what about testosterone suppression? could that affect iron levels?
again - i don't think that's the primary cause because there's so much evidence pointing to the genetics, but testosterone suppression should actually increase ferritin levels, from what i can see. the mechanism seems to be that taking the testosterone out of the process would limit the conversion of ferritin into red blood cells. that is, the ferritin is a precursor to the red blood cells, so what you end up with is more ferritin and less red blood cells. that's the opposite of what i'm seeing.
if anything, the fact that my rbc count was a little bit deficient and my ferritin count was extremely deficient seems to point to the idea that my ferritin got used up making red blood cells and what the test really suggests is that i was hungry. that might be over-simplifying, but i think it makes sense of it.
and, if that's the case, it would suggest that it was just a function of the distance between eating.
so, while fasting is good for testing glucose, it seems to be bad for testing ferritin - or, at least, bad for testing it once and drawing conclusions from it. i need a post-meal test...