Because of the specific physiological characteristics, women always easily suffer from iron-deficiency anemia. However, in addition to these physiological factors, some misunderstandings and habits in dieting can also lead to iron-deficiency anemia in women.

The first error: Fruits and vegetables have no use in iron supplementation.
Many people do not know eating more vegetables and fruits is also good for iron supplementation. This is because fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamin C, citric acid and malic acid. Such organic acids can form into complex compound with iron, so as to increasing the solubility of iron in the intestinal tract, which is conducive to the absorption of iron.

The second error: Eating more meat is bad to human body.
Nowadays, a lot of advertisements and reports hold that eating meat is harmful to human health. As a result, more and more women begin to only focus on the health effects of plant foods, which will lead to the deficiency of iron-rich animal foods. In fact, animal foods not only contains plenty of iron, but also has high absorption rate, which is up to 25%. However, because of the interference of phytic acid and oxalic acid in the food, the absorption rate of the iron in plant foods is very low, only about 3%. Therefore, avoiding meat will easily lead to iron-deficiency anemia. In the daily diet, the intake of fruits and vegetables and meat should be balanced.

The third error: Eggs and milk are very beneficial to people suffering from iron-deficiency anemia.
Milk contains enough nutrition, but the iron content is very low, and its absorption rate by the human body is only 10%. If parents only feed their infants with milk and ignore other complementary foods, it often causes iron-deficiency anemia. Although egg yolk contains high content of iron, however, its absorption rate is only 3%. What's more, some proteins contained in egg can inhibit the absorption of iron by human body. As a result, although these two kinds of food are very nutritious, they are not suitable for the supplementation of iron.

The fourth error: Drinking coffee and tea brings no harms to the health.
For women, drinking too much coffee and tea may lead to iron-deficiency anemia. This is because the tannic acid in tea and the polyphenols in coffee may form a kind of insoluble salt, which will inhibit the absorption of iron. Therefore, women should not drink two much coffee and tea. One or two cups every day is enough.

Of course, in addition to nutritional factors, iron-deficiency anemia may also be caused by some diseases, such as hemorrhoids, cancer, gastrointestinal ulcers, long-term use of aspirin and so on.