Author's Preface

Even though I only started researching the topic of iron and health within the past year, I no longer remember how I stumbled upon it.

I recall that many years ago I read about how the late Dr. Jerome Sullivan, a pathologist, first theorized that men had higher rates of heart disease than women because they have more iron in their bodies. It was a fascinating theory, and so much more compelling, I thought, than the cholesterol hypothesis.

I've long been skeptical of much of mainstream health conventional wisdom; for example, the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease; the claim that running and jogging are the best forms of exercise; the idea that saturated fat harms our health; and that eating too much is the cause of obesity (“calories in, calories out”).

But the idea that too much iron harms us is in a different league. It's something almost no one knows about.

Suppose you're a health conscious person, and you exercise regularly, you make sure you don't become overweight, you avoid junk food, get eight hours of sleep a night, get regular checkups. You take vitamin D and magnesium, maybe even fish oil.

But you've missed something, because you don't know about it. That's because hardly anyone, even the most health conscious, knows or discusses it.

That missing element is iron. No matter how much you exercise, watch what you eat, and so on, if you don't prevent your iron from becoming too high, you're missing a major element of health that could make all the difference.

Controlling your iron means controlling your risk of a heart attack, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, infections, even wrinkled skin and gout.

The information and scientific studies supporting the claim that excess iron damages health are out there, but you need to look for them. It's hardly discussed at all in mainstream health writing. Most likely, even your doctor doesn't know or care. He or she will be prescribing you a statin or putting you on other potentially damaging, expensive drugs, and all the while a high iron level could be the real problem, and slowly killing you.

Since there's next to no money to be made from dealing with excess iron, pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pursue this line of research, and for the same reason most people are unlikely to hear about it.

The experience of researching iron and health can be surreal. You discover how important it is, yet hardly anyone, even the most educated health professional, knows it.

I've heard from people who have very high iron levels, over 1000 – I'll explain exactly what that means later – and whose doctors hardly cared. The doctor of a friend of mine assured her that there was no health benefit to lowering iron through blood donation, which is patently false. If you are neither iron deficient nor grossly and obviously iron overloaded, then doctors don't care. Yet iron can cause illness when neither of these conditions are in place.

In this book, I've documented the information I've presented and the claims that I've made. While scientific citations may be an annoyance to some readers, they're especially necessary in this case. If someone (me) is telling them something radical, such as the iron which no one else says is a problem is killing them, then that someone better be able to back up his statements.

My aim with this book is to spread knowledge of the connection between iron and health, and hopefully to bring better health to millions of people.

I can honestly say that this could be one of the most important health books that you'll ever read.