Why Iron Is Important

Why you need Iron

Iron has a special relationship with oxygen. Iron is essential for life itself, and helps support blood building and oxygen transport.*

How To Supplement Your Diet

Instead of getting the full 100% Daily Value of Iron (18mg) through vitamin supplementation, which can increase Iron intake into excess levels, we recommend aiming to get some iron through the foods you eat and supplementing to help fill gaps. During pregnancy, most women need more Iron, while postmenopausal women can probably get enough through diet alone. While most multivitamins include the entire traditional recommended Daily Value of Iron, getting too much can be harmful.*

How Much Iron is too Much Iron?

Too much Iron can impact uptake of other essential trace minerals: this may mean other essential minerals cannot do their job as well. We recommend an amino acid chelate form of Iron that’s known to be gentler and kinder on the stomach than other typically used forms.*

Iron Needs Change After Menopause

After menopause, a woman’s need for Iron is reduced quite a bit to 10 mg daily. Since most postmenopausal get more than 10 mg of Iron in their diet, research shows supplemental Iron may be unnecessary.*

Some Women Need More Iron

Having sufficient Iron stores in your body before getting pregnant is important. Essential Prenatal addresses this by including 18mg of gentle chelated Iron to promote energy-yielding metabolism and red blood cell formation.*

If there are other circumstances that you believe might call for a higher iron intake, we recommend checking in with your physician.

Men are probably getting enough Iron through diet alone.

It's pretty self-explanatory—because men have slightly lower Iron needs than women, they can probably meet their daily values through the foods they eat.*

Ritual’s Iron Form

Ritual chose Albion Minerals Ferrochel® (ferrous bisglycinate). Ferrochel has been used around the world for decades, and has been shown to be a more tolerable form of iron. Ferrochel® is produced by TRAACs® patented method, and fits our other requirements of being vegetarian, non-GMO and generally recognized as safe by the FDA (GRAS).*

Ferrochel® is a registered trademark of Albion Laboratories, Inc.