Iron Tablets

[Lesley58]

had iron tablets through all 3 pregnancy's and suffered bad constipation now I am 59 Doc has put me on iron tablets Ferrous Sulphate 200mg twice a day but they give me the most horrendous runs even though I take them after meals as directed, the Doc says there isn't any different iron tablets I can take or a lower dose he suggested just taking 1 a day but within 2 to 3 hours of taking 1 I violently poo pale grey liquid like a jet wash sometimes I don't even make it to the loo on time as I get very short notice I cannot live my life like this has anyone any suggestions that I can try even if it means me buying something different than what he has prescribed sorry for the "too much information" but I am now desperate to sort something out myself as I am so tired due to lack of iron

What's your iron level? If it's truly low enough that you are feeling unwell, personally I would probably suffer through two weeks or so of iron tablets just to try to get your levels up a bit. My iron was fine in pregnancy, but after I had my first, it went down to 6! I felt horrible and was blacking out and could barely walk. The miserable digestive symptoms were worth suffering with just to feel a bit better sooner.

But there are loads of other options. You can try a gentle iron tablet. Solgar does one that I think is made with ferrous fumerate, which doesn't bother me. If you need to take a higher dose initially, I would take the tablets you're on for a bit and then switch to these. You can also add in Floradix (Floravital is the high potency form, it has 19 mg of iron per daily dose, you can probably take a bit more than this if you need to). Then vitamin C and spatone at every meal, 3 times a day.

When I was really anaemic, I took the iron tablets, plus Floravital (twice a day as recommended) plus spatone and 500 mg vitamin C 3 times a day at meals. That got my iron up pretty quickly. The ferrous sulfate did make me constipated and feel ill, but I only took it about a week or two and then just did the rest by itself. That worked for me. It depends on the cause of your anaemia and how severe it is how well it will work, but there are other options and there's no harm trying them if you are truly so ill you can't keep doing what you're doing.