Iron and Ferritin?

[Butterfly]

Are iron and ferritin levels the same thing? My endo says my iron levels look good in my bloodwork, so he kind of brushed off the need to check ferritin. Are they one and the same?

[VictoriaG]

My iron levels were always within the normal range (according to the lab reports), but my ferritin was not. I definitely don't know enough to explain this, but my experience indicates they are not the same. I have had to specifically request that my ferritin levels be checked, because otherwise, like you, I'm just told my iron is fine.

[Lucy4]

Here is a somewhat technical, but interesting read about ferritin from Wikipedia.
It's a protein which regulates iron on a molecular level, and keeps iron from forming the free radicals which cause so much disease.
Article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferritin)

[Butterfly]

Thank you for that article, I will read it now.

I called my endo back and said I wanted to be more assertive in finding out what's wrong with me. His assistant just called to let me know they keep some of the blood from the lab for 90 days, so they are going to go back to mine and test the ferritin and a few other things I requested.

The reason I wanted to post this is to encourage everyone to push onward and get the answers YOU want. You are paying for the testing and it's YOUR body. If I'm not happy with an answer or a doctor, I try again until I am. :)

I'll definitely be interested to get the ferritin results back!!

[KPE]

I work in a lab and test my iron and ferritin about every month. My ferritin has been running between 10 and 13 ng/ml which is on the low side of a normal range of 10-291. My iron has been running in the normal range and my hemoglobin is around 14 now. When my hair loss began a year ago, my iron was so low it didn't even read on our instrument and my hemoglobin was 10.2. I began taking Slow FE and my ferritin got up to 28 but that's the highest I've seen it. I was trying to get my ferritin up to around 70 because that's what I had read somewhere that it needed to be for hair regrowth. My hair loss seems to have slowed down a little but my hair is very thin right in front and I can see my scalp when I lift my long bangs up. I have been taking synthroid for 12 years since the birth of my first child and never had as much hairloss as I do now. I attributed it to my low iron but my hair still looks worse than it ever has- I used to want my hairdresser to thin my hair out with shears! I am going to start taking my iron more regularly and hope that the extra iron spills over to my iron stores or ferritin- hopefully this will work. I also thought it might be due to stress because I stay that way all the time!