A nurse with three decades of bedside experience missed the warning signs of her own iron deficiency, even as her body sent her four distinct signals for months.
Quick Take
- Nurse Julie, who has 33 years of nursing experience, says she overlooked four classic iron deficiency symptoms in herself before getting tested.
- The signs included ridged and spoon-shaped fingernails, restless legs, chewing ice, and constant coldness.
- She urges people to ask doctors for exact ferritin and transferrin saturation numbers, not just a “normal” label.
- Major medical centers confirm these same symptoms can show up even when standard blood counts look fine.
A Veteran Nurse Missed Her Own Diagnosis
Julie runs the channel Nurse Julie | Healthy Aging Decoded and has spent 33 years working as a nurse. In her video “I Missed My Own IRON DEFICIENCY – 4 Warning Signs I Ignored,” she describes catching her own low iron levels late, despite knowing the symptom list better than most patients ever will. Her point is simple. Knowing the textbook signs and recognizing them in your own body are two very different skills.
She lays out four signals she brushed off for too long. Her fingernails developed vertical ridges and started flattening, then curving upward into a spoon shape. Her legs grew restless at night. She found herself compulsively chewing ice. And she felt cold constantly, even when others in the room were comfortable. Each sign on its own seems minor. Together, they built a pattern she says she should have caught sooner.
The Ice-Chewing Clue Doctors Take Seriously
The ice-chewing habit, known clinically as pagophagia, is not just a quirky craving. Julie cites research showing it shows up in about 11% of iron-depleted blood donors, compared to just 4% of those with normal iron levels. That gap is large enough that clinicians treat unexplained ice chewing as a genuine red flag worth investigating, not a habit to shrug off.
The other three signs track closely with what hospitals and health agencies already publish. Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic both list brittle or spoon-shaped nails, restless legs, and cold hands and feet among recognized symptoms of iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia. Johns Hopkins Medicine and the National Institutes of Health add fatigue and pale skin to that same list. Julie’s personal account lines up with decades of established clinical observation.
Why Normal Blood Work Can Still Miss the Problem
One of Julie’s central warnings is that a standard blood count can come back normal while iron deficiency still exists underneath it. Medical literature backs this up. Iron deficiency without anemia is a documented condition where hemoglobin looks fine, but the body’s iron stores are already running low. Ferritin is widely considered the first test to catch this early, before anemia ever develops.
Because of this, Julie tells viewers to ask their doctor for ferritin and transferrin saturation tests specifically, by name, and to request the actual numbers rather than a simple pass-or-fail result. Research on chronic disease patients shows transferrin saturation below 20 percent, paired with lower ferritin, is a common threshold clinicians use to flag true deficiency. Asking for the raw numbers instead of a vague “in range” answer gives patients real leverage in that conversation.
A Warning Against Self-Treating With Iron Pills
Julie also cautions against grabbing iron supplements off the shelf without a confirmed diagnosis. Excess iron can build up in the body over time, and popping supplements without proof of deficiency can mask other underlying health problems that need different treatment. That caution matches basic clinical practice. Iron is not a vitamin you take just in case. It is a mineral that needs a lab-confirmed reason before it goes into your daily routine.
Julie frames her story as a lesson in humility. Decades of nursing experience did not make her immune to missing symptoms in her own body, and she wants her audience to ask sharper questions at their next checkup instead of accepting a one-word “normal.” For anyone chewing ice, freezing in a warm room, or noticing odd ridges on their nails, her advice is straightforward: get the specific numbers, not just the label.
Sources:
youtube.com, medlineplus.gov, nhs.uk, womenshealth.gov, my.clevelandclinic.org, yalemedicine.org, ubiehealth.com, nurse.com
