Iron
Best-in-class: Iron Bisglycinate
Essential for hemoglobin, oxygen transport and energy. Thorne's bisglycinate is gentle on the gut versus ferrous sulfate, which commonly causes constipation and nausea.
How Iron actually works
Iron sits at the centre of the haem ring in haemoglobin and myoglobin, where it reversibly binds oxygen — that is the job everyone knows. The less discussed roles matter as much: it is the catalytic metal in the cytochromes of the electron transport chain, and a required cofactor for tyrosine hydroxylase and tryptophan hydroxylase, the rate-limiting enzymes making dopamine and serotonin. Bisglycinate is chelated to two glycine molecules, which lets it use amino-acid transport rather than competing at the DMT1 iron transporter, so absorption is better and the gut irritation that makes people abandon iron is much reduced.
Iron quick facts
| Suggested dose | 25 mg every other day is often as effective as daily and improves absorption (per recent hepcidin research). Take away from calcium/coffee. |
| How often | every other day |
| Who it's for | Menstruating women, endurance athletes, plant-based eaters, and anyone with confirmed low ferritin. |
✅ Clinically validated
- Corrects iron-deficiency anemia and reliably raises ferritin, hemoglobin and energy in deficient individuals (well-established in RCTs).
- Improves fatigue and exercise capacity in iron-deficient (even non-anemic) menstruating women.
📊 Correlative data
- Low ferritin is associated with fatigue, hair shedding, restless legs and reduced endurance performance.
🧪 Theoretical / extrapolated benefits
- Bisglycinate's chelated absorption pathway is proposed to reduce the pro-oxidant gut exposure of free iron — plausible but not a proven clinical outcome.
These tiers tell you how much human evidence exists — not how well something works. This is the research space, and most of what’s in here is new rather than disproven. Something sitting at “theoretical” usually means nobody has funded the trial, not that the trial was run and failed.
The trap runs the other way too: something can be clinically validated and still do very little for you specifically. A statistically significant result in a study population is not a promise about your body.
- ✅ Clinically validated — human randomised trials or meta-analyses support it. The strongest footing available.
- 📊 Correlative — observational or epidemiological data. Suggestive, and genuinely useful for direction, but it cannot establish cause.
- 🧪 Theoretical / mechanistic — the mechanism is understood and often demonstrated in cells or animals, and the human trial doesn’t exist yet. Unproven is not the same as ineffective. Plenty of what’s standard practice today sat here five years ago.
✗ is a safety flag, not a grade. Where you see it, the concern is harm — not a disappointing trial. A compound tested for one purpose and found not to help there can still be worth studying somewhere else, so a negative result never gets rendered as a cross. It sits alongside the tier, because something can be both well-studied and genuinely risky.
My job is to tell you which one you’re looking at, and let you make the call. Grading something low isn’t me dismissing it — it’s me refusing to oversell it. This is the research space, and being able to reason forward from a mechanism matters as much as waiting for the trial.
The single most important test-first supplement there is. Ferritin under 30 causes fatigue, hair shedding, restless legs and flat mood well before haemoglobin drops — so the full blood count reads normal and the person feels terrible. Equally, iron is a pro-oxidant you cannot excrete: men and post-menopausal women rarely need it, and anyone with undiagnosed haemochromatosis is harmed by it. Never take it on a guess. Take away from calcium, coffee and tea, which all block absorption; vitamin C alongside improves it.
Iron — safety & side effects
- Constipation, nausea, dark stools and stomach pain — extremely common, dose-related, and the main reason people stop. Taking it every other day rather than daily improves absorption *and* tolerability.
- Do not supplement iron without knowing your ferritin. Iron overload damages the liver, heart and pancreas, it is silent until it is not, and roughly 1 in 200 people of Northern European descent carry haemochromatosis genes that make it far easier to reach.
- Iron is the leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under six. Child-resistant cap, high shelf, no exceptions.
- Separate from thyroid medication by four hours. Minerals bind levothyroxine in the gut and reduce absorption enough to shift a stable TSH. It also binds tetracycline and quinolone antibiotics, and levodopa.
Not medical advice. If you take prescription medication or have a diagnosed condition, check this against it with a pharmacist or doctor — pharmacists are underused and free.
Where to get Iron
Buy Iron Bisglycinate at Thorne →Get the complete breakdown for Iron — inside the Academy alongside the full interactive Vault.
Unlock in the Academy — $10/mo →- When to take it, and what to take it with
- Which form actually absorbs
- Who it's worth it for
- Best-in-class brand pick
- Coach Cam's stacks and notes
Get the complete breakdown for Iron — inside the Academy alongside the full interactive Vault.
Unlock in the Academy — $10/mo →Bloodwork to run alongside Iron
Run these before you start, and again after 8–12 weeks. A baseline you didn’t take is one you can never go back for.
| Marker | What it’s watching for |
|---|---|
| Ferritin | Never supplement iron without this. Overload is harder to fix than deficiency |
| Iron Panel (Iron, TIBC, Transferrin Saturation) | Transferrin saturation catches overload that ferritin alone can miss |
| Hereditary Hemochromatosis, DNA | 1 in 200 carry it. Iron supplements are actively dangerous if you do |
| Complete Blood Count (CBC) with Differential | Confirms whether the deficiency has reached anaemia yet |
The Am I Iron Deficient? panel covers these in one order — 2 markers, $16.20 with the discount applied.
Check results you already have → · All 102 markers A–Z
Iron — frequently asked questions
What is Iron?
Essential for hemoglobin, oxygen transport and energy. Thorne's bisglycinate is gentle on the gut versus ferrous sulfate, which commonly causes constipation and nausea.
What is the suggested dose of Iron?
25 mg every other day is often as effective as daily and improves absorption (per recent hepcidin research). Take away from calcium/coffee. This is a general reference for education only — statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and this is not medical advice.
Where can I find Iron dosing and the full breakdown?
The suggested dose and the full evidence — clinical, correlative and theoretical — are on this page. What's inside the Academy is when to take it, which form actually absorbs, the brand worth buying and Coach Cam's stacks.
Where can I buy Iron?
Coach Cam sources Iron from Thorne, with 10% off auto-applied at checkout — use the buy link on this page.
Build your foundation with Coach Cam
The full Supplement Vault — 350 products across 14 categories with clinical, correlative & theoretical evidence, plus my Thorne partner links — lives inside the Academy alongside 237 peptides.
Join the Academy — $10/mo →What Iron is used for
Iron appears under 6 goals in the Vault’s goal router, grouped by the mechanism it works through rather than by how much trial evidence exists. Each link opens that pathway in full, with the alternatives beside it and the bloodwork that tests it.