What is the Difference Between Anaemia and Iron Deficiency

追加: 2026-05-25

[00:00:03]I often get asked, what is the difference between iron deficiency and anemia?

[00:00:09]It's a really good question and they're often commonly confused, even sometimes amongst my colleagues who are health practitioners.

[00:00:17]Hi, my name is Dr. Joe Collins, clinical hematologist, practice principal of the Iron Infusion Clinic.

[00:00:23]Anemia specifically refers to a person who has low hemoglobin, similar to a low red blood count, whereas iron deficiency is one of the particular causes of anemia.

[00:00:37]Now, iron deficiency refers to the state where your iron stores are low and if a patient is to look at their blood tests, they will see a particular measure called ferritin. Ferritin is a storage protein and it measures our iron stores.

[00:00:53]Iron is very important for making hemoglobin or the red blood component, but iron is also required for a huge number of other functions in the body, including maintaining muscles, nerve growth, neuro- transmitters and brain function. And that is why a person can be iron deficient, but not be anemic and still have a number of symptoms. So, that's why at the Iron Infusion Clinic, which is driven by a clinical hematologist, that is a blood specialist, and I train all of our staff, we actually take an end-to-end very holistic approach as to why you are anemic, if you are anemic, why you are iron deficient and really get to the bottom of what's happening, how we can fix it best for you and how ideally we could prevent this from happening again or at least mitigate the need for having so much iron long-term.