The actual amount of the iron in your body is not very great, but what the iron does is almost fantastic. Nothing in all the discoveries of the space age in which we live can begin to compare with what goes on inside your body, particularly when you consider these marvelous reactions of the iron in your system. Without this metal you could not begin to live, not even for a moment.

Most of the iron is found in the red blood cells, where it forms part of the complex protein known as hemoglobin, the red substance that gives color to the blood. Hemoglobin has a very special faction to perform. It carries the oxygen to the tissues and keeps us alive.

Red blood cells are extremely small. Normally there are around 5,000,000 of them in a drop of blood no larger than the head of a pin! These tiny cells are rounded on the edges and hollow in the middle, something like a disc or plate. This provides a relatively large surface compared with the volume of cell, making an easier exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Each red cell contains 250,000,000 molecules of hemoglobin, and one billion atoms of iron! In the few seconds during whom the tiny red cell is passing through the lung, it picks up one billion molecules of the oxygen from the air in the lung. At the same time in drops a billion molecules of the carbon dioxide, which it has brought in from tissues of the body. This unwanted carbon dioxide is then removed from the body as we exhale or air supplies the red of the carbon dioxide. We call this respiration.

Red blood cells last only about four months, and must then be destroyed. New cells must be produced in the large numbers to replace those that can no longer be used. To meet this needed, your body has to make many millions of new red blood cells every minute, just to keep up the normal supply. Each tiny red blood cell carries its own little portion of iron, which the body measures out with such exactness that each cell has just enough iron for the work it has to do, and no more , so careful is nature not to waste anything.