Your doctor may recommend adding an iron supplement to your daily diet if your blood levels of this essential metal are unusually low. Your body needs iron to help deliver oxygen throughout your body and remove carbon dioxide from your cells, tissues and organs, and is a component in many important enzymes. Discuss the safety of iron supplements with your health care provider before you begin treatment.
Adverse Side Effects
Adverse side effects may occur after you take a dose of iron. Typically, stomach irritation is the most common adverse effect. You may feel nauseated or vomit, or you may experience bowel movement changes, such as constipation or diarrhea. Treatment with liquid forms of iron may cause your teeth to temporarily appear black in color. If you receive iron supplements via IV or injection, you may experience flulike adverse effects, including headache pain, swollen lymph glands, fever or joint and muscle pain. Contact your doctor for further evaluation and care if these adverse side effects increase in severity or persist.
Iron Toxicity
Unlike other vitamins and minerals, your body doesn't excrete iron and only loses this nutrient when you bleed. Therefore, iron toxicity -- or unusually high levels of iron in your blood -- is a serious health concern for people who take iron supplements. There are two major forms of iron toxicity: acute, which occurs if you take a large dose of iron over the span of a few hours or days, and chronic, which occurs when iron builds up in your body over the course of several months or years.
Acute iron toxicity is the leading cause of death due to poisoning in children under the age of 5. A toxic dose of iron may irritate your intestinal tract, causing it to bleed. Consequently, you may notice small amounts of blood in your stools or vomit. Toxic iron levels in your blood may also result in irritability, seizures, abdominal pain, drowsiness or loss of consciousness. In the absence of immediate medical care, acute iron poisoning may severely lower your blood pressure -- a life-threatening condition called shock -- and may cause fever, jaundice, coma or liver failure.
Chronic iron toxicity, also called chronic iron overload, typically doesn't cause sudden symptoms. Instead, you may experience long-term abdominal pain, arthritis, skin discoloration or heart or liver problems.
Contact an emergency medical provider if you or your child develop symptoms of acute or chronic iron toxicity to ensure prompt and appropriate care.
Interactions with Medications
Discuss any medication or supplement you are taking with your health care provider before beginning treatment with iron supplements. Taking a birth control medication may elevate your blood levels of iron, the University of Maryland Medical Center explains. For this reason, women using birth control medication should be aware of how much iron they take each day to limit their risk of developing iron overdose symptoms. Using iron supplements together with levodopa, carbidopa or levothyroxine should be avoided, as iron may reduce the efficacy of such treatments. Iron may also reduce your body's ability to absorb certain drugs, including bisphosphonates, ACE inhibitors, tetracyclines and quinolones. Do not take allopurinol or NSAIDs -- also called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs -- such as the generic drugs ibuprofen and naproxen, with iron supplements. This combination of treatments may increase your risk of liver damage or stomach bleeding.
Contraindications
If you have any health problems or concerns, let your doctor know before taking iron supplements. Typically, healthy men and post-menopausal women do not need to take iron supplements, because they lose very little iron from their bodies and get a sufficient supply of this nutrient from their daily diet. Iron supplements should not be used by people with a personal history of intestinal or stomach ulcers or inflammatory bowel diseases. Also, avoid taking iron if you have thalassemia, a disease that affects hemoglobin -- a component of your blood.
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