My Labs Were 'Normal' for 3 Years While I Could Barely Get Off the Couch

Dragging myself out of bed after 8 hours of sleep, feeling like I'd gotten 4.

Needing coffee just to form sentences.

Snapping at my kids because I had nothing left to give.

Forgetting words mid-sentence and wondering if something was seriously wrong with my brain.

I went to three different doctors. They ran the same tests.

Every time: "Your hemoglobin is in range. You're not anemic."

But my ferritin? It was 14.

For reference, optimal ferritin for a woman is 50-150 . Most doctors don't flag anything above 12.

So technically, I was "fine."

Meanwhile, I'd given up on hobbies. Stopped making plans with friends. Started declining projects at work because I didn't trust myself to finish them.

I wasn't living. I was surviving—and being told there was nothing wrong with me.

The worst part?

I started believing them. Maybe this was just what 36 felt like.

I tried everything the internet told me to try.

Iron supplements—the kind my doctor recommended.

They made me so constipated I stopped after two weeks.

Then I tried the "gentle" ones. Three months later, my ferritin hadn't budged.

I did the B12 gummies. The vitamin D drops. The ashwagandha everyone was talking about. The expensive greens powder that tasted like lawn clippings.

I cut gluten. Cut dairy. Cut coffee (that lasted four days).

I even tried "just sleeping more"—as if eight hours wasn't already my whole personality.

Nothing worked.

I was starting to give up.

Let's be honest about something:

The supplement industry doesn't want you to know this.

They spend billions marketing synthetic vitamins in pretty bottles with promises of "energy" and "vitality." They know most of it won't absorb. They know you'll keep buying more when it doesn't work.

They're not in the business of actually fixing your deficiency. They're in the business of selling you pills.

And conventional medicine? They're trained to look at outdated lab ranges that haven't been updated in decades. A ferritin of 12 is "normal" on paper — but it's why you can barely function by Tuesday.

The system isn't designed to help you feel better. It's designed to tell you nothing is wrong.

But there IS something wrong. And there IS a solution — one that's been around for thousands of years, before synthetic vitamins even existed.

I was in a functional medicine Facebook group—one of those places you end up when regular doctors stop being helpful.

A woman posted her before and after labs.

Ferritin: 11 → 68 in three months.

No IV infusions. No prescriptions. Just something called "beef organ capsules."

I almost scrolled past. It sounded weird.

But her exhaustion story was MY exhaustion story. Word for word.

So I went down the rabbit hole.

Turns out, the iron in organ meats—especially spleen—is something called "heme iron."

Unlike the synthetic iron in pills, heme iron is the same form of iron found in your own blood.

Your body recognizes it. Your body absorbs it. At 5 to 7 times the rate of synthetic iron.

That's not a small difference.

That's the difference between spinning your wheels for months and actually refueling.

Spleen, specifically, has 5x more iron than liver. It's nature's most concentrated source—but nobody talks about it because nobody's eating spleen anymore.

No stomach issues. No constipation. No metallic taste.

Just nutrients in the form humans absorbed for thousands of years - before we started processing everything and wondering why we're all exhausted.

I found Folqs through that same Facebook thread. Multiple women had mentioned it.

What I liked: no miracle promises.

No "lose 20 pounds and glow like a goddess" nonsense.

Just a straightforward breakdown of what's in it and why it matters.

Spleen for iron. Liver for B12. Heart for CoQ10. Kidney, Thymus, Bone Marrow, Trachea, Lung — eight organs total.

The same ones our great-grandmothers ate before we decided chicken breast and multivitamins were enough.

Grass-fed. Freeze-dried. No fillers. No synthetic anything.