Is lots of manual labor detrimental?

Hi! I’m a 36 year old female, hoping to have kids in the next couple of years. I’ve been struggling more and more lately with exhaustion, pain, and migraines. I discovered I had a gluten and histamine intolerance and cut out gluten and high histamine foods. 6 months later my skin is clear, but I’m still just as tired and hurting. I eat SUPER clean. No gluten, no seed oils, local grass fed meats, lots of fruits and  veggies.

I had a huge blood panel done a month ago. Literally nothing was abnormal except the blood smear. No issues with thyroid, inflammation, nothing. My doc said ‘you probably have thalassemia minor based on your blood smear, but it shouldn’t cause your symptoms’

After researching minor, lots of things make sense. I’ve always been horrible at running the mile, but great at sprints and things that require strength- like pull-ups. I’ve been extremely active my whole life, and just thought I was being a baby when it came to pushing through the pain of aerobic efforts. My best mile time was pretty terrible at 9 minutes, but at one point I could do 20 pull-ups, a lot for a woman.

I was an outdoor adventure guide for the last decade and took a job a year ago doing work as an arborist. Things have gone downhill fast. I’m wondering if the 8 hours of hard physical work is just too much for my body to keep up
With? Am I hurting myself or my bones by working hard every day? I just started taking folate and vitamin E at the suggestion of this forum, and have also been taking D, magnesium and zinc.

Relevant blood panel info:
Iron panel showed no deficiency
MCV: 76
MCH: 23.8
RDW: 15.7
Hemoglobin: 12.3

20 pullups is amazing!
Your diet sounds good.

I hate aerobic exercise too vs strength training or activities where i can stop to recoup.
Would love to see a study on how many athletes have Thal, there are a few.

Hi WayfinderAli,
Can I ask how much folate you take daily? I have a very underactive thyroid and even with the thyroxine to replace the missing hormones, I still get very fatigued by the middle of the afternoon, unless I take a large dose of L-methylfolate daily. I forgot to take some of my supplements one day recently and without the folate, I was done by 4 pm that day. I take a large dose of 8000 mcg daily. It cannot be folic acid at this dose, as that large a dose of folci acid can't be processed by the liver.

And your counts do look like you may be thal minor.

A couple prominent thal minor athletes are tennis legend, Pete Sampras and football superstar, Zinedine Zidane.