iron levels are mentioned (by Preston Estep’s Mindspan) as being particularly bad for the brain (iron increases dementia rates!). Iron increases ROS in the cell by catalyzing the Fenton reaction. As long as one is not feeling too fatigued from it, I don’t think that having low-moderate iron levels is a bad thing
I have been near-vegan for many years (though I occasionally eat eggs) and my iron/ferritin levels are both well within the normal range. I’ve posted my bloodwork here—https://www.crsociety.org/topic/17558-all-my-lab-results-here/#comment-38821. My main health issue is low bone density, though this will not affect quality of life for several decades (and zoledronate is a pro-longevity intervention for this). I am now taking Vitamin K2 and may consider medications for this in the future, if needed, and we will almost certainly have lab-grown salmon by then.
Bryan Johnson (vegan except for collagen peptides) also just posted a tweet about his recent results, which seem near-optimal (ofc, he is also much more disciplined about this than most people).
As a result, men in Crete have a biological age about five years younger. They also have ferritin levels about half the average level in Zutphen, which is consistent with their significantly lower risk of stroke, cancer, diabetes, and heart attack.
According to Japan’s 2006 National Health and Nutrition Survey, people in Japan and Okinawa also have low ferritin, and a large proportion are iron deficient (50 percent of women of childbearing age have ferritin below 20 ng/mL). Japanese also have low hemoglobin.
The World Health Organization defines anemia as hemoglobin levels below 12 g/dL for women and 13 g/dL for men. This difference in minimum acceptable value for men and women is arbitrary, simply because women tend to have lower levels—not because a value between 12 and 13 g/dL is unhealthy for men. The average hemoglobin levels for older Japanese (including centenarians) are often even lower than this minimum. In a publication from 1996, average hemoglobin levels in healthy Japanese centenarians were reported to be 11.5 g/dL for women and 11.8 g/dL for men. We can’t be certain that their hemoglobin has always been so low, but we can be sure that their diets and lifestyles haven’t changed much, and these values are lower than those measured in elderly people in Mindspan Risk countries.
Estep recommends ferritin of 10 to 40 ng/ml (mine is 89)...
Animal studies show that high iron feeding increases body iron stores and shortens lifespan, and adding tea to the diet reduces body iron and increases lifespan. In late 2015, a study of people who ate a Mediterranean-style diet (characterized mainly by less meat and more fish) had larger brains and key brain structures and less atrophy than frequent meat eaters. The difference between the two groups that ate the most and least meat was equivalent to five years of brain aging. And of course there are the Mindspan Elite and their lower body iron stores and lower rates of Alzheimer’s. Taken together, this evidence is very strong, but these studies don’t show direct cause, as a clinical trial does. That’s been done too. In 1991 the iron chelator drug deferoxamine* (which binds iron and renders it inactive) was shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
iron levels are mentioned (by Preston Estep’s Mindspan) as being particularly bad for the brain (iron increases dementia rates!). Iron increases ROS in the cell by catalyzing the Fenton reaction. As long as one is not feeling too fatigued from it, I don’t think that having low-moderate iron levels is a bad thing
I have been near-vegan for many years (though I occasionally eat eggs) and my iron/ferritin levels are both well within the normal range. I’ve posted my bloodwork here—https://www.crsociety.org/topic/17558-all-my-lab-results-here/#comment-38821. My main health issue is low bone density, though this will not affect quality of life for several decades (and zoledronate is a pro-longevity intervention for this). I am now taking Vitamin K2 and may consider medications for this in the future, if needed, and we will almost certainly have lab-grown salmon by then.
Bryan Johnson (vegan except for collagen peptides) also just posted a tweet about his recent results, which seem near-optimal (ofc, he is also much more disciplined about this than most people).
https://mobile.twitter.com/bryan_johnson/status/1615759800247422976
https://www.crsociety.org/topic/11136-nutrition-and-supplementation-for-vegetarians/ has a good guide on the deficiencies that I’m more concerned about (taurine and carnosine being among them). Much of crsociety.org is vegan.
Estep recommends ferritin of 10 to 40 ng/ml (mine is 89)...