At I&E, our desire is for holistic comprehensive growth in all areas of your life. The following book review is focused on improving your individual health, because wealth, without health, is useless.
Dumping Iron: How to Ditch This Secret Killer and Reclaim Your Health
Reprinted with permission by P.D. Mangan. All Rights Reserved.
My new book, Dumping Iron, is out, in both paperback and e-book versions.
Dumping Iron: How to Ditch This Secret Killer and Reclaim Your Health is a game-changer in the world of health and fitness. The accumulation of excess iron in the body, a condition that affects perhaps the majority of adults, leads to much higher risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and shorter lifespan.
High iron levels affect men much more than they do women, for the simple reason that men’s iron is on average much higher.
Dumping Iron shows how to measure your iron levels, what the test numbers mean, and how to go about lowering iron if necessary.
Humans are adapted to a low-iron environment, so once iron is in our bodies, it virtually never goes away. Our new, high-iron environment leads to iron accumulation, and to ill health and early death.
Iron is the secret killer that no one is telling you about. Finally, in Dumping Iron, the scientific and medical data that indicts iron is assembled in one place.
What the experts say about Dumping Iron:
“Dumping Iron by P. D. Mangan is a must read by anybody interested in maintaining optimal health, including those in the medical field. Iron overload is an exceedingly common malady in the population and it is easily diagnosed, but it is under-addressed. It leads to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and numerous other chronic and debilitating illnesses. The good news is that iron excess can be prevented and readily treated, which results in a decreased risk of many diseases and improvement in overall health and vitality. Dumping Iron clearly tells us how to achieve these goals.”
— Luca Mascitelli, M.D., Lieutenant Colonel, Italian Army, and author of numerous scientific papers on iron and health.
“In Dumping Iron, Dennis Mangan has provided the reader access to a massive scientific data pool linking body iron overload to major diseases of mankind… I submit that Dumping Iron should be required reading in science and nutrition for high school and above. The ultimate triumph of Dumping Iron might be an informed public that will increasingly access ferritin test screening, and health care providers better prepared to interpret tests of iron status, particularly the ferritin level. Acknowledgment of risks of iron overload and proper product labeling might lead to reduced public iron intoxication and improved population health to a degree that would be no less than monumental!”
— Leo Zacharski, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College. Dr. Zacharski has written extensively on the connection between iron and disease, and has conducted clinical trials of lowering iron.
“Iron has been compared to fire. A small amount of fire is quite useful in our stoves and furnaces. But when fire is ravaging the contents and walls of our home… BEWARE. In this informative book, Dennis Mangan makes clear the devastation that can be caused by excessive/misplaced iron in the tissues and walls of our bodies. We learn that for essentially all diseases — infections, cancers, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, gout, osteoporosis, cardiovascular ills, and more — that the iron burden is a dangerous risk factor.
But equally important, the author describes a variety of well tested methods that are readily available to neutralize the iron peril. Adoption of even a few of these methods can remarkably decrease iron-catalyzed disease episodes, enhance well being, and, not least, increase longevity.”
— E. D. Weinberg, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biology at Indiana University, and the author of over 140 scientific papers, many of them on the role of iron in disease.
Dennis Mangan’s revolutionary new book Dumping Iron: How to Ditch This Secret Killer and Reclaim Your Health is a must read even for the most informed Health and Fitness professional.
For those of us writing in the Medical/Anti-Aging field, it is imperative to cite your work, as much of the research is newly available and stands directly in the face of ‘modern medical advice’. Dennis’s work is authoritative and his writing style is clear and thought provoking . In fact, I don’t believe there has been a written book on the risks of elevated iron levels so extensively researched- offering the reader more than 120 citations.
His thesis that excess iron accumulates in the blood as one ages leading to cellular and biological inflammation and ultimately the diseases of aging (heart disease, cancer, and cognitive decline), is impossible to dispute. So much so, I’m going to share it with my inner circle and implore them to get their ferritin levels tested.
Do yourself a favor and read this book immediately. The overall success of your aging process and the extension of your life may depend on it.
— Jay Campbell, author of The Definitive Testosterone Replacement Therapy MANual
Dennis Mangan’s book Dumping Iron is a thorough summary of decades of research on the key role of body iron stores in aging, premature disease, and death.
The depth and span of Dennis’ analysis is rarely seen in modern days, where academics are, not fortuitously, strangled between bureaucracies of Atlantic dimensions, the need/desire of easy glory or commercial interests and profit. From the thousands of works done in the field of iron metabolism, Dennis chooses the quality data and discloses in simple and understandable words the double-edged nature of a metal most people and doctors think can only be good for you. Can the size of body iron stores be the key switch signal calling for chronic disease and therefore aging? The decision will be yours, after you read the evidence, never before presented in such simple, engaging and compelling format.
Francesco Facchini, M.D., former Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.
Amazon Reviews
5 Stars: An excellent, thought-provoking book, April 15, 2016
In “Dumping Iron,” P.D. Mangan has a simple but provocative message: he argues that high iron levels in the human body contribute to a wide range of chronic diseases, including heart disease, dementia, diabetes, and many kinds of cancer.
Here are just a few of the things the book mentions:
• Women live several years longer, on average, than men in the United States and most other countries. This may be because women lose significant amounts of iron through menstruation.
• “At age 45, men have about four times the amount of iron in their bodies as women do, and they also have four times the rate of heart attacks.”
• Nonagenarians and centenarians have significantly lower iron levels than middle-aged people from the same cultures. “This can be attributed to the faster death rate of men with high iron levels and the greater survival of those men with low iron levels.”
• Blood donors, who lower their iron levels when they give blood, are significantly healthier than non-donors. The is true even after accounting for the “healthy donor” effect. “[B]lood donors had an 88% reduced risk of heart attack.”
If iron is so bad, why aren’t its risks better known? The main reason is that it isn’t the root cause of any specific disease. Instead, it’s a general factor that increases one’s susceptibility to a wide range of health problems. For example, bacteria need iron to reproduce, so someone with high bodily iron will be much more susceptible to infections, but iron isn’t the root of those infections so it’s usually overlooked.
Also, iron isn’t always harmful. It’s actually essential, in small doses, to many chemical processes within the body. And dietary iron was scarce in the prehistoric past, and so our bodies have evolved to absorb it readily and let go of it grudgingly. But now that we live in a world of plenty, that tendency to hold on to iron–and the resulting tendency for one’s iron level to rise steadily with age–causes health problems.
Since mainstream medical advice almost never mentions iron as a health risk, skeptical readers might wonder if this is just some kooky fringe theory. Quite the opposite: “Dumping Iron” has nearly 150 scientific references, along with testimonials by several medical researchers who have studied iron’s effects on the body. I think this book represents the best of alternative medicine: it offers an idea that’s far outside the medical consensus while staying rooted in research.
But “Dumping Iron” isn’t just a scientific treatise. It also offers practical advice about how to measure iron levels, what the ideal level of bodily iron is, and how people can attain that ideal level. The best way to do so is to donate blood, but many people aren’t eligible to donate, so the book offers several alternatives.
This is my favorite health/nutrition book of the past few years, and I’d encourage everyone to check it out and consider its ideas.
5 Stars: The most important health book I’ve read for years, 15 April 2016
Dumping Iron covers a topic I’d never even considered before: the danger of excess iron for your health and the unexpected commonness of it. It turns out that levels considered in the normal range carry a lot of risk across a wide range of conditions.
I found the book to be very well structured. Each section has a takeaway points summary and the whole work builds up a convincing case against iron and then shows clearly what you can do for your own health. In fact I have already signed up and donated blood based on the advice. When talking with friends about the topic I found I could recall a lot of details for a single reading so I think it worked.
Also I should note that I chased up a small sample of the references to make sure they were being accurately reported and they were. Very highly recommended.
5 Stars: It finally makes sense, March 30, 2016
