When it comes to anemia's iron deficiency is by far the most common one worldwide.

The typical adult human body, if there is such a thing, has about four grams of iron.

So some of that's in hemoglobin, in urethrocytes, or red blood cells.

A lot of that's in myoglobin and muscle.

Actually, a lot of it, about a gram of that, is stored as iron in the liver. And then there's

iron stored in the macrophages, in the bone marrow, and the spleen. And then there's just a little bit of iron that's circulating

around in your plasma. It's bound to transfer in. And we're talking about five milligrams of iron

out of four grams total in your body. So 4,000 milligrams, about 5 milligrams or so is circulating in the plasma. While some

patients will be asymptomatic with iron deficiency anemia, others will be very symptomatic. So that may

include a lot of weakness and fatigue and exercise tolerance, some shortness of breath. And then there's

some symptoms. You really got to think about iron deficiency anemia like restless leg syndrome. A lot of

patients with restless leg syndrome have iron deficiency anemia causing it. And then PICA,

this is where there's this craving of eating ice. And when you

hear that from a patient, they're like, I always want to chew on ice, you ought to be testing for iron

deficiency anemia. Patients may actually look pale or have pallor. there can be glossitis, which is an inflammation of the tongue.

Sometimes when you see angular stomatitis, also known as angular chelitis, and this is where there is an

inflammation of one or both corners of the mouth.

Sometimes it can be caused by iron deficiency anemia, but there's certainly other things like

B vitamin deficiencies and candidiasis and all other kinds of infections that can cause

angular chelitis. But iron deficiency anemia remains

in that differential diagnosis. And it's when we see anemia with a low MCV, an MCV less than 80,

that we think of iron deficiency anemia, or we should be thinking of fallacymia.

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