Skip to content
Language: en
The guide

Inflammation and ferritin: when the number flatters you.

Updated 2 min readWaiting for medical review

The short answer

Ferritin also rises with inflammation, so it goes up during infections, flares and after hard training. A normal or even high ferritin can then hide low stores. Read it next to CRP and your blood count, and retest once you are well.

When you are ill, your liver makes more of a hormone called hepcidin. Hepcidin shuts the door in your gut where iron gets in and locks iron inside your cells, so less reaches your blood. At the same time your body makes extra ferritin. The result can look like plenty of iron when there is little.

Infection, even a quiet onea sore tooth, inflamed gumsStress and poor sleeplong-term, not one bad nightLow vitamin Dkeeps hepcidin raisedVery hard trainingintense sessions, long runsYesterday’s iron doseeach dose shuts it for a dayInflammation anywheregut, joints, skin
What raises hepcidin. Inflammation and stress work through the same door.

Clues that ferritin is flattering you

  • CRP or your white cell count is raised.
  • Transferrin saturation is low while ferritin looks fine.
  • Your red cells are small: an MCV under about 86 fL.
  • Ferritin jumped to around 100 µg/L or more for no clear reason. Iron built with food and supplements rises slowly.
Do

Retest once you have been well for 3 to 4 days.

Don’t

Treat a ferritin from during or just after an illness as your real level.

Quiet inflammation counts

It is not only colds. An inflamed tooth or gums, a lingering infection, a flare of a chronic condition, very hard training, long-term stress and poor sleep can all keep hepcidin up. The good news runs the same way: when inflammation settles, the door opens again and ferritin often starts to move on its own.

A ferritin above your lab's range, especially with no obvious infection, needs your doctor. It has other causes, including liver conditions and iron overload.

Questions

Can ferritin be high and iron low at the same time?

Yes. Inflammation pushes ferritin up and serum iron down. That pattern is a reason to look for the inflammation, not to take more iron.

Does exercise raise ferritin?

Very hard sessions cause short-lived inflammation that can lift ferritin for a day or two. Skip hard training the day before a test.

Sources

  1. 1.Ganz T. Hepcidin and iron regulation, 10 years later. Blood, 2011
  2. 2.World Health Organization. Guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations, 2020
  3. 3.The Iron Guide, part 2: How iron moves

This page has not been reviewed by a clinician yet. Read it as general education, and take your own results to your doctor.

Educational, not medical advice. ferritin.ai does not diagnose or treat any condition, and it never sets a dose. Talk to your doctor about your own results.

Keep reading