Low ferritin: what worked for you?

My ferritin is low too, plus I seem to have some kind of iron binding problem. This has been going on since well before I started TRT, before any GLP, and before I got into peptides. I've already gone deep into investigating it: upper and lower GI scopes, oral iron, fecal hemoglobin tests, urine tests, genetic testing, diet changes, supplements, swapping out cookware, labs, imaging — the whole list. After 3 years and thousands spent on lifestyle changes and diagnostic work, the answer I landed on is an iron infusion once a year. Honestly, it's no big deal. Sometimes my TRT I/M injections hurt worse than the iron IV does. It usually takes 45minutes and runs me about $50 total. Absolutely worth it.
 
lessthanhalf said:

Naturally you're right. Still, when you look at likelihoods, for a female aged 15-45 with low iron, menstrual bleeding is by far the usual explanation — their requirements are simply higher for that reason, so stores run down far more frequently. Men obviously don't have that going on, which means a graver underlying cause becomes considerably more probable among men or among females who aren't menstruating. The trouble is that reasoning by probability like this means women harboring early GI cancers get overlooked for longer stretches. On the other hand, running every test on every person isn't feasible either; that approach brings its own problems, false positives among them. So testing becomes better justified once the chance of uncovering something treatable is high enough to outweigh the expense and the potential harms. Whether a perfect solution to this kind of dilemma even exists, I doubt. And yes, the US generally offers fairly mediocre primary care and preventive medicine — unless you happen to be wealthy.
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I'm 63 years old. Heavy periods were never something I dealt with, though it's been 20 years since I last had a period.
 
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