Are All Iron Supplements the Same?

For people who regularly enjoy red meat, eggs, dark green vegetables, fortified cereals, nuts, or everyone's favorite onion-care and should not be there is a need for all types of iron supplements. In addition, many multivitamins including iron in their formula, which also gives you the RDA (recommended dietary allowance). However, iron deficiency can be found in menstruating women and children, pregnant women, and people taking drugs that reduce stomach acid.

Iron is needed to produce red blood cells, and sufficient amounts of iron causes iron deficiency anemia, requiring supplements. Typical symptoms of iron deficiency include excessive fatigue and lack of energy, shortness of breath, trouble learning and increased incidence of infection. If your health care provider determines that you need a supplement, you may want to do some homework and find the one that gives you the most bang for your buck, and provide you with quality products.

ConsumerLab.com, a leading provider of consumer information and independent evaluations of products that affect health and nutrition, has done much research for you and recently released a report on the variation in cost of iron supplements, as well as on various review brands. They found that the cost to obtain the equivalent dose of iron from supplements varies by more than 100-fold. In fact, a 25 mg dose of iron can cost as little as two cents or more than two dollars, depending on the product.

ConsumerLab.com found that all the products in their current review contains a number of listed them from the iron (such as their 2008 survey) and do not exceed the limit for lead contamination. "It is great that all the iron supplement in this study found a high quality, but people were using iron supplements must choose carefully to ensure they get the right shape, right dose, and do not spend more than necessary," said Tod Cooperman, MD, President of ConsumerLab.com.

To compare products based on cost, CL calculate the cost of obtaining 25 mg of iron from each sample. The cost to obtain 25 mg of iron ranging from only $ 0.02 to over $ 2.00 - 100-fold difference. For most products, the cost per 25 mg is about 15 cents or less. Items most expensive (30 cents or more per 25 mg of iron), including iron complexed with heme, polypeptides (proteins), or a polysaccharide (sugar), or a mixture of forms of iron, or with additional material. For a full report on the costs and review of the particular brand, check out www.consumerlab.com/reviews/Iron/iron/.

Products included in this report are: 21 Century Iron, Bifera, Fergon, Ferro-Sequels, Floradix Iron + Herbs, Garden of Baku Life Iron, Life Extension Iron Plus, Nature Made Iron, Nature's Bounty Gentle Iron, Nutrilite folic tri-iron, Products Ortho Molecular react Iron, Slow Fe, Solgar Gentle Iron, Ideal Iron Thompson, Mineral Iron Comfort Vitamin Shoppe, Vitamin World Iron Soft, Slow Release Iron and Walgreens.

ConsumerLab.com is a leading provider of consumer information and independent evaluations of products that affect health and nutrition. Subscribe to ConsumerLab.com is available online.