At any one time you have about 4000mg of iron in your body.
Most of this (2500mg) is used to make the ‘red stuff’ in your blood called haemoglobin.
There is a reserve store of iron in Ferritin of about 1000mg (so enough iron to grow a baby or replace 2L of blood)
The rest of your iron is in the muscles and tissues of the body (500mg)
Overall, the body is very efficient at recycling iron and so you only need to absorb 1-2mg a day from the diet.
