Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. The weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.

How iron deficiency can affect your hair, skin and nails?

Well, guess what? It really doesn't most of the time.

Iron, in fact, has very little to do with hair, skin and nails.

And the truth is iron may not be as good for you as you think.

What I'm about to tell you may come as a big surprise.

But first of all, what is iron and why do we need it to some degree?

Well, iron, of course, is one of the most common elements on earth.

We need iron to make hemoglobin.

And most of you know that hemoglobin is the molecule in our red blood cells

that carries oxygen around to all of our tissue.

So without iron, you don't have any hemoglobin.

And obviously without hemoglobin, you're not going to carry oxygen around your body efficiently.

Now, iron has gotten a wrap since the 1950s as being far more important to your health than it actually is.

And this is another example that I like to use for my patients and use for you listening

where advertising frequently is the initial driver of a belief system that actually has very little to do with the truth.

And back in the 1950s, when television was first beginning,

one of the biggest sponsors of television was a company called Geritol.

And you can hop on YouTube and look at some old Geritol commercials.

And the principle of Geritol was that most Americans were suffering from iron poor blood.

And the reason everybody was so tired was that we had iron poor blood,

and Geritol, which was basically an iron containing tonic,

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