MICRO-MINERALS
Minerals are indispensable part of a complete diet of humans, animals and plants nutrition. They are inorganic elements that are found in all body tissues and fluids. These minerals yield no energy but they have vital roles in many activities occurring in the body. The body needs many minerals, called Essential minerals. They are divided up into major minerals (macrominerals) and trace minerals (microminerals). These two groups of minerals are equally important, but trace minerals are needed in smaller amounts usually in microgram quantities (less than 100 mg quantities).
IRON (Fe)
INTRODUCTION
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from Latin: ferrum) and its atomic number is 26. Iron (Fe) belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. The Earth’s crust is made up of about 5% of iron. After oxygen, silicon, and aluminum, iron is the fourth abundant element.
Iron is an essential mineral to all cells of the human body. It is needed for both physical and mental health because every cell in the body needs iron to produce energy. It is present mainly in heme of hemoglobin, myoglobin, and cytochromes & in iron storage proteins ferritin & hemosidrin.
SOURCES FOR IRON
Sources of iron include: liver, cereals, flour, egg-yolk, fish and shellfish, red meat, beans (such as red kidney beans, edamame beans and chickpeas), nuts, dried fruit (such as dried apricots), lentils, soy foods, green leafy vegetables, and raisins. Milk is very low in iron content. Iron utensils also increases iron content of food.
In Foods, iron found in its two forms:
1. Heme Iron: derived from the hemoglobin and myoglobin animal food sources (meat, seafood, and poultry). Heme iron is the most easily absorbable form (15% to 35%) and accounts for 10% or more of our total absorbed iron.
2. Non-Heme Iron: Non-heme iron is obtained from plants (such as cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables) and iron fortified meals. It is not well absorbed as heme iron. (Lucia K et al., 2021).
Distribution of Iron in the Body
An adult human has approximately 4 grams of iron in his body. This amount is available in two forms:
1: Functional forms:
About (75%) of iron is present in its functional form as:
a- Hemoglobin (67%) b- Myoglobin (7.5%) c- Respiratory enzymes (0.5%) as cytochromes etc.
2: Non-functional forms:
About (25%) of iron is present in its non-functional form. Free iron is very toxic. So, iron is bound to proteins (non-hememetaloproteins) that allows it to be transported & stored in non-toxic forms.
1- Transferrin (0.1%): for transport of iron in blood.
2- Ferritin & hemosiderin (24.9%): for storage of iron in tissues.