To ask if my blood test results are okay?

[SteampodLove]

I’ve been feeling really tired lately, have lost A LOT of hair in the past year, been having heart palpitations and yeh, just generally feeling not great.

Had bloods done on Friday and just got the results through on the NHS app, everything has come back as ‘satisfactory’

It’s my thyroid and ferritin levels that I guess I’m a bit worried about, I’ve read that for hair loss prevention/ new hair growth, you need a ferritin level of 80+ mine looks like it’s only 34? I do already take a liquid iron supplement though so I’m not sure what more I can do?

Are these results okay or do you think I should go back to the GP?

It says my B12 level is 636 ng/ L

It says my ferritin level is 34 ug/L

It says my thyroid is serum TSH level is 1.19 mu/L

All of my bloods came back just as satisfactory. I’ve looked at previous years and they’ve been ‘good’ and my levels have been higher.

I guess if the above are all okay than I am need to look into Peri Menopause. But I’m really not convinced about my ferritin levels!

Your ferritin is ‘normal’ in that it’s within the labs normal reference range, and nice guidelines say treatment is only needed if below 30. However, for healthy hair growth ferritin needs to be above 70, and many women feel better up towards the 100 level, so buy some high strength iron bisglycinate (better bioavailability and fewer gastrointestinal side effects) and take on alternate days (Google why alternate days works better to boost levels) and work on increasing it yourself. Liquid iron isn’t very high so will take ages to have much effect.

Your B12 is fine. Did they check Folate too? Do you take Vitamin D over winter? Many areas don’t test for this any longer as most of the U.K. is deficient over winter, so advice is just to take supplements. Low Vit D can also contribute to hair loss.

I’d either take iron tablets or increase your iron as 34 is within normal levels, but is fairly low still. My teen DD recently had an iron infusion and they’ve said to aim for ferritin of 100. Also they tested her iron sat which confirmed the deficiency. Presume they didn’t test that for you. Her platelets were always high too, reactive to the low iron.

Thanks both.

Going to order some higher strength iron tablets and see how I get on!

I have actually started taking Vit D tablets in the last month, but doubt they’ll have had an effect yet!