Anemic but iron levels are fine...

[graciegal]

I had a 15-hour dizzy spell today and called my midwife. She said that my iron levels are fine but my hematocrit was low at only 31%. Anyone else have a similar situation? Did drinking water fix that fine enough?

[Mamatoto2]

My knowledge is limited, but from what I understand, there's more than one type of anemia-not all of which are related to iron per se (folic acid comes to mind as another possibility). Maybe ask your MW why else you might have the symptoms/results you have and how then to best address them.

[katelove]

Hi,

Haematocrit is the proportion of red blood cells to total blood volume (the other components being white cells and plasma). If your haematocrit is low it either means that you have lost red blood cells without losing plasma or you have increased your plasma. During pregnancy it is almost always the latter as we increase our plasma volume by 50% but our red cell count by 33%. Bleeding does not cause a low haematocrit as you lose cells and plasma in equla proportions.

An haematocrit of 31% seems significantly low to me for your stage of pregnancy (I worked out that you're about 16 weeks, is that right). However, on it's own it doesn't really tell you much. Have you had iron studies done?

I think it would be a good idea to make an appointment with your midwife to discuss all your results and work out the cause of the low haematocrit as the treatment will depend on cause. Iron studies will be the most useful for this I would think but the rest of your Full Blood Count results will be part of the picture also.

It's always a good idea to be well hydrated of course but drinking water will not improve a low haematocrit. In fact, theoretically, it could make it worse but it would be almost impossible for a well person to drink enough water to do that. It is usually only seen in people who take ecstacy at rave parties then drink *heaps* of water or people who have psychiatric disorders which cause them to drink water to excess.

Oh, and this type of anaemia is called "dilutional anaemia" or, occasionally, "physiological anaemia".

Hope you're feeling better soon
Regards
Kate