Floradix Liquid Iron Formula, 500ml

Yes, I was anaemic for a while.I was prescribed iron tablets, but for a couple of reasons they weren't so good for me. I think it was a midwife friend who first mentioned Floradix. It worked for me.Because I was quite seriously anaemic I did some research and found that iron absorption is not a simple affair. In fact, most (95%?) of the iron in the iron sulphate(?) tablets doesn't get absorbed, but still causes digestive problems and so on, whereas the iron in the Floradix (and many other food sources, especially from meat and shellfish) is absorbed much better and is tolerated much better. I made sure to eat a good diet, rich in iron, and took Floradix as often as it said on the packet. It worked, and my haemoglobin level rose back up to normal in 3 or 4 months, which is as fast as theoretically possible I think, as the blood cells have a certain fixed life cycle of 120 days or so.I personally found the taste very nice. Almost too nice as it was tempting to drink more than I was supposed to. I don't think it would be dangerous to drink too much but it also won't speed up recovery from anaemia. You have to take it every day for a few months. (Taking too many iron sulphate tablets on the other hand can be fatal, and you MUST make sure to keep them away from children! The iron sulphate itself tastes really very foul indeed so they put a thick sugar coating on the pills, and children can easily mistake them for sweets.)As far as diet goes, well, unfortunately for vegetarians - and I had been a veggie for 15 years up to that point - it is rather hard to correct anaemia without eating any meat at all, although you don't need to eat much. It turns out that if you eat a little meat then even iron from non-meat food sources will be absorbed much better. I'm not sure if anyone has figued out why that is but it seems to be what studies have shown. I totally respect anyone's dietary choices but for myself, I now eat a little meat every now and then. I reckon most lamb is effectively free range and almost organic so I stick to that, and organic chicken. If you like shellfish then you're laughing. Most shellfish have huge amounts of iron which is readily absorbed. (But lobsters have no iron as they use copper instead of iron for oxygen transport.)(Shellfish may well have the same effect in increasing absorption of vegetable-source iron as meat does but I believe the studies were done with meat and not shellfish, and since I'm not sure it's known WHY meat aids absorption I can't assume that eating a little shellfish will have the same effect, but the iron in shellfish itself will be absorbed well. Mussels have as much iron as liver for example.)Floradix is safe, effective, pleasant and ethical. I would definitely take it again.

I'm a veteran of 5 months of treatment for iron deficient anaemia. I should have been diagnosed 2.5 years before that, but the GP failed to contact me after a blood test. So after I insisted on another test to check the underlying condition for another health issue I crashed pretty badly and am only JUST coming out of severe lethargy and muscle pains and memory impairment. Being female, menstruating heavily with fibroids and a vegetarian from the mid 70s, I really should have been dosing myself with this stuff from the start. I didn't. So an extreme body shutdown occurred. But I did search the web an awful lot, but even then the information is bitty and I've only just put together the full picture.Conventional Treatment for anaemia is through a enormously high dose of iron tablets (600mg of compound =70mg elemental iron) in the hope that some of it will be absorbed to give a RDA of 8-15mg plus the extra to make you recover. Technically the Floradix adult dose provides 15mg daily, so this is a maintenance dose for women. It takes 4 months to completely replace all your red blood cells. Iron absorption is helped by vitamin C which weakly grabs hold of the iron until it gets safely to your duodenum. However pretty much everything else will tightly bind to the iron so it never gets absorbed....tea, coffee, calcium (cheese, milk, egg white, tofu), polyphenols (red wine, vanilla), phytates (durum wheat especially...found in chapatis). To make red blood cells you also need vitamin B12 and that needs the other B vitamins and calcium to be absorbed. Vitamin D helps the absorption of Calcium (UK sunshine April to Oct, 45 minutes per week). I wasn't told to take B12 and ended up with crippling leg pains which sometimes stopped me from walking. Thankfully I seem to have nearly reversed this with slow release tablets. There's not quite enough in the Floradix if you have completely drained your stores. Floradix contains iron, vit c and all the b vitamins.So I'd been taking the Floradix for 6 weeks and getting a gently gradual increase in wellbeing, when I saw an article on how vitamins are better absorbed in spray form just under the tongue and in the cheeks. But as Floradix is liquid if you sip and hold a little of your dose under your tongue at a time, this should have the same effect. I've had a few goes and it seems to be perking me up faster (I can assure you that after all this time the placebo effect is nil).To answer the cons. Deal with constipation by eating a handful of dried apricots and prunes daily, which are also high in iron. You don't know constipation until you've taken conventional iron tablets, but I got over that and restored my fibre heavy gut in 3 days.If you find the taste odd, which it is, rather like a sweet vegetable stock cube, well iron tablets are tasteless going down, but the acid reflux coming up is rather fouler. I couldn't stand Spatone, a water naturally high in iron sulphate. Make a choice.I reduced the heavy periods by taking raspberry leaf tea daily (tightens up the womb). I wanted to dodge having progesterone forced down my throat by the suddenly attentive GP.Ultimately iron and B12 are very necessary and very difficult to assimilate when you suddenly need it (you can potentially overdose on iron however if you aren't losing it through some form of bleeding)...and that could also apply to you meaties out there if you have acid reflux or gut absorption issues. I wish I had been taking Floradix as a therapeutic dose for years, and it looks like a necessity for the immediate future. Despite still feeling a bit wrung out, my stamina has increased dramatically ....I just thought I was unfit.

Bloke here. Been feeling tired and lethargic for a while now and decided to do something about it. After much internets, common cause seems to be iron deficiency, so I'm giving this product a try.Day 1: Doesn't taste as bad as some reviewers say... will post more updates over coming weeksWeek 1: It works. I was realising this by Day 2, but wanted to be sure.Not sure how to describe it, but it feels like someone's reached inside me and pulled my skeleton upright so I stand taller. I literally feel lighter on my feet. I get tired far less often during the day, my body doesn't ache as much, my eye sockets aren't as sunken as they used to be, I'm more focussed and alert, and I'm feeling much more positive about life. I wish I'd found this stuff 6 years ago when I first started feeling drained. Screw the doctors and chemists who told me I didn't need iron supplements (although admittedly it was the NHS website that made me seek out an iron supplement so kudos to the internets as usual). The downside is now I'm realising I've probably got something wrong with me and the iron supplements are just masking the symptoms. That being said, I feel orders of magnitude better thanks to the supplements!