Beside ferritin, hemoglobin shouldn't be overlooked as the determinant of iron status. Hemoglobin is a part of the CBC (Complete Blood Count) test.

Iron supplements are notorious for irritating the stomach, worsening gastritis and acid reflux. Even iron bisglycinate, while fully effective, is a significant stomach irritant. Ferric pyrophosphate might be safer, and I'm trying it now, but I have to take it twice a day because once wasn't sufficient.

With regard to addressing anemia, active B12 (hydroxo/methyl/adenosyl), methylfolate e.g. Quatrefolic, copper, and vitamin A also matter.

One can also simultaneously be low or suboptimal in many other vitamins and minerals unrelated to anemia, e.g. vitamin D. Fixing only one of them is no guarantee of a sustained solution.

With regard to blood tests, it can take many iterations of doing them to find anything useful. Doctors are ridiculous to work with in this regard, so I bypass them and get the tests myself. Doctors work for the insurance firm, not for you.

Maybe I am missing it, but I don’t see where AI solved anything in this anecdote. Rather, a team of medical professionals and a patient willing to advocate for herself did.

There is a lot of authoritative sounding text here but no real explanation of how this huge process solved the mystery fatigue. In fact she says in the middle that the specialist she saw was more valuable. Toward the end she mentions experiments that were run, but the heavy hitters appear to be from specialists adjusting the medication related to her tumor treatment and a real person reviewing her food diary and noticing she was in a caloric deficit.

For all of the writing about collecting data and using AI, she never explains what the AI did for her. Maybe it suggested trying iron supplements because her ferritin was slightly low on a blood test? I hope it explained that these blood tests can have transient highs and lows and that excess iron from supplements can have major negative health effects if not monitored.

For all of the lead up about using AI, there was never really a delivery where the AI was used to solve the mystery fatigue.

I’m glad this person is feeling better, but this post reminds me of those LinkedIn posts where someone is trying really hard to show their AI skills but used an example where the AI didn’t contribute to or accelerate the outcome.

I solved a similar issue with the help of AI. I doubt I would have ever solved it with the help of a PCP, because of really subtle nuances. It’s been almost a year and my symptoms have basically disappeared.

AI helped me figure out my symptoms were related to histamine issues. This was really hard to track down. I started to tune into chicken and eggs causing me issues, but (1) I wasn’t actually allergic (2) chicken and rice is a standard safe diet (3) chicken is low histamine itself, but can trigger histamine release . It was further complicated because a bunch of foods didn’t consistently trigger reactions.

It was only after I tracked a bunch of foods and tried a bunch of different remedies that Claude was able to track down the pattern. From there, I was able to understand what foods would trigger my issues.