Iron Glycinate

What Is Iron Glycinate?

Iron in its ferrous form, each ion held by two glycine molecules. Glycine is the smallest amino acid, and each one closes a five-membered ring with the metal. There is 29 mg of iron per serving as Ferrochel ferrous bisglycinate chelate, and a serving is one capsule.

How It Works in the Body

Those two rings leave the iron inside a small, neutral molecule about the size of a dipeptide, and the chelate stays bonded as the pH climbs past the stomach. Iron that reaches the body goes into heme, the flat ring that carries oxygen in hemoglobin and holds it in muscle as myoglobin. It also sits in the iron-sulfur clusters that pass electrons down the respiratory chain. What the body does not put to work is banked in ferritin.

What It Supports

• Oxygen transport: Iron sits at the center of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells.
• Oxygen in muscle: Myoglobin holds an iron atom and keeps oxygen on hand inside muscle fibers.
• Normal energy metabolism: Iron-sulfur clusters play a role in the electron transport chain that makes ATP.
• Glycine along with it: The two glycines are absorbed as an amino acid the body uses for collagen and other proteins.

Who It May Suit

People on vegetarian and vegan diets, where all the iron in food is non-heme. It suits menstruating adults, people who give blood often, and anyone whose intake of iron-rich food runs lower than they would like. The capsule shell is hypromellose.

Good To Know

Not everyone needs extra iron, and the body has no active way to excrete a surplus. Talk with your provider before use, especially if you are pregnant, have hemochromatosis, or take a thyroid medicine or an antibiotic that iron can bind in the gut. Keep iron away from children: accidental overdose of iron-containing products is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under six.