The so-called "milk anemia" refers to infants and children suffering from iron deficiency anemia due to excessive drinking of milk, neglected to add supplementary food.
The newborn receives a certain amount of iron from her mother at birth, but after six months, she needs to add iron from her food. However, the milk sold on the market contains 0.5-2.0 mg of iron in 1,000 ml, and the one-year-old child Every day it takes about 6 milligrams of iron from food. Not only does milk contain too little iron, but iron has a low rate of absorption. Iron is the basic element of hematopoiesis. Iron deficiency can cause iron deficiency anemia. According to analysis, the iron content of milk is only 33% of human milk. At the same time, the absorption rate of iron in human milk can reach 50%, while the absorption rate of iron in milk is only 10%. One of the promoters that can increase the absorption and utilization of iron is vitamin C with the lowest content in milk. At present, most people cook milk with metal utensils, and vitamin C is easily oxidized. Coupled with the lack of stomach acid during infancy, is not conducive to the absorption of vitamin C, if you do not pay attention to vitamin C, iron absorption and utilization will naturally reduce. At the same time, milk contains more calcium, phosphorus and potassium, and these minerals can make the stomach contents alkaline; phosphorus can also be combined with iron to make it difficult to dissolve. These will affect the absorption of iron, thus hindering the correction of iron deficiency anemia and may even aggravate the condition.
In addition, copper is also a component of many enzymes in the human body. Most of the copper is present in the plasma in the form of plasma ketoxynucleoside oxidase, a multifunctional oxidase that catalyzes the absorption of ferric ions that cannot be directly absorbed by the body into ferric iron that can be absorbed and utilized to promote iron. Absorption rate in the intestine is to make hemoglobin stock material. The copper content in milk is also extremely low. 1000 milliliters contain only about 0.01 milligrams of copper and it is difficult to meet the physiological needs of the baby. This is one of the reasons for the "milk anemia." In addition, folic acid, vitamin B12 and other anti-anaemia factors in milk are vulnerable to loss. At present, the milk consumed by infants and young children is almost all boiled at high temperatures, and the loss of folic acid and vitamin B12 can reach more than 50%. Vitamin B12 can only be absorbed successfully only by the action of mucin in the stomach. Due to the lack of mucin in the stomach of the infant, raising it with milk alone will inevitably result in the deficiency of folic acid and vitamin B12, resulting in the disorder of the nucleic acid metabolism of the cells, and the occurrence of megaloblastic anemia in infants and young children.