97 | Is Hibiscus High in Iron?

0:00 Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm an herbalist and nutritionist. And in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. Today, I wanted to share something with you that I learned recently when I was putting together a lecture on hibiscus. I am, as some of you know, I'm teaching a class called Herbs for Nutritionists. And in this particular version of the class, we are focusing on cardiovascular and immune supportive herbs. The idea is if you're trained in nutrition, but you want to work with herbs, we're going over 16, very gentle, very easy to start with herbs that might be helpful for your client population. And as a side note, it's not too late to join. If you want to join this class, you can get up to 16 CEU credits and learn about a bunch of herbs that you're probably going to find really helpful in your practice.

0:47 Anyway, hibiscus is one of the herbs that I think is really underappreciated, at least in many kind of Western American-based herbal circles. It actually has quite a lot of research in terms of supporting people who have blood pressure. High blood pressure, cardiometabolic disease, and so forth. It is not a cure-all and so forth, but it's a really, really lovely herb to know about. And one of the things that's nice about hibiscus is that it tastes good. It's a fun herb to have. It's something people actually like to do many times. So it's a lovely one to have in your toolkit. So anyway, I was preparing a lecture on this herb for the class. And as I was preparing for the lecture, as I always do, I try to refresh my knowledge.

1:28 I try to see what other people are noting or talking about. I try to look at the research. And I saw that in many of the monographs that have come out, you know, for the last five or 10 years, they will mention that hibiscus is rich in vitamins and minerals, including iron. And I thought to myself, huh, interesting. I've never really thought of hibiscus as something that's rich in iron, but as somebody who focuses on fertility and reproductive, menstrual health, iron deficiency, and anemia, something that comes up a lot of my practice. So I'm always really interested about ways that we can possibly top off levels or add a little bit of extra iron into people's daily regimens. So I thought, let me look into this a little bit more. I want to know more about how much iron are we talking and so forth.

2:10 So I did a little bit of digging, and I found that conveniently, excuse me, in 2023, two researchers from the University of Toronto. Let's see, I'm not going to do a good job with these names, but I'll do my best, Oya Wole and Dio Sade, published a paper, and they had thinking along similar lines. If you're not familiar with hibiscus, it is a very common beverage in many parts of the world, including Mexico, lots of Central America, many places in Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. Very common beverage. People love drinking this. It tastes good. So it's refreshing. It's relatively easy to grow in some of these areas and so forth.

2:52 So these researchers from the University of Toronto were thinking, hmm, we hear that this plant is high in iron. Many people in some of these areas, especially sub-Saharan Africa, it's very common to have iron deficiency or iron deficiency anemia. So they were thinking, I wonder if it would be feasible to promote hibiscus tea, which is already commonly accepted in these communities and accessible and so forth. We're wondering if that might be a way to alleviate some of this burden of iron deficiency. So they thought first step is let's actually find out how much iron are we talking, which is great, right? That makes a lot of sense. So what they did is they said, let's figure out how much iron is coming out in the way that people generally consume this plant, which is traditionally we are going to prepare hibiscus.

3:42 It's the calyx, not the flowers. The calyx is like the little, it's a little part that kind of wraps around the flower before it comes out. So the calyx is the part that is traditionally used. That's what you're going to see if you go to buy red zinger tea or hamica, it's commonly called roselle, etc.. It looks kind of like a flower petal, but it's actually the calyx. And generally what's happening is we're going to do a hot infusion, and then it's going to be served either warm or more commonly chilled as like an iced tea. A beautiful, red, sour, lovely flavored iced tea. So let's see how much iron is actually coming out when prepared that way. Not just going to look at how much iron is in the calyx, but how much iron is extracted in a water-based infusion extraction process.

4:26 So what they found is that if you take about 12 grams, which is on the higher end of a daily dose for many people, some of the studies looking at hibiscus are using much less than that. Although there are studies up to 10-ish grams a day, and if people are drinking a lot of tea daily, you might get up to 12 grams. So anyway, they found that in the 12 grams, if you extract 12 grams of calyces in water, you're going to get about 1.25 milligrams of iron. Now, this is not really going to get you super close to your recommended daily amount for most of us. It's a teeny bit. It is potentially like a little bit of a top off.

5:08 But I would not say this is a life changing amount of iron. However, they went on to look at how much of the iron in that extract, in the water-based infusion, is actually available to be absorbed. And they said only about 30% of that amount, remember, and it's only 1.25 milligrams, only about 30% of that was what they considered extractable. Because what happens is, as you probably know, iron, it's very easy for it to bind with polyphenols. The herb, the hamica, the hibiscus, has a lot of polyphenols in it. That's what gives it that beautiful red color and some of the other properties it has. So the iron is actually binding to those polyphenols, meaning it's not really something that we can extract in the gut and use as a daily source of iron, generally speaking.

5:57 So realistically, if you're taking 12 grams of the calyces. Infusing them in water, and drinking all of that, you're really only going to get about 0.375 milligrams of iron, which is not a substantial contribution to the daily requirements. So anyway, I just wanted to share that with you because I thought it was really interesting and feel very grateful to these researchers for actually taking the time to go through this step by step and look at what are we realistically talking about. So it is interesting to see, you know, it's very easy for things for you to just read, oh, it's high in iron. Like, great, it's high in iron. But when you sit down and look at it, you're like, well, maybe relatively high in iron, comparatively speaking, but the amount that's actually absorbable and available in a standard daily dose, I would say it's probably a little bit misleading to say that this plant, this is a good source of iron for most people.

6:49 Lots of other reasons to work with hibiscus. And I think it's something that many of us should be exploring a little bit more and lots to love. However, I think probably it's for the best to avoid saying that hibiscus is going to be a great source of iron for these reasons. All right, I hope that was helpful. Check the show notes if you want to look at the article yourself. Like I said, it is open source, so you can read the methods and a little bit more about how they did this yourself. Also, if you're a nutritionist and you want to join us in Herbs 102 for nutritionists, you are absolutely welcome to do that. It's starting on March 8, 2026. However, it'll be available to register sort of indefinitely.

7:31 Everything is recorded, so you're welcome to jump in at any time. We would love to have you. feel free to reach out with questions and have a lovely rest of your day.