Iron deficiency anaemia is extremely common affecting around 20% of the world’s population including 8% of preschool children, 12% of pregnant women and 15% of non-pregnant women of reproductive age. Iron deficiency without anaemia is 3 times more common yet remains under-recognised and undertreated. The symptoms across both groups are many but include fatigue, weakness and irritability. Taking iron supplements is first line treatment, but may not always bring success. Evidence demonstrates that holistic gut health and iron absorption are inseparable. Naturopath Di Strang and her client Natalie Chapman bring the point home in this episode “The return of Iron Woman.”
Iron deficiency anaemia is extremely common affecting around 20% of the world’s population including 8% of preschool children, 12% of pregnant women and 15% of non-pregnant women of reproductive age. Iron deficiency without anaemia is 3 times more common yet remains under-recognised and undertreated. The symptoms across both groups are many but include fatigue, weakness and irritability. Taking iron supplements is first line treatment, but may not always bring success. Evidence demonstrates that holistic gut health and iron absorption are inseparable. Naturopath Di Strang and her client Natalie Chapman bring the point home in this episode “The return of Iron Woman.”
I'm talking to Dai Strang, a well known practitioner in Sydney, and her client Natalie Chapman. Hi, guys. Hi, Daniel. Thank you for having us. Hi Daniel, Nice to be here. Nice to have you both. So let's just start with you, Natalie. You are by all accounts a very driven person and you're an Aussie girl who went to the US and did extraordinarily well. You founded a fashion label, you worked with some very well known iconic type personalities, Beyoncé, Cindy Crawford, L McPherson to name a few. And your design's been featured in many well known magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. So how do you get to that point? How hard do you actually have to work to get to that point of success in the US? Very hard. And to that point, when you are that driven and Taipei control freak, that's my personality. You, I would have been, it would have been about 10 years ago when I moved to America. And when you're passionate about something, you will go as far as you need to to make it happen. And I was so passionate about what I was doing. And I think when you also have success along the way in meeting a lot of different people, the people you're surrounded by, the networks build, the success does build as well. And you're just living off this, this amazing feeling of Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. It's happening and you just keep going, keep going, keep going. Tell me a bit of a story about your lifestyle over there. How much you slept, the stress, your diet. When you land in LA, for instance, you just, you have this feeling of all these walls are gone and you can just do whatever you've got to do and you'll do whatever it takes to make something happen. And the problem with that is that you won't sleep as well. Well, you will sleep well in the beginning, but eventually your health does start to become a problem. You're sleepless, anxiety rises, stress rises and you just it becomes an unhealthy balance and. How many years did you do this for over there? About six to seven years. Right. OK. So you're a very high energy person, naturally. Were you able to maintain that energy level throughout those six to seven years, or did you find it waning over time? I I think that I would be in denial to say that I did a really good job of it. I am just naturally driven and an entrepreneur at heart, so I was always going to have that as a priority no matter what. And I think diet doesn't become the priority, which is a problem. And you just, you're you're in that fight or flight mode, you are in survival mode, but you don't realize how much of that is actually happening to you because you're so focused on achieving those big goals. And that's the problem. And had your diet changed much since when you're living in Australia to after a few years of living in the US? Oh, absolutely can. You give me an example of what diet might have looked out like for you. In America, I would have eaten. We had a lot of Mexican food, so very fresh foods. But it's it's the way you're eating. You're not eating and sitting down and going, ah, you know, I'm enjoying this meal and appreciating this meal you are. Here's my day of all these different things I've got to get done. I have X amount of time to eat or even that, oh, I'm hungry. What am I going to have? And then it's over. So it's not there's no for me. There was no real appreciation for just stopping and fuelling myself. Yeah. So was it fair to say that you, you lost touch with yourself and your relationship with food and lifestyle a little bit? Oh, absolutely. No. No. No, no, absolutely. And I, you know, COVID, The funny thing about COVID is that as awful as the that whole situation was, I probably exercised more than ever. I was outside walking, making sure that I could get outside, get fresh air. I'd be talking on the phone, having all my meetings on the phone and just pacing. And that was probably fantastic. But you know, it's not, it's still not enough. There wasn't enough awareness. And you were also losing weight over time there as well? Yeah, I was. It's the it's the running the business and it's the stress and anxiety that comes with that. I think being in a different country and trying to continue scaling it and you've got all these pressures on you, but at no point do you think that you can't do it. It's more of a case of OK, I've I've got to do this so I can do keep doing that and it's a forever cycle of OK, go, go, go, go, go and it's very dangerous. You returned to Australia in 2022. May I ask what made you return? I hadn't seen my family in two years, so I'd been waiting for a flight to come out to Sydney and finally one popped up. So I thought, well great, I'll go over and see the family. It was the pivotal time for me because we'd I'd gotten the business through COVID and feeling really great about that. Like it was a really proud moment for me and I thought, cool, I can travel a bit more, I can work from home, be a bit more mobile, get to Australia, see the family. And then it was like there were shackles on my ankles. And after you've been here for a while. Yeah, and I just my body was telling me that I was not going anywhere. Let's just explore that for a second. You got here, You're a financial person, but you felt that your energy had been depleted. Is that? Yeah. So you kind of let down, let yourself go. Yeah, yes, absolutely. And I I'm very intuitive. And what I believe happened was that I was in my safe place. I was in. I was at home, Yeah. And I think what was happening was my body was just telling me you're done and I need you to stop and think about getting healthy again. What did you do next? I went to always go to my GP whenever I come to Sydney, so we went and got Bloods done and this second time around he said to me, Natalie, what on earth are you doing over there? Because you have no iron and this is the second time we've done this and you've got no iron, he said. Look, I I'm really not going to encourage you to go back. We need to fix this. So it was about six months of doing liquid iron supplements, which did nothing. And then I did 9 infusion. Now the beauty of that iron infusion is that I went from no iron to so much iron that I went. Are you kidding me? This is what it feels like to be fuelled with iron. Oh my God. How did it feel? What was the difference? Well, you feel like Superwoman. That's just it. Like you can do anything and it's just such an amazing feeling. Problem was then it dropped and it dropped so fast. And his solution was that I would just keep going on iron infusions. And I said, look, I really don't like that. I that idea there's something wrong and we need to get to the bottom of it. A friend of mine said, look, I think you should talk to a naturopath and I got referred to die. So just just before we do that, but when you when you originally had the the liquid iron supplement, it didn't work, you mentioned to me that it made you feel really angry, which is an interesting reaction. What was that anger about? I mean, I think when you, you feel like there's a bit of hope when someone gives you, tells you that there's, you know, let's try this way and it doesn't work. And you've just spent six months of your life thinking that something might happen and hasn't. It's it's, you know, excuse my French, but it's pretty shit. It's a feeling of what if I'm not going to get better? And so you were referred by a friend to the the lovely dye. Now I've known dye for a long time. I think she's been naturopath, by my calculation, for well over 100 years. It's a. 150 Daniel, it's 100. Hello DI, how you doing? Great. Thank you. Good. So DI, when Natalie came in to see you, what was your first response? So it's actually really interesting, Daniel. When I first saw Nat, I thought she was, we've used this word depleted, but she was nutritionally and I think emotionally depleted. And we actually didn't start with iron. She had some more pressing symptoms. Initially. She had gallbladder pain, some liver, some liver issues, and her adrenals were exhausted. Now Nat's just told you her story, so that's not surprising. And so that's where we started. We started with looking at her digestion and looking at adrenals that, you know, that kind of really fundamental stuff first. And actually I I was looking at her notes and I thought the biggest thing that we did, we we looked at her diet. Her diet was pretty good, but we we made it more nutritionally dense. That was really important because. What does that mean? Well, I I think if like Natalie's a really petite person, so I thought everything that she eats needs to be, needs to contribute nutritionally. So we had smoothies in the morning and we had, you know, things like avocado and banana and, you know, coconut water and some supplements in there. You know, we had lots of quite a Mediterranean, actually, lots of lean meat, salads initially. Some cooked vegetables too, because I thought she looked, you know, her digestion was was slow and you know, she just wasn't absorbing lots of things. So we just went back to basics. We went back to, you know, the food that I probably grew up with 150 years ago. You know, really good fruit and vegetables, good lean meats, good fats, really basic but nutritionally, you know, nutritionally dense. The other thing, Daniel, that I think was really interesting when I went back to Nat's notes and I think the most important thing that we did was some lifestyle stuff because she had a number of emotional hits. I think, you know, we did think I, you know, I said to her, I want you to walk, not run, not do anything too intense just to walk. And I remember we talked about walking, walking in a park or walking in the Bush, you know, doing, you know, some green play if you like. And we also talked about when she ate to be really mindful. You know, it's actually interesting that what she was just saying in terms of in the US, she would just eat. But actually I wanted her to be really mindful when she ate. And I also asked her to eat as often as she could with her family and her friends and you know, have that real connection around food. And the most important thing I think in there is I said to her, I want you to find something that sparks joy everyday. And it can be, it could be just having a coffee with a friend or sitting out in the back in veranda and watching the birds or anything. But she needed to find some time for that because I thought her life in the US was one big To Do List and you get a bit of a dopamine. We all do. You know, getting those 4060, you know, things ticked off your To Do List, but there wasn't much joy and there wasn't much time for living. It was all about doing and running really hard. The thing about Nat that was really interesting was this. When you have a type A person personality as a patient, they do everything. So she did everything. It was like, it was like this was her new list. So she was an extraordinary patient and got really good results really quickly, which I think was important. But because one, one of the things that happened when I first my our first consultation, I thought for her, she was at a bit of a fork in the road. Yeah, she was moving home. She was closing a business. She was thinking about a new career. She'd she'd had so many stresses and lived with chronic stress for so long. I I've really thought if she doesn't get her health right, she is going to move very quickly down the road to some kind of a nasty chronic disease. So it was a bit of a, you know, a bit of a watershed moment, but she was a superstar student and and and seemed and got everything, got almost everything right. So we started at the basics. Di, I'd love what you said about finding joy and I think that's just so important and and just living a little bit more, the question is from a more structured point of view, what were the major dietary and or supplementary changes that you worked on with Nat? At first what we did was we looked at an an adrenal formula to support her adrenals. I looked at and we looked at some liver support. So let's just look at the adrenals because that comes up a lot for many people in in modern society and the adrenals pump up cortisol and do all sorts of things which are related to anxiety. So what are we as naturopaths do when we think people are are adrenally exhausted? What does that mean to us? So what we did, what I did was I put her on a formula that had ashwagandha phosphatidylserine, some nutrients like vitamin C and you know some of the B vitamins. I also put her on at like AB Complex as well, just to really support that adrenal function because it had been overworked for probably a decade. So I was really interested in in kind of winding back that really high level of stress that she was living with. And what I really wanted to do, Daniel, was to to get her to sleep properly because when you're wired you, you don't sleep and sleep is really fundamental to health. So worked, we worked on that. We, you know, we had lots of foods that supported adrenal function, you know, really good formula. And I think we went quite hard on that. And she reacted really well to this formula I've used, said a number of times, got really good, good results with it. And you could see her winding down, like coming back to earth, if you like, and getting back in her body. I think one of the things that I think often happens when you're really stressed and running really hard is you spend all your time in your head and you're actually not spending any time in your body. So, you know, we're just kind of getting her to sit, to eat properly, to eat quietly, to do some mindfulness, take your shoes off and, you know, walk on the grass, that kind of thing. And then the supplements really support that. I think you can give adrenal herbs, but if you're not doing the other things, you get, you know, a partial result. So it was the lifestyle and also the supplementation. So over what sort of time period would you normally expect to see improvement from adrenal burnout? I saw that again in, I think it was six weeks and she looked much better, but she still wasn't there. I went back to my notes and it said improved. But we're not there yet. You know, naturopathically, we think about, you know, taking a month for every year that you've been living with something. And I certainly wasn't going to tell our Type A personality that was going to take a year. We actually made a big difference in six weeks. And it was like, OK, you now have proof of concept, let's get going. And the other thing that was happening was she was getting a lot of gallbladder pain. I was suspecting some gallstones or some sludge, you know, some poor digestion. So in her diet we had lots of filtered water, we had some increased in prebiotics and fibers and that kind of thing. It was really interesting that that that whole picture just fell away. It really did. Never had an issue again. So what was the the major differences in the diet that diet had put you on? In these smoothies for instance, the smoothies were the best thing ever and I still do them every day. So in the smoothies I think having those B vitamins, the iron supplement plus that that beautiful I am repair. But it was the combination of everything. And then I'd put an avocado in there. What's the basis of A? Smoothie. It'd go between berries. I went heavy on blueberries actually, and I'd go almond milk, the Greek style yogurt. Honey. I actually put Rocket in there. Rocket was delicious in there. Spirulina. But honey is the best thing because it just sweetens it up so you actually drink it. So then. It wasn't perfect. No. No. No, that's. Great. And you know one of the SO one of my children I have, I have four. One of my children was a really fussy eater and I used to think I used to use smoothies as a way to get really a really nutritionally dense meal into him and to hide a few things in there as well. And I, you know, I was thinking the same with Nat. Whatever we can put in there, let's put it in there and start the day and then you can we can get some of her supplements because I did put her on quite a few supplements and that can be hard to take all those tablets. So being it with food in the morning worked really nicely. Especially those B vitamins, they can feel quite intense. So that was the perfect way to let that absorb into the smoothie and then just have that throughout the day. And the smoothie means that you don't. You're not just taking everything in one hit, you're taking it throughout a couple of hours, which is really good too. Guy, at some point you'd put Nat onto a particular type of probiotic called saccharomyces bilati and also an iron supplement. What was going on there? Well, so we got our initial stuff resolved. You know, we were at a like at a better base. So we'd, you know, we managed the adrenals and the stress and we'd got rid of those initial presenting symptoms of gall and liver. And so I thought, OK, we need to move, let's move on to iron And Nat's iron was jumping around, so you know, she'd have the infusion and it would, you know, be fine for a little while and then it'd just fall away. So first of all, what we did and then she had a second infusion and I thought, OK, I'm going to put her on lactaferon and sacramides, Sacramides, sees Baladi, because I was trying to see if we could hold the iron, you know, the iron levels. And that worked really well. There's a couple of things with iron, you know, iron deficiency or low iron, you think it's going to be really easy, just give an iron supplement. You increase iron in the diet and it's fixed. So iron intake is complex or iron restoring iron to a a normal and optimum level is complex. So you have to think about a few things. You have to think about intake of iron. You also have to think about absorption of iron and you need to think about the body's ability. So sometime in the presence of infection or inflammation, the body will sequester iron and what it does, what it's doing, if you have an infection, bacterial, viral, they use iron as a substrate to to fuel themselves. So the body's really clever. It goes okay, goes and grabs the iron and takes it out of the system. So what I was trying to do was I I was trying to keep her iron levels high and I put in lactaferrin. Lactaferrin is a really cool ingredient. It it's a glycoprotein that comes out of milk and it's involved in transportation and absorption of iron and the other thing it does is it's antimicrobial. So it it actually was perfectly, perfectly placed and I also put in some Saccharomyces Baladi just in case there was, I suspected that there was a, you know, a little bit of an infection or bacterial anomaly in her gut. So I put in both of those things and we did really well to it, maintained her iron. And did it make any changes to her gut as well? Oh, sure has. Sure has. I think my overall overall health is probably the best it's ever been. Does that mean your physical and your mental symptoms? Or absolutely. I think you feel every day I feel lighter. You feel like you can just digest almost anything and you've got, I've got so much energy. It's. Wonderful. That's scary in a person like you. I'm. Very. Scared. Yeah, it is. It is, but I think what was so huge was that DI was able to fix my iron deficiency issue. And for a minute there I was really worried that I wasn't going to be able to naturally have my iron levels go up. And the fact that she was able to really figure that out was huge. And you know, when I went back to my GP and told him, he said I don't know what you're doing, but keep going because it's working. I think the result of it, my skin's brighter, my hair probably is. It's, I mean, it's amazing. Not going to be shy about that. My hair's fantastic. You're a new person. I'm a completely new person. And it just gives you a new lease on life to go, OK, go ahead. But you just got to take all of this experience with you. One of the scary things I think about chronic iron deficiency is the potential for some sort of bleed going on. I guess somebody ruled that out fairly early in the piece. Yes, 'cause I I think everything just showed every like, my whole health was perfect, everything looked really great. But it was this iron deficiency that was the issue. But I was saying to die. Like, once I had all these positive results, I talked to my friends about it and like people in my community and I'd share, share it with them. Some people thought that I was pregnant. They were like, what's going on with you? You're glowing. No. I'm just healthy. DI What was the next step? Well, it it was actually really interesting Daniel because that this product that we were using the Lactaferrin and Sacramyces Baladi was discontinued. So we thought, OK, let's see what happens. And that's iron fell like. Oh my gosh, that's right. You remember and I was like, no, I know. So what we did was we found a new product and we and so because her iron was so low and she said I want to have another iron infusion. So we put her on you, you will be familiar with this product and iron and lactaferrin product and we restored her her iron levels. But what was interesting was I was trying to work out what was going on, was there an underlying infection? But and Nat had so many bloods that it was that was really good. The white blood cells weren't telling me that was there. Stress cause stress can be inflammatory and when the body's inflamed, the body thinks it's that there's an infection so it goes and sequesters the iron. So what what we're doing at the moment is we're just holding with iron and and lactaferon and the other thing that we're doing is I've put her on a gut healing product because I thought I I still think that there's some inflammation or there's something going on in her gut. So we've got her on a a typical practitioner product to heal and seal the gut and rebuild the microbiome. You know, I'm trying to make sure that the microbiome is as diverse and as healthy as possible so that we can maximize absorption. We'd, I'd really like to get to a stage where we don't have to use a supplement, but at the moment I'm not. We're not going to drop it out just yet because you know that to happen again. What are some of the ingredients you'd find in a product like that? Is it Glucosamine type stuff or? So it's got it's in this one. I think it's got some licorice, some turmeric, some a bit of glutamine and some nutrients like zinc and selenium in there to just really, you know, it really heals. That heals the gut and the integrity of the gut. I think Nat's gut probably was a little bit leaky. You know, she had a little bit of bisphosis and leaky. So I'm just trying to heal that and you can even, you know it's really difficult to measure except when you see her in the flesh and you go everything is you know is really, you know is really blossoming and blooming. You know she's getting better absorption from her food and you can see that from her nails and her skin and her hair. She's getting, you know, she's you know has less gut issues you know all of those things are normalizing. I really love Lactaferon in there for that too because it is it helps with the facilitation or the growth of good bacteria and it is it is quite aggressive with not so good bacteria in the gut. So it helps with diversity and that helps with the the health of the gut and we've got in the in in that gut powder is some prebiotics. So we're feeding, we're feeding the microbiome. What we what I'm trying to do is change the terrain of the gut so that it's really healthy and we can optimize iron absorption from the diet. So we'll keep supplementing but this is not our long term goal. Our long term goal is that we take that out and we we've resolved those underlying factors. I was concerned that there was a stealth infection. I was concerned that there was a chronic, A chronic infection, you know, almost subacute. But I can't find anything in her bloods, You know, there's nothing that indicates that. So I think what we're doing now is bringing her stress down because stress is inflammatory and we often don't think about that. And some bringing stress down, boosting inflammation and healing her gut. They're fundamental for good health. And I think we get, you know, we get those right, we will restore her, be able to restore her iron function. This is like the Canary in the the mine for Natalie, you know, so the thing that that happens for her is her, her iron becomes depleted. So it's actually a really good red flag. When that starts to go down, we can go back to those basics. So that's we're that's what we're doing at the moment and everything else is, is is doing really well. But it's interesting unpacking that picture of iron deficiency, Daniel, because it's not it's never just I'll pop an iron supplement in. It's always much more than that. So dependent on a healthy microbiome and a whole lot of factors really. So you're quite right. I was interested to read recently, which is an old story. But it's nice to remind yourself every now and again of just adding turmeric to your diet and the effects that turmeric has on sustaining a healthy, diverse microbiome as well. And so even when people go off supplements, I just love the idea of people just throwing in a teaspoon of turmeric into their smoothies or, you know, whatever they're cooking that night. Yeah, Turmeric is actually in the the gut product and I really like that as a that that helps with that diversity of the microbiome and also just in working locally to reduce inflammation. And systemically, I think you know, turmeric is, you know, it's the new black, isn't it? It's, it's. The New Black Orange is the New Black. Do you feel that you are somehow more educated about the relationship between mental health and physical health and environment and food after seeing you? Die. Absolutely. And I don't think they'll ever take it for granted again. I believe that everyone's guilty of it. Unless you've actually gone through a health issue, you don't actually understand what's happening. And that's been my message to so many people like it's everyone can be functioning and feel normal, but what's actually going on is not great and just been bringing awareness to that. And I guess for many people in your situation or similar situations, these sorts of health conditions creep up over time. Absolutely. You know, the stress continues to increase, The lack of sleep continues for some years and all of a sudden you have some very strange symptoms sometimes. So it takes a bit of unpacking, doesn't it? Absolutely. And I mean, they say the gut is a second brain, and that's absolutely true. Going forward, what do you do to maintain your health? My smoothies are going to stay with me for as long as I can live. I'm not a foodie. I'm not someone who's like, I want to go into the kitchen and make a beautiful lunch or a beautiful dinner. I admit that. That's just not me. I love work and I love socializing and I love being out and about. So the best thing for me is to get those smoothies going, hack everything into it and just have them throughout the day and just keep them going and that's what I'll keep doing. And and what about time for you? Time for self? Have you found a way to bring some balance to your high type A personality? That takes some serious training. That's not easy. But I will say that in Australia, you don't appreciate Australia until you've left Australia. And what we have in Australia is clean air. We have beautiful greenery around us. We have these beautiful oceans and you feel like you're living in bliss and it's just you're able to. For me, at the moment you wake up, you go for a walk. Do you? I do a smoothie, have your coffee and you can be outside and it just feels better. It just feels healthier. So I think for me that's being in Australia has just working me up a bit more. DI Do you think there's any opportunity to further improve Nats health? I think Daniel Nat is going to be one of those people that always needs to be nudged back into boring. You know, to and not boring. She wasn't boring. Nat is a really good example of people don't know how unwell they are until they feel well again. Yes, yes. You know, that's. And so I think having come been through this journey, you know, she probably will take it for granted a little bit 'cause we do and my job is to remind her, but remember how bad you felt. And you know this is a little bit of a symptom where we need to actually go back to our basics and remind ourselves this is a, you know, this is a high achieving young woman who's going to change the world, I am sure. And just making sure that she has the right parameters around her and being outside, I think being outside is for her and in the Bush or in grain is really important And taking some time to be mindful and you don't have to be a foodie, but you do have to appreciate what's in front of you and you need to eat slowly and that the importance of connection and food's a really good way to do that. So I think all of those things, you know, I think our relationship going forward will not be, you know, don't need to manage her health so closely, but I will give her a gentle smack on the wrist when she's when she's running too hard. Well, I love everything you've said about connection and and finding joy and and living resonates very strongly and I think it's certainly a very important way forward. So thank you Di any final problems. No, no, it was it was actually great chat. Hey Nat, you're doing something interesting. Now what's Illuminae? Illuminae Well this is this is new business and for me loved fashion and but there was a much bigger conversation once I was able to once Dyne, I were able to come up with a formula to solve my iron deficiency. I just said to her like this is ridiculous. We need to bring awareness to this and I've got the opportunity to pivot here and create a brand that's going to pay attention to it. Too many people are iron deficient and liver Luminae is going to bring awareness to that and much more. OK, so is there a website? It's a website at the moment, it's it's very new, but we're going to have all sorts of things happen there and it's just going to be, it's going to be a hub where people can actually learn and and read all sorts of different things about health and solutions to fix any problems anyone might have. Thank you, Roddo. Well, thanks guys, and lovely chat. I'm really happy that we got to some basic issues because a lot of people just feel pretty miserable, low energy for a long time. They don't know what to do about it and getting some guidance around lifestyle and diet is absolutely critical. So all good. Thank you so much. Thank you, Daniel. Absolutely.