"Raising ferritin fast" protocol - no meat??

[50BMGdoesitforme]

Hey all - my ferritin was at 16. I did the "Raising ferritin fast" protocol, taking the recommended pills at the recommended dose for 7 days without missing any doses, no vitamin C or D supplements, and checked ferritin three days after it was over - 16!!

A. I read the whole thing through and there are some general guidelines about meat, but nothing really specific - can anybody confirm exactly what I should NOT be eating that week? Or maybe even the week before? For instance I drink a gallon of raw milk a week and eat lots of meat. He did say that people that go vegetarian that week do better - is that the best bet?

B. If I did want to get checked for the hemochromatosis disorder, would a Total Iron Binding Capacity test (discountedlabs) give me that info, or is something I would need to ask my doctor for?

C. Despite literally no change in the number, toward the end of the week I did notice SUBSTANTIAL improvements in ED symptoms, which are now trailing off. So maybe I did get just a little relief from ferritin! Looking forward to doing it right and getting real results.

Thanks all!

 

[50BMGdoesitforme]

Bump to the top - anybody have any experience they can weigh in on? Would love any advice on which foods to eat or stay away from during the process. Many thanks!

 

[Systemlord]

A. I read the whole thing through and there are some general guidelines about meat, but nothing really specific - can anybody confirm exactly what I should NOT be eating that week?

You can eat meat as much as you want. A lot of these organizations that put out these nutritional guidelines are bought and paid for by the big food and drug companies!

All of the studies looking at red meat consumption, causing heart attacks, are surveys and questionnaires, that’s not science, that’s propaganda. If you look at who is behind these studies, you will find Kellogg food corporation has ties to the people that did the study.

I’m on the carnivore diet and doing very well, my diabetes is almost completely reversed.

 

[Systemlord]

He did say that people that go vegetarian that week do better

People that tend to go vegetarian also tend to have more problems with arthritis, kidney stones, and inflammation. That’s because plants have defense chemicals and poisons which is the first thing you learn in botany class.

Red meat is the most nutrient dense food on the planet, and also the most anti-inflammatory food.

 

[50BMGdoesitforme]

Hey System - thanks for the replies. I'm actually only talking about the week of doing the iron chelate protocol for raising ferritin fast, which was basically invented by a member here and now even Defy prescribes it. He does mention where one of the very few failures of the protocol that he is aware of was someone eating a substantial quantity of meat that week which actually prevented ferritin from being raised - it's all over my head but clearly not over his! Just want to be sure that when I do it again hopefully next week that it will be a success this time. Believe me, I'm a lover of meat and I think that is what kept it from working the first go round!

 

[Systemlord]

He does mention where one of the very few failures of the protocol that he is aware of was someone eating a substantial quantity of meat that week which actually prevented ferritin from being raised

I’ve never heard of anything more ridiculous. Red meat is loaded with iron!

 

[50BMGdoesitforme]

Here's the procotol:

Fixing High Hemoglobin or Hematocrit and Low Ferritin While on TRT

It's that vitamin C and D, or apparently too much meat, suppresses hepcidin, which this protocol boosts, allowing iron to be released from your own RBC. This guy seems to seriously know what he's talking about and apparently it's worked for a ton of people.

 

[50BMGdoesitforme]

Hey Systemlord - I totally misunderstood. I just finished reading through the big thread on here about the protocol and see that you were quite active in the discussion, so you're clearly familiar with it. I think that when I was searching for a reason as to why it didn't work, I misinterpreted some info about doing the protocol vegan - surely meat would only help, right??

Also, I think I found the culprit - I read that ACE inhibitors are a no-no on this, and I take 40mg of Lisinopril every day, so I'm going to try to switch to something else long enough to get it out of my system and do the protocol. But any advice anyone might have on things to avoid (clearly vitamins c and d) would be appreciated - I want to give it the best chance I can!

 

[DorianGray]

Hey all - my ferritin was at 16. I did the "Raising ferritin fast" protocol, taking the recommended pills at the recommended dose for 7 days without missing any doses, no vitamin C or D supplements, and checked ferritin three days after it was over - 16!!

B. If I did want to get checked for the hemochromatosis disorder, would a Total Iron Binding Capacity test (discountedlabs) give me that info, or is something I would need to ask my doctor for?

Thanks all

B. No, that test won't tell you if you have hemochromatosis. You need to get genetic testing for HFe gene. There are two main variants. Highly recommend you don't do anything before you do this. Fred Vorck's protocol (Raising Ferritin Fast...) is insightful, but there are caveats to implementation. Fred has posted here but he has a ******** group-Iron Disorder Study Group, which has more details. I used 23andme for genetic testing which can show your makeup, but there are others.

 

[50BMGdoesitforme]

Great info, DG. I did do the DNA thing a while ago through familytreedna - off to research if I can get any info from that!

My gut reaction would be no simply because I've been on unusually high doses of TRT for the last few years (240mg/week most recently) - just dropped down to 140/week and daily injections, so it would make sense that my ferritin would be in the toilet. I did donate maybe 3-4 times in the last few years and did a Power Red once - not sure how that factors in but it seemed to take quite a while for me to recover which is very unusual.

 

[NeverSayNeverAgain]

Are your FT levels way too high? Why are you donating so often? Did you not do the full Iron panel I would need to see if your Iron levels shot up dramatically I'm guessing yes thus the improvement of libido. If Iron was way up and ferritin remain the same something else is going on that prevented hepcidin from raising. Your not suppose to eat red meat because it contains a potent form of Vitamin D (25(OH)D) which suppresses hepcidin your suppose to avoid as much Vitamin D and C as possible as they both will keep hepcidin down. Also red meat has heme iron which is absorbed differently and immediately goes into hemoglobin and myoglobin which is not what you want to do for this protocol. The biggest mistake was the raw milk which contains tons of Vitamin D and some C.

There is like zero wiggle room in Freds protocol I would only do it for three days next time under strict dietary restrictions, you should be close to 30 ferritin in 72hrs. If you take a ton of supplements back off right before and during the protocol.

 

[Systemlord]

surely meat would only help, right??

Red meat would absolutely help raise iron/ferritin levels.

 

[DorianGray]

@50BMGdoesitforme Some other things to list if you want the comprehensive help package from here is age, weight, lifestyle and a whole bunch of lab test data. CBC, Complete iron panel, all thyroid stuff, lipid panel (Discounted Labs is great for this) and gene tests as mentioned. All stuff I wished I'd done first before taking any steroids, testosterone or dietary supplements.
Live long and prosper!

​

 

[FDV70]

Red meat would not help with ferritin levels IN A PERSON ON TRT.
Let's step through this using the basics.
Exogenous Testosterone --> erythropoietin increases 24/7 and does not cycle --> erythroferrone increases --> hepcidin decreases --> nothing binds to ferroportin --> ferritin cannot build
Whether you take heme or non-heme iron, if ferroportin isn't bound, iron is leaving cells and entering serum and getting put to use in hemoglobin.
In normal people, hepcidin has a daily cycle and rises in sleep and ferritin builds chiefly at night. We're injecting esters like Cypionate or Enanthate that have long half lives and so hepcidin is _always_ pushed down.

There are obviously only two ways to raise hepcidin, the IL-6 inflammation pathway (useless to us here, no one is going to deliberately catch the flu) and the BMP/SMAD "iron overdose" pathway. This is what we are leveraging. We are taking oral iron in a dose which the body senses as an overdose and rises hepcidin in response. Thankfully, it is normally a strong enough response to override the effect of erythroferrone. The hepcidin rises, binds to ferroportin, and oral iron is blocked from absorption in the gut and the RBC iron recycled in the body is _retained_ and stored in hepatocytes. This IS ferritin. We overdose on iron, the body rejects the oral pills, ferroportin is lowered, RBC iron goes up. (And in fact guys with a high RBC count get the best response on the protocol.)

It is important to note that all of this is basic Ganz -- Dr. Tomas Ganz literally confirmed that this is how iron homeostasis works. He's the guy who discovered hepcidin in 2001 and erythroferrone in 2014. I asked him to review my work and he did, which is noted in the protocol at the bottom, as well as his response.

Some things, which I note on my page, suppress hepcidin, like vitamins C and D. Meat (heme iron) has been found (see research linked on my page) to in large part bypass hepcidin anyway, probably an evolutionary mechanism to ensure that iron intake from plant grazing would be limited but meat, which would have been somewhat more rare (talking cavemen here) would be absorbed no matter. Speculation, but the point is that non-heme iron works well for this protocol, and heme iron from meat tends to feed hemoglobin. Consume all the meat you want, but it's a confounding factor during the protocol and IMO best to cut back during the week you run the protocol. You'll have a harder time understanding the "true" result if you have red meat every day and your hemoglobin goes up (but so does ferritin).

If the protocol doesn't work and it wasn't due to the things that can hold you back like vitamins C or D, then we look into HFE genetic mutations. C282Y hemochromatosis is absolutely going to nullify the protocol. In fact, C282Y is a defect in the BMP/SMAD pathway, and hepcidin isn't raised by iron (it is in inflammation though). H63D hemochromatosis will not derail the protocol. TMPRSS6 is another mutation that may derail the protocol, because TMPRSS6 mutations (of which there are many) govern the production of hepcidin. There is unfortunately a lot more to iron disorders than just C282Y; you would need a deep dive in your HFE gene data from a service. (I and my co-admin used to do these in my Iron Disorder Study Group on FB but very quickly became overwhelmed, so we don't do one-by-one SNP analyses any more).

Hope this helps.