What are the causes of low hemoglobin levels during exercise?

Low hemoglobin is also known as exercise-induced low hemoglobin. Patients will have hematopoietic dysfunction and blood cell reduction. Severe cases will experience insufficient Qi and blood after strenuous exercise. This is mainly due to excessive exercise training that leads to the loss of blood cells and blood dilution. The blood cannot be separated, so low hemoglobin will occur. Most of the time, it occurs after excessive exercise, so in normal times, you should reduce exercise and get enough rest.

Why does exercise-induced hypochromia occur ?

There are many reasons for sports-induced hypochromia, mainly the following:

(1) Lack of hematopoietic substances, resulting in reduced red blood cell production:

Iron deficiency is the main and most common cause. Long-term high-intensity training will result in iron deficiency. Exercise increases the body's consumption of various nutrients. Excessive sweating and increased iron excretion in feces and urine can cause excessive iron loss. In contrast to the increased demand, the absorption of iron in food decreases, which can easily cause the body's iron reserves to decrease or even be deficient. The latest research report shows that even if hb is still at an ideal level, athletic ability will decrease as long as iron reserves decrease. This shows the importance of the body's iron reserves to athletic ability.

After intense exercise training, the damage to skeletal muscle fibers must be repaired during the recovery period. If protein intake is insufficient, the body will have to use hemoglobin in red blood cells as a source of protein for muscle repair, which will reduce the number of red blood cells and the hemoglobin content in red blood cells.

(2) Increased red blood cell destruction and loss:

Intense exercise training can cause red blood cell destruction and hemolysis, making it impossible for red blood cells to reach their normal lifespan of 120 days. At the same time, exercise training can also cause changes in renal permeability, causing occult blood in the urine or even hematuria, resulting in red blood cell loss.

(3) Hemodilution:

Long-term endurance training can cause an increase in the body's total blood volume and blood dilution, which will cause a decrease in hemoglobin concentration.

How to prevent and treat sports-induced hypochromia?

Exercise-induced hypochromia may be due to one or more of the above factors. To correct exercise-induced hypohemoglobin, blood tests should be performed and comprehensive prevention and treatment methods should be adopted according to the individual and the cause of the disease.

3.1. Improve dietary nutrition

In the diet, attention should be paid to strengthening the supplementation of iron-containing foods, protein, vitamins C, B12, and folic acid to fully ensure the daily intake of hematopoietic substances. Foods with high content of the above ingredients include: animal liver and blood, milk, egg yolk, soy products, green vegetables, kelp, seaweed, black fungus, etc.

3.2, Choose nutritional supplements appropriately

Athletes should regularly test their Hb and serum ferritin (serum ferritin is the most sensitive indicator of the body's iron reserve status). When these two indicators do not reach the ideal level, choose appropriate nutritional supplements for enhanced supplementation, focusing on the balanced supplementation of nutrients that affect the red blood cell metabolism process, namely iron, protein, various amino acids, vitamins, and trace elements. Exercise-induced hypohemoglobin can also be treated with traditional Chinese medicine dialectical treatment. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that exercise-induced anemia is related to spleen deficiency and kidney deficiency. Therefore, blood-replenishing Chinese herbal preparations are mainly based on blood-generating prescriptions that strengthen the spleen, replenish qi and tonify the kidneys.