I would like to address one of the most common medical issues, which at the same
time is also the least discussed and treated one: chronic weakness, or in other words –
Anemia.
Many people feel chronic weakness and fatigue and turn to their family doctor. In
most cases, the doctor's response is this or that kind of "virus", with a
recommendation for a rest. With this usually ends the medical discussion of this very
common phenomenon, which is neither defined nor diagnosed, and therefore, is
unsuccessfully and inefficiently treated.
One of the most common causes for this chronic weakness and fatigue is anemia,
which has the inaccurate definition of mere "blood deficiency". As is the case with
many of the medical terms, anemia too is a collective term for a number of blood
pathologies, originating from different root causes.
Anemia manifests as poor supply of oxygen and nutrients essential to all bodily
tissues. This causes various symptoms, such as: fatigue and lack of energy, dizziness,
pale complexion, headaches, breathing problems, palpitations, lack of concentration
as well as decreased cognitive function, such as memory and thought ability, sleeping
problems, moodiness and depression, numbness of the limbs, abdominal pain, nausea,
constipation, clumsiness and lack of flexible movement, jaundice, colour change of
urine and stools, gallstones, ulcers and halted thriving in babies and toddlers. While
many tend to belittle anemia and "live with it" for many years, eventually, it means
constant starvation of the body and persistent deterioration of bodily functions, until
the system collapses and a serious disease erupts.
The problem intensifies due to the undiagnosed anemia by the medical establishment,
even though it is easily detectible in a regular blood work. In any case, the medical
establishment lacks the proper tools to deal and efficiently treat anemia. Usually the
medical establishment sends off the patient with an iron supplement prescription, but
almost all of these supplements are synthetic, and therefore, cannot be properly
absorbed in the gut. Moreover, the iron deficiency is usually not the main problem to
begin with and so in many cases, prescribing iron supplements can even cause harm
due to iron overload.
Firstly, it needs to be clarified that anemia does not always manifest as merely "blood
deficiency". There are many cases, in which RBC count or the number of hemoglobin
molecules does not indicate a significant deficiency, if any, in blood quantity. In most
cases, the examination of the blood test ends here, and the physician sends off the
patient telling them "all is OK". However, counting the number of hemoglobin chains
implies nothing about the quality of the RBCs. The number of the RBCs can even be
more or less within the normal range, but the contents of the blood cell might be
lacking or damaged, and this nullifies that red blood cell efficiency. This is illustrated
in an example of a letter being sent to its address: if the envelope does not contain an
actual letter, it is of no use.
Each red blood cell must contain a certain equal amount of iron and protein. In most
cases, the problem lies in fact in a chronic protein deficiency (and the reasons for that
need to be summed up in a separate article), and this is why iron supplements
prescriptions not only do not help the problem, but rather worsen it. As said, there are
several kinds of anemia, for example: microcytic anemia (characterized by iron
deficiency based on chronic protein deficiency), macrocytic anemia (characterized by
vitamin B12 deficiency) and pernicious anemia (characterized by deficiency in both
protein and B12 and is common in cases of long term undiagnosed and untreated
anemia).
Therefore, in order to diagnose the deeper pathology of blood quality, we cannot
simply make do with the results of the hemoglobin and RBC tests, merely counting
hemoglobin chains and RBC membranes. We need to continue and further check the
results of other parameters included in the blood test, both in its chemistry chapter and
the CDC chapter. Unfortunately, in most cases not enough attention is being paid to
these parameters, there is no crosschecking of the data and often most of these
essential parameters, such as the amount of protein within the RBC (represented by
ferritin) are not even included in the list of blood tests issued by the physician to the
lab.
In this way, a pathology of blood quality goes undiagnosed for months and years, and
overtime can become serious, manifesting clear symptoms of anemia – even though
the quantity of blood remains marginally normal.
In this article, we have discussed how either blood quantity deficiency or blood
quality deficiency, or both, can cause anemia. Merely checking the quantity of blood
cells or hemoglobin chains does not suffices, and more often than not, the prevalent
and difficult problem lies in blood quality deficiency.
What are its causes? This will be discussed in article no. 2 of this most important
topic.
