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  4. Brother with severe liver disease from long-term alcoholism. Has to have an iron panel done. They did some of the tests. He has an iron saturation of 91 percent. Holy moly. Iron, 230. Transferrin, 180. ABC, 3.4, HUB, sorry this is scrolling down, 13.6. HIT, 37.6, MCV, 109.4. I think MCHC, 39.6, RDW, 14.7. He has not had a drink for 13 months.

Brother with severe liver disease from long-term alcoholism. Has to have an iron panel done. They did some of the tests. He has an iron saturation of 91 percent. Holy moly. Iron, 230. Transferrin, 180. ABC, 3.4, HUB, sorry this is scrolling down, 13.6. HIT, 37.6, MCV, 109.4. I think MCHC, 39.6, RDW, 14.7. He has not had a drink for 13 months.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, you need to get this iron out. I don’t see a ferritin level but given he has alcoholism, I expect that to be very high. The alcohol has probably been accelerating the absorption of iron. As you know, it does that, and this is potentially serious. So I would. If he’s working already with the hematologist, I’ve yet to see one that ignores an iron saturation of 91 percent especially if the ferritin is really high, which I would expect it to be here. And he would need to do a therapeutic phlebotomy and possibly even chelation depending on what his … I see that the ABC was RBC, so I was wondering about that. Since RBC is low, he may not qualify for phlebotomy because that would put him into further anemia. And this is a problem with alcoholics. So they might have to do chelation protocol, which is riskier, especially with liver disease. So it’s a tricky case. I feel for you, Julie. But see if you can help by getting a ferritin and getting a hematologist to pay attention to this because it’s important.

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