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About this tool
Space an iron tablet away from tea, dairy, antacids and meals, and see the elemental iron it delivers.
The Iron Supplement Timing Planner measures the gap between an oral iron tablet and every food or drug that blocks its absorption, and converts the tablet strength on the pack into milligrams of elemental iron. It applies the labelled separations — 1 hour before food or 2 hours after a meal, 1 hour either side of tea or coffee, 2 hours from dairy and calcium, iron 2 hours before or 4 hours after an antacid, and 4 hours from levothyroxine — plus the fact that vitamin C taken with the dose increases uptake. Built for people treating iron deficiency who want each tablet to count.
Open Iron Supplement Timing Planner on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Knows that an antacid before the tablet needs 4 hours while one after it needs 2, instead of applying one blanket number.
Converts each salt at its true percentage — sulfate 20%, fumarate 33%, gluconate 12% — so you can compare products.
Every short gap comes with the exact clock time to move the tablet or the item to.
Leave at least one hour either side, and two hours if you can manage it. Tea polyphenols bind iron in the gut and a cup taken with a meal has been shown to cut non-haem iron absorption by roughly 60%, which is enough to blunt a full dose.
65 mg. Ferrous sulfate is about 20% elemental iron by weight, so the 325 mg on the label is the salt, not the iron. Ferrous fumarate 200 mg gives about 66 mg and ferrous gluconate 300 mg gives about 36 mg.
Alternate-day dosing usually delivers more absorbed iron per tablet. A single dose raises hepcidin, the hormone that blocks iron uptake, for about 24 hours, so studies published from 2017 onwards found alternate-day single doses beat daily or twice-daily regimens on fractional absorption and caused fewer gut side effects. Ask your prescriber before changing a regimen.
An empty stomach absorbs the most, but a tablet you can actually tolerate beats one you stop taking. If nausea forces you to eat with it, avoid dairy, tea and high-fibre foods at that meal and add a vitamin C source such as citrus or amla, which keeps iron soluble. Discuss persistent side effects with your doctor — a different salt or an alternate-day schedule often helps.