Iron Deficiency Case Study

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Laura is a seventeen year-old high school student just outside of Duluth, Minnesota. She is an average student in the classroom, but excels in intramural track and field competitions. She is about to start her senior year, and Laura wants to maintain the school track and field records, which she has earned in the past few years. Because she wants to be in top physical condition when the school year begins, Laura changes her diet so that she now only eats low-fat, highly nutritious foods. She has become a vegetarian. Although she still eats eggs and dairy products, she now chooses soy patties over hamburgers. Laura also begins running every morning before school. She was in the best shape of her life the first few months of the school year, winning all of her events. Recently, however, Laura has not been feeling too well. She has noticed that it is much harder to gather the energy for class every day. She has a hard time "getting up" to start new things. At first, she noticed it only once a month, while she was menstruating, but now she feels tired and weak more often. She gets particularly tired after running sprints. At the beginning of the year she set the pace for her team, but now she finds it difficult to keep up. At first, she thought she was just tired and stressed from such an active lifestyle, but now she is noticing other symptoms, causing her to be a bit more worried. She is now experiencing shin splints (persistent pain in the shins). Lately she has looked pale. She gets frequent headaches and finds herself much more irritable. This may be because she has been having trouble sleeping lately. This winter has also been particularly cold and Laura can't seem to warm up. Laura's symptoms were not severe enough for her to worry, so she put off seeing the doctor. However, Laura now tends to get more bruises than she used to. And, when she gets cut it takes

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