For me the main reasons I thought of an iron overload:
- I have on and off liver and pancreas pain, occassionally, short, not too bad, like a twitch and sometimes days or weeks in between without any. I already had prior to the diet. Sometimes got better, sometimes worse again. But since healing takes time, I just gave it some more time, not really bothered. Had a break of the pain for a month or so last November, it came back in a time when I ate more cooked meet than ever before.
- Also some on and off diabetic symptoms. Though these usually appeared when I for example included rice in my diet. I would pretty fast get vision problems, nerve pain, weight gain etc. Or sometimes having nerve pain from drinking freshly juiced organic oranges. I mean to some degree my body might have been sensitive to it because of longterm fruit and sugar etc restriction. But still, the degree to which I was sensitive to it, ws suspicous, especially because I suspected to heal on the diet, including the diabetic and pancreatic symptoms. On the other side, when eating a little bit of bread, potatoes, rice etc. several days in a row and I'd then get diabetic symptoms I didn't consider it too suspicious for a long time, because I knew from people in such forums, that they'd even react on such foods or vegetables immediately. But would they get diabetic symptoms? As far as I remember they rather get intolerance or digestive symptoms.
- The day I had the most pain was when I ate clay which is an iron bomb and raw beef heart, which is high in iron especially when taking its relatively low amount of copper and zinc into consideration, to balance the iron out. And that pain started bothering me.
- I didn't crave raw beef muscle meat since quite some time.
- And what I kind of use as my final proof (which I value higher than a blood test) is the following: Eating raw organs is not a big deal for me, I even sometimes really liked eating raw kidney, even when it wasn't that fresh and had a little unpleasent pissy smell. Anyway, (raw) spleen.. which is loaded with iron, I think it is most abundant there. I had a very specific disaffection when eating it. I mean I like the look, it reminds me of berry sorbet and blood mixture or so. Kind of asthetic. The texture is also nice. And still eating it felt weird. Tried it a few times, each time organic, grass fed, very fresh.
Back then I thought, well I don't have access to raw blood, shouldn't I be missing iron and therefore find eating spleen satisfying?
It was weird to me. And after a few months, liver pain getting worse (again), sleep getting worse (again) in a very particular way that I could distinguish from sleeping issues I had before and therefore couldn't solve like before. Occasional nerve pain, sometimes worse. Worse skin. And maybe sth else as well which I don't remember right now. Looking worse, of corse.
Puuh, that was pretty detailed, sorry.
Anyway, I decreased my red meat and organ consumption. Some raw liver for copper. The occasional liver pain / twitch is rare by now. Symptomwise it is bearable, I've been through worse, but looking bad and feel exhausted because of the terrible sleep.
I would love to donate blood, but I am in a foreign country at the moment and I am not allowed to donate blood here yet. In 6 months they say.. Only way might be getting to know a nurse or similar and doing it privately, haha. Or going to a doctor for blood work and hope he will do the right measurements but I can't be sure that he'd do so and I anyway don't consider blood work to be always correct. Too many involved factors and things we don't know about yet. Additionally I'd need to hope that he'd prescribe me to donate blood. But I can't even know for sure if my current health insurance would pay for all that. And at the moment I don't wanna risk spending all the money by myself without even knowing if the doctor would measure the right stuff or if the measures are valid.
Little bit annoying situation
![Grin ;D](https://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
Might try the castor oil thing, though I don't understand how it should work if it is wrapped in plastic. Or did I get it wrong?
Otherwise just getting through it by lowering dietary iron intake. But might take very long. Let's see.