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  4. In the iron deficiency section, you recommend iron supplementation dosages for different stages of iron deficiency. Can you provide us with reference ranges for each stage? What do you consider mild, moderate, and severe?

In the iron deficiency section, you recommend iron supplementation dosages for different stages of iron deficiency. Can you provide us with reference ranges for each stage? What do you consider mild, moderate, and severe?

Chris Kresser: I’m just kind of doing this off the top of my head, so I reserve the right to edit this later, but I would say severe would be in the alert range, like if you get a LabCorp report back and it’s highlighted in red and it’s alert, that would be, like, ferritin below 5 or 8, I think, and iron saturation below, I can’t remember the exact ranges for their alert, but both LabCorp and Quest have a kind of alert value, so I would say that would be severe. Moderate would be still in the low range, like Adam asked about ferritin of 15. I would say that’s, depending on whether it’s a female or male and whether the female is menstruating or not, that would be more in the moderate category. And then mild might be all of the other iron markers are normal and ferritin is at 20 or 25, perhaps, for a menstruating female or for something like that. I can maybe take a look because it is a little more complicated. It depends on whether it’s a male or female, menstruating or non-menstruating female, but it’s not really set in stone. It’s more empirical, based on what I just said.

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