LuckyIronLife

ALT Ontario Health guidelines up until now had a very low threshold for what your ferritin levels should be in order for it to be considered iron deficiency. Adults would need to have ferritin as low as 10-15 µg/l before being flagged for intervention. However, the new guidelines increases the threshold to be 30 µg/l. µg/l = micrograms per liter

ALT Symptoms of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia are often dismissed as less critical than what they are, simply because the baseline for what qualified as a deficiency has been so low. This oversight can lead to insufficient screening and treatment, leaving many struggling with the symptoms without a clear path forward, or worse, their symptoms are undermined and ignored until it is far too late.

ALT "We want to see this problem be addressed earlier because it's totally correctable, which means the problem is unnecessary," Sholzberg said. "It's a structural problem and we're structurally solving it." Dr. Michelle Sholzberg is the Director of Hematology at the University of Toronto who advocated for this change for years along with many industry stakeholders

ALT About 40 per cent of women and girls, or people with the biological capacity for reproduction, in Ontario have iron deficiency. It's a problem that's been talked about for a while, Sholzberg says, but a recent surge in women's health research has built up data to support the advocacy people like her have been engaged in. "It's one of the most satisfying things to treat in all of hematology — and I've heard other care providers say in all of medicine — because you can fix it."