Low Ferritin and Low Stomach Acid: Why Your Iron Isn’t Going Up

Not sure if you know who Barbara O’Neill is, but I’ve been following her teachings for years now and I love so much of what she has taught me.

Here’s the part I don’t think I’ve ever told you: she is the reason Balangy exists.

I learned about wild yam root from her. That’s it. That’s where it started. I tried it, I loved it, my body responded, and then I got obsessed and decided to make my own version of it. Which became the Balancing Hormones Body Oil, which is truly my hero product.

My heavy bleeding got lighter. My hormonal migraines haven’t come back since 2023. The mood swings softened and I felt like I wasn’t bipolar anymore. The night sweats stopped.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while: share my favorite teachings from the experts I actually love learn from. Videos, podcasts, books, the things I rewind and write down.

I’m going to do it as a Q+A. Their answers, in their words.

First one is Barbara O’Neill, obviously.

And I picked the iron conversation because you know I’ve been working on my ferritin for a long time now, and it is finally going up.

This is the part that drives me a little crazy.

So many people find out they’re low in iron and go straight to iron supplements, straight to infusions. And listen, sometimes that is necessary, I’m not here to argue with anyone’s doctor. But if you never ask why your body isn’t holding onto iron, you’re going to be back in the same place next year. An infusion can help you but it doesn’t answer the why.

That’s exactly what Barbara talks about here, and it’s the thing that reframed the whole puzzle for me.

Q: Why do so many people stay low in iron, even when they’re eating well?

“I suffered low iron for thirteen years until I solved the puzzle. Now iron is bound up in food, and it needs acid to liberate it, to free it from food. So most people with low iron, they’re either bleeding very heavily at period time, so they need the wild yam root to stop that. And they also can be low in hydrochloric acid, because the acid liberates the iron.”

Q: Okay so why would someone be low in hydrochloric acid in the first place?

“If someone’s eating every couple of hours, that exhausts the digestive enzymes, so they’re low in hydrochloric acid. If someone drinks with their meals, it waters down their hydrochloric acid. If someone overeats, overburdens the stomach, it exhausts hydrochloric acid. If someone’s highly stressed when they’re eating, that exhausts hydrochloric acid.”

Q: So how do you actually boost hydrochloric acid?

“Only eat at meal times, only drink between meals. When you sit down to dine, no stressful things should be discussed at the meal table. Take a little bit of cayenne pepper with your meal, that’ll wake anything up. Having the juice of a lemon with a little very hot water just before the meal, that can also boost hydrochloric acid.”

Q: And what does any of this have to do with ferritin specifically?

“Ferritin is iron stores, and the body uses protein to bind with iron to store it as ferritin. So often people with low ferritin levels is because they’re not eating enough protein. And they may be eating enough protein, but if they haven’t got enough hydrochloric acid, they can’t break down the protein.”

This is the part that made me stop and rewind.

Ferritin is a protein that binds to iron and stores it. So the storage itself is made of protein. Low ferritin can mean you’re not eating enough protein. And it can also mean you are eating the protein and your body can’t break it down, because you don’t have the acid to do it.

So low protein and low stomach acid and low iron can all be the same thing showing up on different lines of your labs.

Get it? That’s what took me years to learn and see.

1. Lemon juice in hot water before meals. Not with. Before. And I stopped drinking water during meals, I drink between them instead.

2. Protein at every meal (meat or vegan), eaten calmly. Sitting down, no stressful conversations, no doom scrolling.

3. Handling the bleeding, not just the iron. Because you cannot fill a bucket with a hole in it. Wild yam, my oil, cycle support. This is the piece almost nobody addresses.

4. Also, other ways to work on your hydrochloric acid is plain celery juice on an empty stomach, and also instead of lemon water before meals, do apple cider vinegar diluted with water. Don’t drink liquids with meals and protect your peace. Recalibrate, you know, after stressful or misaligned moments that we all have.

5. Digestive enzimes and digestive bitters.

If you know me I have always shared my body changes, health challenges, postpartum, and I feel right now the most prevalent one is to keep raising my ferritin. So many people ask me why I don’t do a transfusion and I believe it’s because I felt a lot of connection with this explanation right here.

If you want to know more, my protocol at the moment is this one:

Coming up: the Drainage Challenge starts Tuesday, August 18, and I’ll be sharing everything as I go. Paid subscribers, we have a live Q+A at 11AM on day one, and the ebook drops that same day too!

xo, Gi 🖤