What is Anemia?

Recently I’ve been discussing on our sister user group Yahoo - Kidney_transplants about anemia and what might bring it on / reverse it’s effects.    I thought addressing it hear on kidney in the news, might be a useful exercise.

Today starts a 4 part series on Anemia, what it is, what causes it and how to fix it!

For those of you who don’t know, Anemia is defined as: a deficiency in hemoglobin – a molecule in your Red Blood Cells (RBC’s) that carry Oxygen.  What’s happening is the RBC’s (Red Blood Cells) travel to the lungs where they pick up and store Oxygen in the molecule Hgb.  The RBC’s then delivery that to the other parts of you body.

Normally, the human body should have the following levels for men and women (For our international readers I’ve placed it in mmol/liter)

W 12.0-16.0 g/dl  -   7.4 – 9.9 mmol/l

M 13.0-18.0 g/dl –    8.1 – 11.2 mmol/l

When you fall below these levels you are considered Anemic – *However* just being slightly Anemic is not a bad thing (We’ll discuss this later).   The things you should be on the lookout for is continued long-term decreases or rapid decreases in your Hgb levels.

As we discussed, Hgb is a molecule inside the RBC – so having too little Hgb can bring on Anemia – so too can a decrease in size of the RBC or quantity of your RBC’s.  That’s why your doctor asks you to do a blood test and looks at your HGB and RBC counts.

Now back to the discussion of Anemia…

A shortness of hemoglobin means your body (Brain, muscles, organs etc) don’t get the normal amount of oxygen they need to do their job.

This shortness of hemoglobin can translate to the following:

• Shortness of breath
• Weakness when working out
• Malaise (being tired)
• Muscle weakness
• Lack of endurance

So often in the news we hear about athletes doping, or using medications to increase the amount of hemoglobin in their blood.  You see, not only can a decrease in Hgb(Hemoglobin) make you tired and slow, but an increase can impact your muscle strength, endurance, speed – in a lot of ways it can give you “Super Human Energy / Strength”.   A good way to think of it is like a car engine:

Car’s on normal gas (Hgb) run normally – but the higher octane gases run even more efficiently (Over 100 Octane is called racing fuel).  Lower Octane gas can make our cars sputter and stall – very similar to our bodies on Hgb!

So in summary, Oxygen helps our bodies (car) run efficiently.   RBC’s transport the Oxygen to our entire body (Brain, muscles and other organs).   The RBC’s have a special place they store the Oxygen on its trip to the body – that being Hgb.  One reason why we might become Anemic is becuase the RBC’s don’t have enough storage space (HGB).   Without this “storage space” or Oxygen, the RBC’s dont’ carry enough Oxygen to the body and the body starts to slow down.

So I’ve tossed a lot of stuff at you today – take some time to digest what we’ve discussed and next time we’ll look at how HGB and RBC’s are created and those triggers are.   From their we’ll move on to what might cause Anemia and how to reverse it.

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Michael

images above from ADAM