishing the spleen. Aim for getting one to two servings of squash in your daily diet. If you want some ideas, try my Butternut Squash Soup as a starter.
The other food group that’s very important for nourishing your spleen and red blood cell production is green leafy vegetables like nutrition-rich spinach, kale and chard. Having one serving of those per day, something like a Kale Caesar Salad or sautéed spinach, is also very nourishing to your spleen.
Last, but not least, bitter foods are great for the spleen, specifically vegetables like romaine lettuce and arugula salad. You can even consume bitter herbs before a meal as a supplement. But anything that’s sort of a bitter food is very nourishing for the spleen.
2. Use Probiotics for a Healthy Gut
Step number two to help you naturally overcome anemia symptoms is to boost gut health with probiotics. Gut health is crucial for absorption of nutrients. The principle is not: “You are what you eat.” Rather, it is: “You are what you digest.” If you’re not digesting properly and absorbing and assimilating nutrients properly, you’re not absorbing iron!
For a lot of people taking iron supplements, unfortunately they might not be working all that well. The reason is that their digestive system isn’t healthy; they probably have a condition called leaky gut syndrome. Leaky gut doesn’t allow you to properly absorb iron as well as certain other vitamins and minerals, like vitamin B12, magnesium and zinc.
3. Consume Iron-Rich Foods
The next step in helping you overcome anemia symptoms is consuming iron-rich foods. The richest sources of heme iron (the more absorbable form) in the diet include lean meat and seafood. Dietary sources of non-heme iron include nuts, beans, vegetables and fortified grain products. In the United States, about half of dietary iron comes from bread, cereal and other grain products, but I recommend focusing on healthier options that are easier to digest instead.
Some of the best iron foods include beef liver and chicken liver. Liver? It might sound gross to you, but if you buy organic chicken liver at your local farmers’ market or at your health food store, you can put it in a slow cooker with chicken in equal ratios, or about a third liver, two-thirds chicken. Include vegetables like carrots, celery, onions and sea salt. This is the perfect meal to help replenish your liver, as it’s very high in iron. For other iron-rich foods, look toward organic, grass-fed meats like beef, bison and lamb. Also, eat spinach, kale and chard. Have a bison burger with a side of spinach, which is fantastic for helping you to reverse anemia.
4. Reduce Stress
If you’re emotionally stressed out and you struggle with forgiveness, anger, or have chronic worry and anxiety, those things really deplete your spleen and your liver and will exhaust those organs. So, really make sure that you are scheduling in times of relaxation and fun during your week. Plus, get plenty of sleep at night. Those things will really help recharge your system and body and help you bust stress. If you do those things, you’re going to see fantastic results in overcoming anemia.
5. Consider Taking Supplements
In addition to making the holistic changes described above, you can likely benefit from taking a B vitamin complex supplement that includes folate (not folic acid!), as well as an iron supplement. Another bonus tip related to stress and spleen health: In Chinese medicine,
