Am I just getting old or is something wrong with me?

[Waitinginmycar]

Is this just the aging process, is this how it happens?
I am in my mid forties and have always enjoyed good health and have been in reasonable/good shape but I realise my health has really deteriorated over the past few years.

Over the past years this has happened:

• teeth have gone bad, I floss every day and obv brush twice with fluoride toothpaste but I suddenly have so many cavities! Two of my teeth chipped out of nowhere, pieces fell out!
• I have really bad dizzy spells out of nowhere, just whilst sitting down or doing nothing. I sometimes wonder if this could get worse, at the moment it only lasts around ten seconds but what if it gets even worse for example while I am driving? I fainted once about two years ago but never since.
• constantly wiped out. Walking up the stairs has me embarrassingly winded

• BMI lower end of normal
• Private GP thought my iron was very low and said iron stores were totally depleted, I never got around to getting the treatment as the iron infusion was £900. Checked again with NHS gp after 18 months and they said it was low but normal
• Hormones normal, not near menopause yet.

I saw the NHS gp one year ago and they said this is just the ageing process, this how it feels to get older. Is it? Is it feeling dead tired all the time and seeing your body gradually deteriorate? Feeling slightly panicked!

OP,
With Floadix I took the full scoop twice a day and within 10 days could feel a massive difference.

I had been falling asleep mid afternoon and would be out cold for up to an hour.

The difference was amazing for me.

Tbh I took floradix once and it did nothing for me other than stain my teeth badly.

Get some iron tablets from the chemist. I had my iron levels checked recently - GP said they were within the normal range. But when I actually asked for numbers they were literally just over at 11 I think, a few months before I'd had them tested and they were 47. So 11, clearly isn't normal for me. It took around 6 weeks to feel a difference on 600mg a day of ferrous sulfate.

Floradix doesn't have a huge amount of iron in iirc - didn't work for me. It's better for maintaining iron levels rather than getting levels up asap.

Aging has affected me badly. Extremely tired and achy. I can't exercise much nowadays yet "hungry" all the time.

For this and other reasons I kept coming back to was I prediabetic? Anyway I started eating lower carb (and really cut back on bread - it's no longer a staple for me.) It's improved my teeth.
I have started eating loads of green veg and some beans (but I do also eat more eggs/ meat than previously.) Mostly no snacking.

After initial bumpy start I feel miles better energy wise.

And yes I've been low in iron before it's awful: get supplements watch out if you drink tea / milk, they hinder iron absorption so separate that from your supplement/ iron rich food.

OP I hope you are okay.. this is a lot to take in..

great helpful advice 🌸

Blimey, what happened there then? The wide differences in mgs per tablet is because they're different kinds of iron, with different absorption.

Say you want to absorb 25/30mgs a day. If you take 30mgs of basic ferrous sulphate (the cheapest, that cause all those symptoms), you'll only actually absorb about 3-5 mgs.

So you need to take a 325mgs tablet, to get just over 100mgs of elemental iron, of which you'll absorb maybe 20-30%.

Apologies if my sums are off, still sick!

If you take something which is more BIO-AVAILABLE, easier and more complete absorption, you need less of it, and a big factor in less symptoms.

100mgs of elemental iron in your gut is noticeable.

So stop obsessing about actual numbers if they're confusing, and just look at whether they're described as high potency, or gentle on the stomach.

Also do not take anywhere near:

Tea, coffee
Eggs
Spinach, chard or rhubarb,
Peas, lentils aka legumes incl. soy protein
High fibre, bran etc
Calcium esp dairy

But WITH vit c , on an empty stomach.

Honestly, it's not difficult, and makes a huge difference.

Horrified to hear that iron levels are sil being dismissed in UK, such a debilitating issue, so easy to fix.

NHS gp won't test for vitamin D and won't prescribe what I had previously either. They say it's standard NHS practise and nothing they will do.

It's NHS standard practice to move away from prescription Vitamin D since it can be bought over the counter, but it's postcode lottery for testing and care for it to get to that point.

I had a full nutritional panel done in the winter of 2019 after my health had badly deteriorated alongside inflammation and hormone testing (previous diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency, but it turned out while I had a lot of the symptoms, my ovaries are fine). I was put on prescription Vitamin D again, and then I had a nurse practitioner go over what I needed to do after the prescription which was really helpful for me. Before I'd just had GPs tell me to take a multivitamin, but as the nurse explained, those are often too low - even the 100% ones - especially for those who've had previous significant deficiencies.

The science of supplementing is still pretty new in many areas and it's going to be pretty individual depending on a person's needs - for Vitamin D, the current recommendation to my knowledge is that for every 1000 IUs of D, 100 mcg of K2 helps with absorption (like Vitamin C with iron) with up to 4x those amounts generally considered safe without medicial supervision, beyond that it might be more risky, but the research is still on-going.

A full nutritional blood panel could help you know what you're currently low in, it's amazing how just being what's labeled as 'borderline' can mess with everything, and hopefully that along maybe with some reconditioning exercises (with the dizziness, maybe look into POTS reconditioning exercises - reclined cardio and strength training may be safer for a bit while working up to upright cardio or swimming with strength training) could be enough to get you feeling better.

monitormyhealth.org.uk

The above is an NHS initiative where you can pay for certain blood screening at a fairly low cost. Its about £29 to get vitamin d checked. However for £47 you can get that plus thyroid, diabetes, cholesterol.

I've used this service and medi-checks when I've found it hard to get the GP to agree to bloods then sent results across to my GP and asked for an appointment to discuss.
Quite often medichecks for example have written that I need to see a GP as my ferritin and haemoglobin were low or my bloods indicated underactive thyroid etc and I've found that the GP has then treated me properly.

It's not right we should have to do this BUT if you can't get to the bottom of why you feel so awful, it's worth it to pay for bloods
imo.

@LizzieSiddal I had Ferrous Sulfate from the pharmacist. It was the same as someone would be prescribed by a doctor.

You're getting confused between the 14mg supplements to help prevent deficiency which you can just pick up from the shelf yourself and pay for at the till, and an OTC (which means over the counter ) strength which you have to ask the pharmacist for because it's stored...guess where? ...

Before I'd just had GPs tell me to take a multivitamin, but as the nurse explained, those are often too low - even the 100% ones - especially for those who've had previous significant deficiencies.

@BiBabbles Yep, and the NHS would still provide a high-strength vitamin D supplement to someone with a diagnosed deficiency who needs it, because as you say, the strength someone with a deficiency needs is stronger than ones people can get themselves I think.

I was tested last year and put on a loading dose of both D and B12 because both were off the scale low, so they do indeed test and prescribe when its needed!

I am 48

Lots of essential vitamins and minerals needed for normal health. Our body does not always produce enough. I would ask GP for full blood test. Iron, D3, B12 if low can all make you feel exhausted and low calcium will be bad for teeth. Take supplements. I get mine from Holland and Barrett through post. They often do a buy one tub get one tub for 1 penny.