My doctors assure me this diet could not cause the severity of anemia measured. Most doctors, I find, are not well trained in nutrition. But in order to determine what kind of anemia you have, you will need to know a good deal more than just your hemoglobin levels. The bone marrow is the source of new blood cells. Your physician can get an idea about the answer to this question by measuring your reticulocyte count and calculating your reticulocyte index.
Reticulocytes are very young red blood cells.
If your bone marrow is working well, it should be pushing out a large number of these young red blood cells into the blood stream in an attempt to correct your low hemoglobin levels. Therefore, if your bone marrow is working well you should have a high reticulocyte count and a high reticulocyte index. Anemia in the face of a highly functioning bone marrow is seen in conditions such as sickle cell anemia, in which the red cells that are produced do not function normally, and break up. Even though the bone marrow tries its best to make new cells, it can't quite keep up with the rate of destruction, and you become anemic. If your bone marrow is not able to make new red blood cells and send them out into circulation in response to your anemia, your reticulocyte count and index will be low.