Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Oxygen, Energy, And The Hidden Cost Of Deficiency
Feeling wiped out, lightheaded, or strangely clumsy isn’t just a bad day—it can be anemia quietly starving your body of oxygen. Joe shares a candid look at how anemia showed up during cancer treatment and the exact steps that brought energy back without leaning on a long list of meds. We unpack the difference between iron deficiency, B12 and folate issues, and chronic disease anemia so you can stop guessing and start fixing the right problem.
We walk through the labs that matter—CBC, ferritin, transferrin saturation, B12, and folate—and how to read them in context so inflammation doesn’t mislead you. From there, we go practical: building iron-smart meals with beans, lentils, leafy greens, and citrus; when animal sources help; and how a simple vitamin C pairing can dramatically improve non-heme iron absorption. Joe shares real tactics that worked, like hot lemon water with blackstrap molasses, timing iron away from calcium, and spacing coffee or tea to avoid tannin roadblocks. If you’re plant-forward or managing side effects from therapy, you’ll hear how to cover gaps without compromising other goals.
We also dig into lifestyle levers that move the needle: hydration to keep blood flowing, moderating alcohol, and double-checking your meds for nutrient interactions. For tougher cases, we talk about when to consider ESAs or transfusion and how to avoid becoming dependent on quick fixes when your body can recover with support. The goal is simple: restore oxygen delivery, clear the brain fog, warm up those hands and feet, and get your strength back with a plan you understand.
If this helped clarify your next steps, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a boost, and leave a quick review so more people can find it. Your story might be the tip someone else needs to get their energy back.
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Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we're going to talk about anemia. And uh if you don't know, I'm still dealing with uh battling an aggressive cancer, and I'm possibly clear, I'm gonna find out hopefully tomorrow, um, which obviously won't mean anything if you're listening to this, but um it's possible that I'm gonna find out I'm cancer free very shortly. I'm hoping obviously that to be the case. Um, but one of the byproducts or collateral uh incidence of both the cancer and the treatment is anemia. I've been dealing with this now for, I don't know, going on three months, and I've been slowly making progress, but I really want to talk about it because as we're going through life and we discover sets of problems and we learn how to resolve them, that gives us the tools to help others, and so that's my hope. Um, is that I can help some of you possibly avoid anemia, and if you're dealing with it, uh how to resolve it without any drastic or toxic measures. So, first of all, what is anemia? Um, anemia is a medical condition characterized by a decrease in the number of red blood cells or a reduction of hemoglobin, which is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to the body's tissues, or both. In my case, it was both. Ultimately, what happens is you have an insufficient oxygen delivery to the body's organs and tissues, and you end up with a variety of symptoms. And I'm gonna let's talk about those. So, again, there can be any number of symptoms, but some of the common ones are fatigue, which I've been dealing with, um weakness, you know, hand strength has been diminished, um just doing normal tasks that normally I can do for you know hours, um, getting tired out pretty quickly. Um pale or yellowish skin. I I didn't deal with that. Probably maybe a little pale, I guess. Shortness of breath, again, that comes along with being tired. You get winded easily. Um, dizziness or lightheadedness. I've been dealing with that. It's crazy. Like I'm a little seasick or maybe even a little drunk without the without the fun part. Wake up in the middle of the night, head off to the bathroom, and you just next thing you know, you're slamming into a wall. You're like, whoa, I forgot how to walk. Um, cold hands and feet, that's been brutal. Um, even neuropathy, where I've been dealing with quite a bit, uh, which is numbness and sort of tingling pain that goes along with it. And really the worst part about it is I kind of forget where my feet are. So I find myself tripping over things, um, bumping into things. Um, and it's it's just been a real pain. You can also get chest pain and severe cases, which fortunately I haven't had, maybe a little teeny bit. Um, but yeah, this is really uh a potentially pretty serious deal. Now there's a lot of different types of anemia, so let's just get into that quickly. There's iron deficiency anemia, which is the most common type of anemia. So it's caused by a lack of iron, and that iron is essential for hemoglobin production. You know, blood has a metallic taste to it, if you ever have purposely or accidentally tasted blood. And um, I'm sure that's because of all the iron that's in it. Um vitamin deficiency, you can definitely um that can be a contributing factor or it can be a cause, a causal factor. Um, and typically vitamin B12 and folate are the instigators, so you gotta make sure you keep up on your B12 and folate, uh, which is kind of an issue because with cancer, B12 and folate are not necessarily your friend. So, this is one of these issues with me that you know, the double-edged sort of things um sometimes my diet can have issues, even though it's you know, keeping the cancer uh minimalized or gone. It also has its negative side effects that I have to deal with. Um anemia can come as a result of chronic disease, different infections, inflammatory diseases, or malignancies. We'll get into that a little bit, but even cancer can cause anemia. So think about it, you get a disease that um attacks your systems or uh weakens you in in a number of ways. Well, it makes sense that that one of the side effects of that might be uh diminishing uh ability to create these red blood cells and hemoglobin. Um there's also aplastic anemia, which is rare, but it's a situation where the bone marrow fails to produce sufficient blood cells. There's hemolytic anemia, um, and this is a result of premature destruction of red blood cells, which can come from various reasons, including autoimmune diseases, genetic disorders, and then there's sickle cell amemia, which is a genetic form of anemia, which is caused by abnormal hemoglobin that leads to misshaped or sickle-shaped red blood cells that can obstruct the blood flow. So figure that most red blood cells are round and they pass through your um your blood vessels pretty easily. Um they're sickle shaped, they can jam up, create like a log jam, and and have issues. Um, how do you how do you know if you know sometimes you're just feeling a little weak, or maybe you're feeling a little dizzy, or whatever you have one of these symptoms, how would you know that it's anemia? Um, you know, generally you're gonna take a blood test. And you know, with me, with my cancer treatment, I'm getting blood work done all the time. So that's actually how I learned that that's what I was dealing with. A doctor obviously figured it out and prescribed uh a folate vitamin B, but I have chosen not to take it, and I'm dealing with it with uh natural supplements and my diet instead. So we'll get into that a little bit. Um so treatment obviously if you have low iron as a primary cause of a problem, then we need to get iron in you. So um there's iron supplements, there are um B12 and folate supplements as as I described, which was prescribed for me. There are different medications and therapies for obviously chronic diseases or hemolytic anemia. In real severe cases, blood transfusions um or other procedures can be used to stimulate red blood cell production. Um, but really I think your diet is gonna be the best way forward um to deal with it. How are we gonna prevent anemia? You know, I look at a problem and you say, okay, well, if I got it, I gotta solve it. But if I don't have it or if I'm prone to it, you know, is there a way to mitigate my chance of getting it, or to, you know, just just maybe eliminate it? Um, you know, your diet is so important in your health. We talk about diet from every kind of angle, and I'm gonna keep talking about diet because I think it's you know one of the most important pillars. Your diet is your nutrition, it's your hydration, it's your um supplementation, it's your medication, it's it's so many things. So if your diet is well balanced and you've got enough iron and vitamins and other nutrients, um, you know, probably your best way to keep it from happening. Obviously, some of these factors like disease or treatments or you know, some of the other ways that you get it, um can sort of supersede that. But I think your diet is definitely if you have a strong diet and you have another contributing factor, I think you're less likely to get it at least, or you're not likely to get it as bad. So my anemia was really bad for a period of time, and it's been very slowly getting better. And I have been taking a supplement called fluoravite, and it has iron and B12 and a number of other herbs in it, and um, I take that twice a day. I was taking it originally once a day, but now I've upped it to twice a day, and then I drink um hot lemonade with black strap molasses, and that's another way to get iron into you. We're gonna talk about the whole vitamin C element to it. Um so this is, you know, what I've been doing at the very least, but your diet again is is really really huge. Blood loss um can be a problem, and it can contribute to nutritional deficiencies. So if somebody's a hemophiliac um or has a serious injury, loses a lot of blood, um, heavy menstruation, gastrointestinal bleeding, there's a lot of um reasons, even um you know, things like celiac disease or um Crohn's, you know, where you have uh dietary malabsorption, where your your body just isn't taking nutrients the way it's supposed to. Um, these can all be attributed to, you know, or or can can contribute to nutritional deficiencies. Uh vitamin B12 deficiency is definitely an issue. Um and this is one of these things that uh vegetarians and vegans deal with pretty regularly. So, you know, there's I have a primarily a vegan diet right now, and I have to be very careful about making sure I get enough of certain vitamins and minerals because some things just don't come in plants very well or very effective or very completely, and you just have to figure it out. You know, how am I gonna get this? You have to be aware of it, and you have to take um you have to take action that that overcomes this. Um folate deficiency is another, you know, nutritional deficiency, and this is important for DNA synthesis and cell division. And once again, um, you know, this can come from dietary problems, malabsorption, even alcoholism, and and uh consuming certain medications. So this is definitely um, you know, something to consider. Chronic diseases, this is something that we talked about a little bit, but um chronic inflammatory diseases can interfere with iron metabolism like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, uh, chronic infections. Um and so this can be contributing factors, cancer, most definitely, and and the effects of the treatments like chemotherapy. Um really attacks the bone marrow, sometimes a lot of blood loss and all of that. Bone marrow and blood disorders as well, um, can be certainly contributing to factor factors. Um you know, leukemia is a is a blood disease, and uh myelodispas splastic syndromes, which I don't know what it is, but uh myeliofibrosis can also disrupt blood cell production and lead to anemia. Um you know, autoimmune disorders. This is something that you hear a lot about lately. More and more autoimmune diseases where your body starts attacking itself. Um what a nightmare, right? I mean, you have this great immune system whose job it is to knock out pathogens, infections, and and do it, you know, take care of problems, and then all of a sudden it starts seeing your own healthy cells as a problem and starts attacking, and then you got to deal with that. Um, so these are these are all issues, obviously, inherited dise uh conditions like sickle cell disease, um, and there's a few others that really you can't do much about other than you know try to treat it. Certain infections can also be problematic this way. Um and even medications, you know, there's so many issues with our modern medical system in the sense of um, you know, we're so drug-centric. A doctor, you know, whatever problem you have, a doctor's gonna say, well, we're gonna prescribe a drug for it. And then that drug is gonna have you know an effect that you want, and maybe it has an effect that you don't want. And just about every drug, it seems, has a side effect. And like for example, um, you know, for the chemotherapy, the drugs that they gave me had side effects. One of the side effects was nausea, really bad nausea, horrible nausea. So bad sometimes I couldn't take a bite or something that normally would taste really great. And now it tastes like I can't even swallow it without wanting to throw up or without throwing up. So then they give you nausea medication. Okay, that stuff works pretty good, except for the next morning, you wake up and you've got the worst constipation you've ever had, and maybe a headache. Okay, so now I gotta go and deal with that. And then there's a side effect from that. The next thing you know, you're on you know, a dozen medications trying to mitigate side effects from the original medication, and I talk about this all the time. It's just this this constant um uh cocktail that people take. And that's why generally I try to avoid pharmaceutical drugs whenever possible, because even sometimes when a natural solution maybe isn't as effective, generally it's also not as toxic and it doesn't have the same side effects. So sometimes you got to deal with, you know, I could take a drug that's gonna really knock it out, but then I gotta go deal with this cascading um cycle of side effects and mitigating one, creating a second, mitigating that, creating a third, and just going on and on until finally you get it all enough under control, and you can, you know, get up to a dozen different medications for that. This is, I just think is really important. Um, something like acute blood loss, you know, that probably doesn't happen very often, but it could happen from trauma, could happen from surgery, internal bleeding, um, and and you can get anemia pretty quickly, but I suspect as the blood returns, you know, you don't have that same problem of why is my body not making the blood? It just lost a lot of it. Now your body's got to replenish it. So whether you get a transfusion or a partial transfusion, or you just wait until your body reproduces um, you know, that blood, you'll be all right, probably quicker. Um alcoholism is another thing, and probably other other drug addictions um can interfere with red blood cell production. And ultimately, you know, a lot of it really just has to do with um nutritional deficiencies. You know, when you consume a lot of alcohol, it attacks your body in so many ways, and you can affect your bone marrow, you can affect your organs' ability to process nutrients. And so, you know, you've got a lot of um a lot of issues this way. So let's get into um you know what do you do? Whether it's preventing or uh treating, basically it's the same kind of answer, right? If I don't have it and I do these things, it'll keep me from having it. If I do have it, I do these things, it'll make it go away. So let's just look at it that way. Prevention and treatment being a very similar situation. So we're looking at a combination of dietary strategies, lifestyle changes, regular health monitoring. So again, we're gonna come up with um maintain a balanced diet. If you know you're prone to anemia, then let's focus on making sure we get enough iron-rich foods in our diet. And um, you know, there's there's sources of heme iron, which are animal sources, non-heme iron, plant sources, um, red meat, poultry fish, shellfish, these are all great heme iron sources. Um non-heme iron sources, beans, lentils, spinach, you know, things like fortified breads and cereals. They're gonna put iron into it. I don't think that's really the best way. Nuts and seeds. Now, nuts and seeds are a double-edged sword. Um, they've got some good, they also have issues. So those are really uh primary sources of iron. And um, you know, dark green leafy vegetables, spinach, uh, collards, um broccoli. There's a lot of, you know, vegetables that do have iron in it, but really it's gonna be your proteins, is where it all comes from. And that's part of my problem is my diet is very protein lean, keeping the methionine out of my system. So um, I do take a medical food called hominix that has uh all the aminos besides methionine, and it also has iron and and a number of other vitamins and minerals. So I'm going at it from a lot of different directions, but my ability to eat a bunch of meat um has more harm to me than the good it would do in producing uh the red blood cells and hemoglobin. Vitamin B12 sources, once again, meat, fish, dairy, fortified foods. You know, if you're vegan or vegetarian, you might need to want to look into some supplements or um, you know, some different herbs and things like that where you can find it. Uh folate sources, leafy green vegetables, wonderful. Citrus fruits, beans, fortified grains. Again, I don't like the fortified grains, I don't like fortified bread, I don't like fortified um you know, cereals and all that. I just think it's ridiculous. We should just eat the foods that have what we need in them without somebody uh squirting some synthetic vitamins all over the place. If you take iron supplements, a lot of times it's uh you just don't absorb the same. You know, if you're eating spinach, if you're eating broccoli, if you're eating microgreens, you know, huge way to move forward. Microgreens are amazing. Um your body's working with the entire process, all the different chemicals and vitamins and minerals that are present in these vegetables, these fruits, these foods, and your body's good at taking them apart. When you just get it in a pill, and it's you know, the base molecules, for whatever reason, I your body doesn't absorb the same way. So we can do some things to help um enhance the absorption of iron. So there's a couple of things in my blood test. I get um, you know, the red blood cell count, platelet count, hemoglobin count, and all that, but I also have um the iron um in my in my system, and also um the ability to absorb it is somehow calculated through the blood test. So this is important because once again, you can do things both to uh stimulate or retard your body's ability to absorb things. And you know, I work with CBD a lot, and that is helpful. Uh working with nanoparticles, that's another way that you can uh increase bioavailability or absorption. There's lots of things that you can do, but with iron in particular, you mix it with vitamin C and it enhances uh the absorption. So, for example, I'm right now while I'm talking to you all, I'm drinking hot lemonade, which I grew the lemons, there's a little lime in it, and black strap molasses. Black strap molasses is um basically it's the bottom of the barrel when they're producing molasses, and it's full of all kinds of uh um vitamins, minerals, and especially iron. So when you pair the two together, the vitamin C from the lemon and lime and the blackstrap molasses, you have an increased amount of iron in your body can absorb it better. So just remember if you're eating these foods rich in vitamin or rich in iron, get some citrus, get some vitamin C. Take a vitamin C pill that or or some kind of uh tincture or elixir. Vitamin C is pretty well easily absorbed. So when you do take supplemental vitamin C, you can it absorbs pretty easily, so that's helpful. Um, another thing, try to avoid calcium intake when you're taking iron, because calcium can inhibit iron absorption. So we definitely want to take the vitamin C, and we want to avoid something like milk or um other foods that have a lot of calcium, and this is something that's important. Hydration, you know, this is something that we really want in all aspects of life. When your body is dehydrated, your blood gets thicker and doesn't flow as well, all the things don't work as well. When you are properly, and I know this because I'm sitting here getting blood drawn all the time now, and I watch other people, I look at my blood and see how it comes out, boop, goes right in there, and then you see other people's blood really super dark and slow and thick. You can tell you're like, wow, that's very different from my blood, and so this is something that's important, you know. I regular checkups is the thing that comes up. It it's something that you know. I I never went to the doctor before, and then I get cancer, and now I'm at the doctor every other week, you know, every other day sometimes. Um, depending on your situation and your lifestyle, you know, I think you can take care of yourself for the most part. But if you want to know what's going on in your blood, you gotta get it tested. Now you can go and get your own blood test. There's a lot of um uh clinics and and services that you can you can get your own blood tested. Um, things like this, I think, are easily done and and don't require uh doctor's orders for. So, you know, figure it out. You can go in and get a um just a physical, get some blood work done pretty easily and not too expensive. So maybe worth doing it a couple times a year, just see where you're at, especially as you're getting older. Um you know, alcohol consumption. We live in such a we have lived in an alcohol-centric world forever. Um, you know, since people drank it to avoid getting waterborne diseases. Um human beings love alcohol. And alcohol causes a lot of problems, and people are starting to figure it out a little bit better. But excessive alcohol can interfere with red blood cell production and contribute to nutritional deficiencies. So if you're gonna drink, you know, don't drink so much, and if you're gonna drink, make sure you're eating better. Um, I'm all about freedom. Do whatever you want to do, but just realize there are consequences to your actions. And when you do something like drinking alcohol, you gotta take um the appropriate actions to counteract the problems that the alcohol causes. Yeah, education, that's what this is all about. Um I'm all about let's teach each other these problems. I've I never dealt with this before in my life. Now I have it, I'm learning it, I'm solving it, and I want to help others. So that's important. Um you know, medications it's important. There's there's a a PDR physician's desk reference that pretty much has information on every medication, and it talks about things like side effects and um interactions with other medications. So whatever medicine you're on, research it. You know, look at that thing and look it up and see what all it does, see how it works. You know, we just listen to our doctor. The doctor says, take these pills three times a day, and you go to the damn pharmacy and get your pills and take them. You don't know what you're taking, you don't know what it's doing to you, you don't know why. None of it. We just do it. And I'm telling you, you know, knowledge is power. Um, if you're on prescriptions, learn what they do and learn what if it's gonna affect this in any way, shape, or form. Um, pregnant women, definitely monitor. You get take care of yourself, get your blood work done. You know, if you are anemic, it's gonna affect your baby, not just you. And so um I I believe pregnant women have a propensity to be anemic because you're gonna need more iron and folate along just for growing that kid, making a new life for him. You gotta you gotta up your intake of a lot of things. And so this is something that you want to be mindful of. Um if you're gonna take iron supplements, uh, read up on it. Again, you know, you want to take you wanna take it with some vitamin C, you know, do the things that are gonna make it work better. You'll know, you know, if you're feeling weak, if you're feeling dizzy, if you're feeling cold, if you're feeling neuropathy, chest pains, all these symptoms, and you're taking your iron pills and you don't get a difference. Well, guess what? It's probably not working. Um, so do the work. Do the research and go at it with your diet if you can. I think that's really definitely your best way. Um, you know, for you vegans, eat some more beans, legumes, citrus fruit. Um, you know, for non-vegans, you know, meat, fish, and dairy, you're gonna get all the things you need that way. Important. Something like a blood transfusion, I think, is really reserved for the most severe cases. And you know, I don't would never want to get a blood transfusion, I don't think I've ever had to, but it can be a quick solution. And um, if things are bad and and you're not responding to diet and some of the other uh less invasive procedures, maybe that's what you need. Um there are medications that stimulate uh erythro poesy poiesis, ESAs they call them. You know, medical terms. I don't know why they have to be so darn long and complicated, hard to uh I guess it makes the doctors get to be smarter than us, and because they know the fancy words, but anyways, um these might be prescribed for people that are dealing with things like kidney disease or going through like I am, chemotherapy. Um they had me on a drug that uh stimulated my bone marrow to produce cells. And I thought it was mostly for white blood cells, but uh my current doctor said, well, if you take these drugs and you don't need them, then your body might decide, well, I don't need to do that work that I was doing because I've got the drugs helping me out, and so you can sometimes go backwards by taking a drug that you don't really, really need. And so my first three rounds with UCI, they gave me this drug um after each round, and now I haven't taken it at all. Well, now I'm dealing with a little bit of anemia, and I'm resolving it, but I think it's overall probably better than had I continued taking this drug because what happens when my system decides, oh, I'm really not into making these cells anymore because I just used to getting this drug. Uh, I don't want to be dependent or or find myself in a really bad spot because now I need this drug to exist and stay healthy. Um iron blockers limit the consumption of calcium and tannins, tea and coffee um around iron-rich meals. So if you're gonna be eating meat or dairy or uh you know, some kind of iron-rich, maybe don't drink your coffee and tea along with it. It's just you know, you gotta you gotta balance things out. Um you know, I I think monitoring yourself as much as I was always generally against it in the past. Um, I think getting regular blood work done is not a bad idea for certain things. Um, you know, a basic panel, you can learn a lot. Now that I'm staring at blood work all the time, I'm like, well, shit. I if I have a spike or or am deficient in something, it's a pretty easy way to nip something in the bud before you actually feel it. Because I don't know about you, but by the time I feel something wrong with my body, it's already pretty well bad. And you know, this is a good way to nip it in the bud, get it before it becomes a big problem. Um, you know, your healthcare provider can work with you. Um, and and you know, frankly, just like everything, the lesson here is do your work, do your research, pay attention to how you are, how you feel, pay attention to what you're eating, pay attention to what you're drinking. You know, in this case, there's some very specific things to be mindful of. Pay attention to your the, you know, the the the symptoms that can show this. Get some blood work done. If you do, take a look at it, you know, see what's your red blood cell count, your hemoglobin, your platelets, your um your iron, your iron absorption, all those things. It can it can be a game changer. I don't think people generally die from anemia, but it can be a contributing factor for sure. And I'll tell you what, it's very inconvenient, very unpleasant, and um, it certainly does not help. So that's my thoughts on anemia. I really um, you know, hope you gain something from this. I think more than anything, let's live a balanced life. Um, be mindful of what we're doing, and uh do the research if you feel like there's something out of whack. This has been another episode of Healthy Living Podcast brought to you by Willow Creek Springs. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. I want to thank all of our listeners for making the show possible. Remember, we have uh uh subscription episodes, and you know you can support the show. If you like the show, tell people about it. The more we get listened to, the better it works. And really, it's just about building community, helping other people, and that's the way we do it. All right, have a good day. We will see you next time.
