During periods of growth like infancy, childhood, adolescents and pregnancy, your blood volume increases in order to feed the new tissue. More blood and more tissue means more iron is needed to carry the extra oxygen around. Not meeting the demand can have lifelong consequences. Even without symptoms of anemia, iron deficient infants have signs of mental impairment caused by lack of iron. Studies suggest that anemia at 9 months of age is associated with impairment of infants and toddlers on tests of cognitive function, poorer performance on intelligence tests at ages 3 and 5, and lower learning achievement and less concentrating ability in the second grade.
Women take in less iron than a man because they are on average, smaller and eat less food.
Plus, they lose more because of menstruation. These factors put women at greater risk for iron deficiency, and make it important for them to eat right to get adequate amounts of iron. There are two kinds of iron . Heme iron if found only in animal tissue and is the more potent form of iron. The iron found in plant food is all non-heme iron.