The claimEvidence D · marketing folklore
Feeling depleted? Take something that builds qi and blood
The evidence
The phrase bundles at least four different situations, told apart by hemoglobin and ferritin; the non-heme iron in foods like jujube is low and poorly absorbed, with no human evidence it corrects iron-deficiency anemia.
The mechanism, in brief
Put together what this story has covered, and you can answer what many people are really asking: what does bu qi xue — the traditional Chinese idea of replenishing qi and blood — correspond to in the body?
Sources (3)
- Camaschella, C. (2015). Iron-deficiency anemia. The New England Journal of Medicine, 372(19), 1832–1843.
- Hurrell, R., & Egli, I. (2010). Iron bioavailability and dietary reference values. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 91(5), 1461S-1467S. Abstract only (the AJCN supplement full text could not be retrieved): iron bioavailability is estimated at 14-18% for mixed diets and 5-12% for vegetarian diets in subjects with no iron stores, the values used to set dietary reference values. Phytate, polyphenols, calcium, ascorbic acid and muscle tissue shift absorption strongly in single-meal isotope studies but only modestly in multimeal studies with a varied diet; the nature of the meat factor is unresolved; iron status generally has a greater effect than diet composition. The abstract gives no separate heme vs non-heme absorption percentages (abstract, PMID 20200263).
- Chen, J., & Tsim, K. W. K. (2020). A review of edible jujube, the Ziziphus jujuba fruit: a health food supplement for anemia prevalence. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 11, 593655.