Chronic anemia

by Mary
(Cochin)

I'm a 20 year old girl. I always feel very tired and sleepy. On holidays I sleep for about 12-14 hours. In the recent years I’ve experienced a great lack of concentration and memory loss. I had a poor memory from my childhood onwards. But in school days it didn’t affect my studies. I’m still bright & smart except that I’m very weak in remembering things & that I sleep a lot. This makes me poor in my studies now. My recent blood test shows:

haemoglobin(cynmeth hb) 11.7 g/dl (13-18)
lymphocytes 47% (20-45)
PCV 35.3% (37-54)

OTHER RESULTS ARE ALL WITHIN THE NORMAL RANGE.

PERIPHERAL BLOOD SMEAR:
Impression: HYPOCHROMIC NORMOCYTIC PICTURE

I know this means anemia. But is this very common and is this as simple as that? Will there be any problems? I’ve been given some medicines. Will that and a nutritious diet be enough?

Anemia And Tiredness

You have a normochromic anemia or anemia of chronic disease. This means that you have some underlying chronic illness causing this type of anemia. I note that you have a marginally raised lymphocyte count which could be related to the anemia, but could equally indicate a chronic viral infection causing your anemia too. Your symptoms of tiredness and poor concentration are common in anemia.

Anemia And Nutrition

Nutrition is important to everyone and is of course important to you. However, unless your chronic anemia is caused by poor nutrition, it is unlikely to make any difference to you. What you require is investigations to determine the cause of your problems. These are numerous and not something I can outline for you here, but you need to question your physician as to why you have this.




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