How The Body Gets Its Iron
Most of the iron in the body is hoarded and recycled by the reticuloendothelial system, which breaks down aged red blood cells. However, people lose a small but steady amount by sweating and by shedding cells of the skin and the mucosal lining of the gastrointestinal tract. The total amount of loss for healthy people in the developed world amounts to an estimated average of 1 mg a day for men, and 1.5–2 mg a day for women with regular menstrual periods. People with gastrointestinal parasitic infections, more commonly found in developing countries, often lose more.
This steady loss means that people must continue to absorb iron. They do so via a tightly regulated process that under normal circumstances protects against iron overload.
Read more about this topic: Human Iron Metabolism
Famous quotes containing the words body and/or iron:
“And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“When I say artist I don’t mean in the narrow sense of the word—but the man who is building things—creating molding the earth—whether it be the plains of the west—or the iron ore of Penn. It’s all a big game of construction—some with a brush—some with a shovel—some choose a pen.”
—Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)