What is ferritin and why does it matter more than hemoglobin?
Answered by the AskDoc Medical Team · Medically reviewed under our Medical Director, MBBS
Ferritin is the iron warehouse; hemoglobin is the delivery trucks. Stores empty long before deliveries fail, so you can be significantly iron deficient, tired, breathless, shedding hair, restless legs, with perfectly normal hemoglobin. Testing only hemoglobin misses that entire stage.
Below roughly 15 to 30 means depleted stores; inflammation falsely inflates ferritin, so context matters.
Refilling takes months of treatment, and in men and postmenopausal women low iron always deserves a search for the cause, usually quiet gut blood loss, alongside the refill.
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Only after a blood test
If a blood test shows low ferritin, iron tablets rebuild your stores over three to six months. Do not self-dose without the test: in men and women past menopause, low iron needs its cause found first, because it can signal hidden bleeding.
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