Originally Posted by
martianone
IMHO- let your physician talk you into a colonoscopy and fecal occult blood. Your screening probably didn't include a ferritin, ask your physician about this test, also a vitamin B-12 and folate.
My hematocrit came in at 35 earlier this year and I was given all those follow up tests to try to identify the cause. Iron, folate, b-12 etc. as well as tests of liver and kidney function. Nothing stood out as abnormal and so there was nothing I could do on my own to try to bring my levels back up. I felt really run down all the time and was having breathing and heart rate issues so I think I had some sort of illness but they never figured it out. I could hardly ride my bike at all and even walking upstairs would leave me winded. They gave me lung x-rays and lung capacity tests and both static and treadmill ekg tests. No conclusions.
Last month I started feeling a lot better and I'm back on the bike and riding decently strong again and then my next set of blood tests showed hematocrit back up to 39. This is just into the "normal" range (even though average male has a 46). I'd feel better if they had identified what the cause was but since I feel better I guess eventually I'll just forget about it.
Best of luck figuring it all out.