We do understand what you mean, and we did say so in the post that it is a marker of inflammation. The question is to what extent is it? Inflammation also causes anemia, so one must look at both the CBC as well as ferritin and other markers to be sure. This post is not to discuss diagnosis but to link ferritin to other health conditions in context.

Your information mixes together several issues and thus confuses the reader. I worry the writer is also confused. Ferritin is what we call an “Acute phase reactor” This means that in illnesses that have acute inflammation ferritin rises as it responds to inflammation and becomes inaccurate as a marker for iron stores. Ferritin is normally useful in looking at iron stores but we must remain alert for when it has been pushed up by inflammation. This is why it should be–when there is question–measured with Iron/iron binding capacity and sometimes with a sed rate as well. An example where ferritin can be high, but the body depleted in iron is in “Stills’ Disease” called in Modern day Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Just because the Ferritin is high in JRA (in olden days’ called Still’s Disease) has NOTHING to do with iron count truly being high–ferritin is falsely elevated as a marker of inflammation in this ailment. Indeed many children with Juvenile Rheumatoid arthritis have low iron when measured in other fashion. What is the author’s point? A high ferritin in this autoimmune disease, for example, is meaningless–it is not even a good or accurate means to measure iron and would lead to false understanding… While low ferritin is less fraught with risk because treating low iron in Restless legs, as an example WILL help decrease restless legs symptoms, does the author imagine iron helps low thyroid? As another example, celiac disease, ferritin is low because the bowel is damaged and cannot well absorb nutrients. Avoiding gluten will heal the gut and permit better iron absorbtion; I worry someone misunderstand that a treatment for celiac involves iron. Overall it completely misses the point to say ferritin is high in Hemochromatosis (yes this is real elevated iron which we diagnose via DNA) versus ferritin high in Still’s Disease (iron is NOT elevated at all. This is a false positive. It means the author doesn’t understand the test. For the same reason ferritin is High in Grave’s but not in Hypothyroidism. It is not the iron that changes it is the test which is falsely impacted by inflammation. Ferritin is NOT the same as iron. Ferritin is a test impacted by forces beyond actual iron results. That’s why we do OTHER tests to double check it. FERRITIN is a test fraught with error. You have it all backwards and I am sorry you wrote a whole book that way.

Ask your doctor or pharmacist.