Iron Intake Needs
Iron absorption and loss rates differ dramatically between people. Knowing yours prevents both anemia (too little) and accidental iron overload (too much)—two problems with opposite solutions that feel confusingly similar.
What this measures
How your DNA shapes iron intake needs.
TMPRSS6 governs how aggressively your body holds onto iron from food by regulating hepcidin, the hormone that controls iron absorption. HFE shapes how much iron the gut absorbs and how much the liver stores. Together they set your individual baseline for iron handling — independent of how much iron is on your plate.
Common HFE variants (C282Y, H63D) are associated with higher iron absorption and storage — useful in iron-poor diets, problematic in iron-rich ones. TMPRSS6 variants are associated with the opposite pattern. Most clients carry combinations of these, and the combinations matter more than any single variant in isolation.
Heme iron from animal sources absorbs more efficiently than non-heme iron from plants — but pairing non-heme sources with vitamin C changes that. Coffee, tea, and calcium compete with iron absorption. Blood donation is a real intervention for clients on the high-storage end, just as targeted supplementation is for those on the low.
An iron supplement that’s appropriate for one client is the wrong intervention for another with the opposite variant pattern. Knowing your TMPRSS6/HFE profile changes how you read iron labs and what supplementation actually makes sense.
Iron Intake Needs is one specific finding in this system. Your Genomic Lifestyle Optimization Report shows where your variants place you on the micronutrients and strategic supplementation spectrum — and what you can do about it: it renders as a dark card with a color marker calibrated to your variants, opening with the gene mechanism and closing with a practical, mechanism-led recommendation.
Want to see what a real Mosaic dark card looks like? Walk through a sample report →
In context
Minerals: the 7-insight cluster.
Iron Intake Needs is one finding in a tightly-related cluster. Mosaic sequences the other 6 alongside it so you see the whole biology — not an isolated data point.
Questions people ask
About Iron Intake Needs.
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