Hey Allan,

my recommendation is to please always include the units: g/dL, ng/mL, % etc. Labs and countries have different units and without them we could only be guessing.

Ferritin (kind of “iron storage”) and hemoglobin aren’t enough. You also should know iron itself and hematocrit. Although your ferritin and hemoglobin look to be at the lower end of the acceptable spectrum, you’re not having any symptoms.

Also… seems like you’ve dialed-in food wise and supplement wise. But you don’t have to resign from coffee nor dairy products for meals, as long as you don’t target those meals as iron heavy, e.g. you can have breakfast with milk/cheese and lunch dinner with steak&veggies. You’d need TUE for iron blood infusion, which works wonders.

i am not a doctor but just a slowtwitch idiot so take this with a grain of salt.

the range where i am from is 20 - 300 so aim to be high normal (mine is around 250). take a ferrous sulfate tablet every day for 2 months and then get re tested. get your b12 at the top range too and then your hemo should come up. you can do some b12 shots (1 a week if it is low). or take daily b12 tablets for 2 months. no down side to having high b12. but higher hemoglobin higher life quality and higher performance. good luck.

there are illicit ways to temporarily increase hemoglobin but the above is a non doping, natural and safe way.

Thanks for sharing.
First up a disclaimer: I am an MD and one particular area of work that I focus on is what we term Patient Blood Management, which are all the various things that we do to optimise patients pre-operatively, conserve patients blood mass intra-operatively and minimise any postoperative blood transfusions.
Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide.
A ferritin of <100 is generally suggestive of iron deficiency and <30 is diagnostic. Ferritin will go up at times of acute stress as it is an inflammatory molecule, so it can be artificially elevated at times.
Don't ask me why some countries cannot adopt the much more scientifically and clinically relevant of <30 as being the lower limit of normal. It leaves a large proportion of the population underrated.
Your haemoglobin is sitting comparatively on the lower side, by no means anything to worry about, but it really is running on the lower side which is less common in males compared to females (where we have a cut off of 12 as the lower limit of normal).
A few key things:
You will almost certainly benefit from iron supplementation so definitely continue what you are doing at present on that front.
A big question is why are you iron deficient as this can be due to things like occult blood loss. There are some environmental reasons why as well (like if you are a heavy sweater with training, certain diets etc).
You may have to argue with your doc's that 37 is low-it is not as well appreciated in the general medical community that this is a low value.
I am not sure what your access to IV iron infusions is like, but this is something we do commonly in my institution (over 800 per annum) to optimise our patients prior to major surgery etc. It is a nice way to get your levels up and not have to worry about taking oral supplements for so long.