Listen
Listen to this podcast or watch the video. CLICK HERE
Transcript
- 03:25 About Morley Robbins
- 08:04 What is Copper Dysregulation?
- 29:44 Prevalence of Copper Dysregulation
- 33:31 Being Copper Toxic AND Copper Deficient at the Same Time
- 39:49 Symptoms Related to Copper Deficiency
- 49:49 Liver in the Diet
- 53:25 Tests for Revealing Copper Dysregulation
- 59:36 Histamine Levels and Copper Deficiency
Wendy: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and I am your host. You can find my website at myersdetox.com. You can find this video podcast on the YouTube channel, WendyLiveto110.
Today, we are having my very good friend, Morley Robbins on the show. We are going to be talking about the issues surrounding copper dysregulation, which is a simultaneous copper deficiency and copper toxicity. It’s a very confusing subject that I wanted to shed light on for my clients and for anyone who has no idea about this health issue because it absolutely is the defining underlying cause of health issues today in America – and around the world as well.
We are going to be talking about what it is, what is copper deficiency, what is copper toxicity and how to correct these issues and how to diagnose them so to speak.
My sincerest apologies we were not able to do a video podcast today. Morley and I actually tried to record this podcast last week and had so many technical difficulties we couldn’t do it. But yet again, we had more technical difficulties where the audio worked, but the video would not. So just audio today.
I hope you enjoy it. We have a lot to talk about. This is a 2-hour podcast, so I’m splitting it up into parts one and two, so I don’t melt your brains. This is a very, very intense podcast, a chockfull of information. So this is part one of the podcast. Look forward next week to part two of copper dysregulation. I know you can’t wait.
First, we have to do the disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment or option or supplementation that we suggest to you on the show.
For any of you guys that love supplements as much as I do, I have a new supplement that I’m using that I absolutely love. It’s called ashwagandha. It’s an ayurvedic herb. It’s amazing to aid sleep. I’m taking it now to assist in sleep and also for adrenal health as well. I think it’s excellent for anyone with adrenal fatigue. It will really calm the body down and really calm down the nervous system and assist sleep and to aid in healing the adrenal glands.
It’s something that I’m recommending to all my clients. You can find it in the Live to 110 Store at store.myersdetox.com. I have an organic form that I’m recommending. There’s lots of herbs out there, but I really think everyone, just like their food, should be taking organic, food-based supplements as well and this is one of the ones that I highly recommend if you’re stressed out, have adrenal fatigue or want some help sleeping.
Wendy: Our guest today is Morley Robbins, also known as the Magnesium Man and he’s the found of the Magnesium Advocacy Group on Facebook. His website is GotMag.org. He has a mainstream medical industry background. Morley was a hospital executive and consultant for 32 years, but left to become a wellness coach and health practitioner.
He currently does hair mineral analysis, a program very similar to Mineral Power. Mr. Robbins has completed the Well Coaches Training Certification as well as the Institute for Integrative Nutrition Health Coaching Program, the one that I went to as well. Mr. Robbins received a BA in biology from Denison University in Ohio and holds an MBA from George Washington University in healthcare administration.
Morley is an expert on minerals and uses hair mineral analysis in his health coaching practice. Twenty-one books 1200 articles later on magnesium, magnesium deficiency and other minerals as well, Morley has come to realize that magnesium play a huge role in all metabolic systems and is therefore a contributing factor in nearly all disease.
He’s also very, very interested in copper dysregulation as well, something that I’ve formerly called ‘copper toxicity’. It’s more complex than that. We’re going to be talking about copper dysregulation, which is another passion of Morley’s s well where it’s a simultaneously copper deficiency as well as copper toxicity. Those two things can happen at the same, exact time. And these two issues, magnesium deficiency and copper dysregulation issues are at the root cause of all disease. So that’s why we’re talking about it today on the show.
Morley, thank you so much for being on the show.
Morley Robbins: Hey! Glad to be here. How are you doing? I hope you had a lovely Christmas holiday and all that good stuff.
Wendy: Yes, I did! It was wonderful. It was very relaxing. I took some needed time off. I really haven’t had a break in about two and a half years. I’ve just been going, going, going. So I took a week off and I did not look at my computer. I think it was very rejuvenating.
Morley Robbins: What was that word you used? Break? You took a break? What is that?
Wendy: I took a break. It was very good for my adrenals, bad for everyone else learning about health. Usually, I just can’t stop. I just enjoy what I do, so it’s a byproduct of that.
But Morley, let’s talk about today about copper toxicity, copper dysregulation. Sorry, I know you hate the word ‘copper toxicity’.
Morley Robbins: Yeah, exactly. I freak out.
Wendy: So we’re going to talk today about copper dysregulation.
Wendy: But first, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and why you became a health coach?
Morley Robbins: I backed into it. This wasn’t what I thought I would be doing when I grew up, but I affectionately refer to myself as a pre-med retread. When I was in college, I had designs of becoming a doctor. My organic chemistry professor made sure that was never going to happen. I thanked him many times since that painful process.
I went into the hospital field, worked there for 32 years and developed a frozen shoulder, which forced me into the alternative healing world, the world of natural healing kicking and screaming and realized that that that was my calling and I became a wellness coach. I really quite unexpectedly had become an expert on minerals. The two that I had the greatest fascination with was magnesium and copper in part just because of how important they are in the body. They also just happens to be the two minerals of my mentor, Rick Malter (who I think the world of) tends to focus on as well.
When you begin to dig into why everyone is sick, about 99% of the reason is they don’t have enough magnesium or they don’t have the right bioavailability than their copper and it’s a little more complicated than that.
Wendy: And listeners, if you’re interested, we did a preview show on how to prevent a heart attack with magnesium, previous podcasts. I definitely recommend checking that out. But of course, there’s lots more information on magnesium beyond just preventing a heart attack, so I recommend giving that a listen to.
Wendy: And personally, I agree with you. I think copper dysregulation is one of our top health crises. Can you tell us a little bit about what copper dysregulation is and how it happens? It’s something that’s very, very confusing to a lot of my clients and I think to a lot of people out there.
Morley Robbins: Yeah, I know. I think it’s an incredibly confusing issue in part because of the very different natures of the two minerals that we just talked about. When people have a magnesium deficiency, it’s mathematical. They’re down, they need to restore it, you add magnesium and voila! You’re back in the game.
Copper doesn’t work that way. It has profound relationships with a lot of different minerals, certainly zinc, chromium, manganese, sulfur. And where magnesium repletion, restoring the magnesium status is a mathematical process, which is simple arithmetic, trying to deal with copper dysregulation is more like solving a quadratic equation. It’s really complicated.
And in part, it’s complicated by the fact that people have been brainwashed over the last 30 years to think of copper as being a bad guy and we’ve got to get rid of it, it’s toxic and get it out of your body, it’s all witchcraft, it’s designed to drive copper deficiency, which is really what’s at the core of a lot of people’s problem.
Surely, you’ve got clients and followers who have fibromyalgia, where they have Lyme disease or they have certainly thyroid issues, Hashimoto’s and all sorts of things, rheumatoid arthritis, people who probably have experienced or someone in their family has experienced an aneurism, all of these conditions have a common origin, copper dysregulation.
And it’s really staggering when you begin to realize that that one mineral has that kind of impact and it’s through 30 different cupro enzymes (cupro is the derivation of copper) and it’s those 30 enzymes that when they go out, begin to affect thousands and thousands of other enzymes.
I think where there’s a lot of confusion is that copper has become so ubiquitous in our environment. The pipes that bring water into our homes and into our buildings is copper pipes where years ago, they were all zinc pipes oddly enough. That all changed after the first world war and then really exonerated after the second world war – so suddenly, copper pipes. And when you have the type of water that we have, our treatment it causes copper to leech out of that pipe and into the water.
Copper is a known anti-fungal agent. Well, commercial growers use copper sulfate and they spray it on all produce to make sure that there isn’t any increased amount of fungus as it’s moving the 1500 miles from one side of the country to the other. So we’re exposed to a lot of copper that way.
Also, we’ve got things like a lot of the processes for birth control tied back to copper. Birth control pills and copper IUD has a profound impact on a woman’s body. Use of antibiotics are profoundly influential in disrupting copper regulation in large part because copper plays a key role in the effectiveness of antibiotics and it has to do with its ability to disrupt or support iron metabolism depending upon what they’re trying to do with the bacteria that they’re trying to go after.
So it’s very pervasive and what is really key to the whole process is to understand that what’s very important for copper is that it be attached to its transport protein, which is called ceruplasmin. Ceruloplasm is a fancy word, French for ‘blue blood’. What its role is in the body is to make sure that the copper and the iron are being properly transported, so that it doesn’t cause oxidation.
So I’m sure a lot of your listeners and followers are familiar with the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was this famous physician in London who was a really gifted doctor and quite the gentleman, but he always wore a cape. Well, the interesting thing about the scientific symbol for ceruloplasm are the initials capital C and the little p. So I call it the “cape.”
So if copper is wearing the cape, it’s just as an incredibly important mineral that enhances and activates some very important enzymes in the body. But just like Mr. Hyde, when Dr. Jekyll took of his cape, he became a serial killer. Well, copper without its cape is a very destructive element. It’s one of the most oxidizing elements in the body, maybe second only to iron or fluoride and a few other elements. But copper without its transport protein is disruptive.
What’s fascinating is that we didn’t know this. No one really took the time to explain all of these out, that copper is actually pretty darn important inside the body and it doesn’t really work right unless it’s attached to that transport protein, ceruloplasm. Once you begin to understand that, a lot of tumblers fall into place. You say, “Wow! Maybe copper is a pretty important mineral. But most of the programming in articles (there are scores and scores and scores of article about copper), the spin in most of those articles is, “Oh, booga wooga, copper is bad. Try to detox” and it’s just wrong. It’s absolutely wrong.
Debra: Yeah. And that’s why a lot out of the higher end supplement companies have taken it out of the multivitamins.
Morley Robbins: Well, sure, because actually – you know, what the listeners need to understand is I’m a conspiracist. I absolutely believe that an entity, a group of entities that are trying to take us out. They can just put up with my weird ways. But copper is the target.
When you take copper out of the human body, it falls apart. And what does it need? It needs all sorts of medication to support its functioning. And copper is behind high blood pressure because it tends to collect on estrogen receptors on the kidney. And when it gets there, it starts to wreak all sorts of habits with electrolytes on the kidneys, which is a really bad place to be, by the way.
Ninety-eight percent of all hypertension is called idiopathic, 98%. What that really means is they have no idea what causes it. The reason why they don’t know what causes it is because they don’t want to understand the mineral dimension of it. Copper will cause a loss of electrolytes because of its nature and that’s what is behind hypertension and heart disease and we can go on down the line.
But the key here is – and this is where it gets really kind of wild and lily – if ceruloplasm is so important, what do we need to in order to have healthy ceruloplasm? Well, the first thing that you got to have – ceruloplasm are made in the liver – is good, healthy sources of retinol, which is the animal-based form of vitamin A.
You think, “Wow! Okay, that’s no big deal.” Well, actually, it is a big deal because retinol’s antagonist in the body is calcitriol, otherwise known as vitamin D (when in fact, it’s not a vitamin D. It’s actually a hormone) and people are drinking and swallowing vitamin D like it’s candy and they have no idea that when they’re doing that, when they’re taking that 1000, 3000, 5000 – I was talking to a client the other day who took 50,000 units a day of vitamin D.
Wendy: Argh!
Morley Robbins: She’s a metabolic train wreck. She had no idea that it was destroying the vitamin A in her liver, which then creates copper dysregulation.
So a really bad thing to do if you’re worried about copper and copper dysregulation, the last thing you want to be doing is be downing a bunch of vitamin D without knowing what your overall profile is. And if you don’t know both your storage and active hormone D levels, you should not be getting anywhere near that supplement.
But that’s only one element that causes disruption of copper. Another is when we’re under a lot of stress – and who isn’t? When we’re under a lot of stress, it triggers the production of a key stress hormone that comes out of the pituitary that’s called ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) and it triggers the production of cortisol and aldosterone and all sorts of stress responses. Well, ACTH will stop the production of ceruloplasm in the liver and in the brain.
Now, what’s interesting is that ACTH rides on a see-saw with a very important mineral called magnesium, so that when magnesium is high, ACTH would be low. The reverse of that is true as well.
Magnesium gets low because of all sorts of stress. ACTH will build. So as we get more and more stressed out, it causes a breakdown in the production of ceruloplasm, which is the very mechanism to create copper dysregulation because when ceruloplasm stops being made, then we have high levels of unbound copper (unbound to ceruloplasm) and we have low levels of bound copper at the very same time. Once that cape comes off, once that cape is being made, copper goes rogue and that’s the very mechanism.
So you want to deal with your stress. You want to be very thoughtful about how you supplement the fat-soluble vitamins. Never isolate them. You take them in combo at least – A with D, E with K, but never just one by itself.
A third thing that you want to avoid is high fructose corn syrup because what high fructose corn syrup is designed to do is cause copper deficiency in the liver and at the same time, cause iron toxicity. It does it perfectly. It does it flawlessly. That’s a very bad combination because you need copper in order to make ceruloplasm. That’s one of the many catch 22’s in the body. So the very mineral that you need to properly bind up is actually needed in order to make the protein that allows that to happen.
The challenge is high fructose corn syrup is pervasive throughout the food industry. It’s everywhere. And most people wouldn’t even stop to think about it. But that sweetener is made in a very specific way and that’s the very biochemical mechanism that results at least a mineral impact. High fructose corn syrup is very bad, very toxic to the liver. It’s in fact what’s behind all non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. It will destroy the production of ceruloplasm.
And then a fourth known element is ascorbic acid. I know we’ve been trained to think that vitamin C and ascorbic acid are one and the same. The vitamin C molecule is like a car. It’s a shell with four wheels, a steering wheel and an engine. That’s pretty much the design of the car and that’s pretty much the design of the vitamin C molecule. Ascorbic acid on the other hand is the shell of a car and no moving parts.
The important part about the vitamin C molecule is that that engine is actually an enzyme called tyrosinase and that spark plug that runs that engine is copper. It turns out that that very enzyme, tyrosinase is very important in helping the body to metabolize copper. Ascorbic acid on the other hand causes copper to separate from ceruloplasm. Isn’t that interesting?
Wendy: Wow!
Morley Robbins: So it’s very, very disruptive and I cannot account for the work of Linus Pauling who was taking 10,000 and 15,000 and 20,000 mg. of ascorbic acid. It makes no sense at all. The research is very clear that it’s a very disruptive element.
And for those of your listeners who think that Albert Szent-Gyorgi got the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid, that is absolutely laughable when in fact, he got it for discovering the vitamin C molecule. What we’re engaged in is revision of history to try to get people to think that ascorbic acid is the active agent when in fact it’s a lot of different moving parts.
Wendy: Yeah, and I think that listeners have to be very careful when they’re reading studies or reading the work of certain physicians that are using high dose ascorbic acid for therapeutic uses. And while they may get one effect, one detoxification effect or whatever therapy they’re using it for, there is a price to pay on the other side with the copper dysregulation that may not be being monitored or be aware of.
But the fact is this synthetic molecule is not going to produce miraculous health in the body. It might produce a short-term health benefit that’s shown in the study, but not an overall long-term production of health. That’s my opinion. And that’s why I no longer use it on my healing program, Mineral Power.
Morley Robbins: That’s great. No, I totally agree. For those who might want to draw a little deeper, you might enjoy Robert Thomson’s book, The Calcium Lie. I believe he has a chapter devoted to the vitamin C molecules. It’s quite interesting reading.
So what I think what the listeners, viewers need to understand is that in the world of allopathic medicine, there are three primary areas of focus. One is on the thyroid, another is calcium and the third is on iron. That’s what they really key on from a mineral and metabolic standpoint.
Isn’t that interesting because when you focus on the thyroid and medicate on the thyroid, we shut down the adrenal glands. And that’s the stress response in the human body, the adrenal glands. When you focus on calcium and start hyper-supplementing with calcium and vitamin D, which raises calcium, you shut down magnesium metabolism. It’s a very bad thing.
And when you focus on iron and there’s complete confusion about the inter-related mechanisms of iron and copper metabolism. When you focus on iron, it shuts down copper metabolism. It’s one of the quirks of the human body.
And so the very three things that the traditional, conventional doctors focus on create compliance for life because once you’ve got control of someone’s thyroid and you’re focusing on calcium and iron, the person can never get back to metabolic balance. It’s impossible. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion is as well because it turns out that the adrenal glands are where 95% of the body store of whole food vitamin C is.
What’s important to understand is that the thyroid makes one hormone a day. It’s a very important one. I’m not disputing that at all. The adrenal glands make 50 hormones a day – not just cortisol, but a whole bunch of hormones that need to be made. All you got to do is study steroid hormone synthesis and your jaw will drop. All that’s being made inside the adrenal glands and it’s being made with the support of the liver as well.
What’s really key is to understand that the cytochrome p450 family of enzymes, which is what converts the steroid hormones from one spectrum to another, well, they’re copper dependent. And if you don’t have bioavailable copper, your hormones don’t work. They can’t morph from one to the other.
So then, suddenly, people are in a situation where they need bio-identical hormones. Why? Because they have mineral disruption. Our great grandparents didn’t have this insanity. They didn’t have all these medications. They’re putting on creams and stuff like that. It’s just we’ve been conditioned to believe that that’s normal. Well, it’s not.
Wendy: That’s not! That’s what I tell somebody. My client, when they started to work with me, it’s really difficult for them to believe that they don’t need thyroid medication for life and they don’t bio-identical hormones the minute they turn menopausal. They’ve been conditioned to think and trained to think via the mainstream media that once you start taking thyroid medication, you need it for life. No! Be us. You need mineral supplementation, balancing your minerals, detoxification, et cetera to create your body’s function. And then it works!
Morley Robbins: That’s right. We’ve had one client who had their thyroid taking out, focused on rebuilding their body and their thyroid tissue came back. Oh, my gosh! You talked about bizarre. She was on thyroid medication and had to basically stop it because it was causing too much disruption. It was an amazing process. So yeah, I totally, totally agree.
But I think the challenge is getting people to accept that the body will, in fact, rebuild itself. There’s so much conditioning out there that we’re designed to fail or falling apart.
I had a client just the other day with a doctor for some issue. And the first thing out of the doctor’s mouth is, “What do you expect? You’re getting older.” No desire to understand what the mechanism was, no concern about the metabolism and was it being properly fed. It was, “Well, what do you expect? You’re getting older.” It’s just a very sad state that we find ourselves in.
Wendy: So what percent of your client base would you say have copper dysregulation?
Morley Robbins: I would bet it’s probably in the 90% range. I bet there are very few who don’t have some kind of copper dysregulation. The reason why I say that is I think about people who have histamine intolerance (sensitivities to foods and chemicals, even like that), think about people with cholesterol issues. Well, hypercholesterolemia is caused by copper deficiency. Who knew?
That was proven in 1972 by Leslie Klevay and was further validated in 22 labs around the world. And then suddenly, big pharma was faced with a very vexing decision, “¢5 for the copper or $5 for the statin?” and you know where that came out? Hypercholesterolemia.
The prevalence of no transmitter issues, people with sugar cravings. Well, that’s a dopamine deficiency. Well, you can’t get dopamine unless you have tyrosine and copper as an enzyme to support it.
So a lot of emotional dynamics around that. People who have temperature dysregulation, the number of people who I’ve worked with who have cold hands and cold feet is clearly in the 90% range or more. And there’s a particular enzyme that’s responsible for thermal regulation in the peripheral extremities. It’s a very cool enzyme. Its nickname is PAM. It stands for peptidylglycine alpha-amidating monoxygenase. I just love that enzyme. And it’s copper dependent.
It’s a very sophisticated enzyme in the hypothalamus and copper is really important for the hypothalamus. I think a lot of people are having a lot of problems with thermal regulations, which also affects the thyroid. It turns out that the process to turn iodide into iodine, which makes it the active form requires copper. Who knew?
So my theory is that most of the thyroid dysfunction in this country is from a lack of copper. That would be easily two-thirds of America that’s having thyroid issues. I think it’s a lot more pervasive than people realize. The only reason why they’re not aware of it is that there’s no literature to support that it’s deficiency as a problem. There’s a gail wind of literature to say that it’s toxic and you’ve got to rid of it.
And in fact, what they’re now finding is that issues of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, multiple sclerosis, all of these very vexing neurodegenerative conditions, at the very origin of that is copper dysregulation and almost without exception, copper deficiency. And copper deficiency will lead to an iron problem. And when iron gets out of whack, a lot of bad things happen.
So I think it’s far more pervasive than people realize. It’s just there’s no easy reference point for people right now to connect their ailment to a copper issue.
Wendy: Yeah, yeah. You teach on this a little bit, but let’s talk about the copper conundrum because I think this is the most confusing thing for most people. How can one be copper toxic and copper deficient at the same time?
Morley Robbins: It goes back to the transport protein, ceruloplasm. What makes copper bio-available is it takes six copper iron to make the ceruloplasm molecule functioning. That’s what enables it to then carry iron and make sure that iron doesn’t cause oxidative problems in the body and inside the cell.
When ceruloplasm isn’t being made properly because of the stresses that we’ve talked about, the metabolic stress of too much D, the metabolic stress of ascorbic acid or high fructose corn syrup or just the lack of magnesium, which triggers the increase of ACTH, those events will prevent ceruloplasm. And when copper can’t get access to ceruloplasm, it goes rogue. And so then you’ve got the dual state of two little bound copper and too much unbound copper at the same time all because of a lack of ceruloplasm.
And so it’s just a quick of that mineral that it requires the presence of its protein in order to be useful to the body. And if it’s not around, it is highly toxic to the body.
Wendy: Yeah, I read that the copper toxicity, this excess copper in the body is stored in the reproductive organs, the uterus, the gonads. It’s stored in the heart and the liver and the brain.
Morley Robbins: Well, it gets stored just about everywhere. What’s important, let’s get into a little bit of metabolic esoterica. I’m sure people have heard of the mitochondria. The mitochondria, it’s the energy of the cell. Well, oxygen is a good thing, but oxygen can go rogue. Oxygen causes rust. So inside the cell, it causes reduce oxidation species or we go to these free radicals. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. I’m sure your clients have heard of them.
Well, the key is how does that happen? What’s taking place? Well, oxygen becomes what’s called superoxide because of a non-functioning enzyme called NADPH oxidase. It turns out, it’s copper dependent.
So if copper is not present, the oxygen will become superoxide. And then you say, “Oh, okay. Alright, so I’ve got some superoxide. Not to worry, I’ll just use some superoxide dismutase (SOD).” Well, there’s there types of SOD. There’s SOD 1, which requires copper and zinc. That plays around inside the cell. There’s SOD 2 is manganese-dependent and it plays inside the mitochondria. And then SOD 3 is extracellular and that also is copper dependent.
So the SOD is suppose to come and eliminate the superoxide, but if that can’t happen, if there’s not enough superoxide dismutase as there often is in a body that’s under stress, it’s losing its minerals. We’re losing the bioavailability of its minerals. The superoxide becomes hydrogen peroxide.
And then you say, “Relax, I’ve got catalase” and catalase is what’s going to turn that hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. So the cell can use that for other reactions. Well, catalase is iron-dependent and if the iron isn’t bioavailable for lack of copper, it becomes a really bad thing. It becomes a hydroxyl radical.
And so copper is pretty darn important to prevent free radicals. And so that whole dimension of understanding at a metabolic level inside the mitochondria, if copper is not there, there’s a lot of bad stuff that happens. The free radicals will basically bring cell to death because it wears it out. It’s got to neutralize that and if it can’t neutralize it, it will die.
And that’s the mechanism behind a lot of these neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. It’s a very subtle dimension, but it’s because of copper not being properly bound to its protein because of stress and stressors.
And it’s huge. It’s absolutely huge.
Wendy: Yeah, that was a very detailed, intricate yet simple explanation. It’s really beautiful.
Morley Robbins: I hope it helps.
Wendy: So why don’t we first go into detail about copper deficiency specifically. You listed a lot of health conditions and things of that nature in general. But what are the specific symptoms in the health conditions related only to copper deficiency?
Morley Robbins: Well, people who have energy problems – fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, adrenal fatigue – the likely culprit is a key enzyme that’s part of the electron transport chain, which is what’s taking place inside those energy furnaces, the mitochondria. The enzyme is called cytochrome c oxidase.
Cytochrome c oxidase in fact requires copper to be present. It’s what transfers electrons at a key step in the process to oxygen so that it can go off and become water. It’s a very important step. And if that does not happen, ATP cannot be made inside the cell.
So if the copper is not available for that enzyme, the energy production will go south. So cytochrome c oxidase is one of the grand daddy enzymes in the body and it’s particularly important for energy production and then of course, the ATP won’t work unless magnesium is attached to it. That’s really what brings it to life, the magnesium.
So ATP is dependent upon both copper and magnesium in order to be available for the body. The other biggie is we are held together by tissue. Our bones are held together by ligaments and tendons and all of that is made possible by an enzyme called lysyl oxidase. Again, copper dependent.
Well, if lysyl oxidase isn’t around, hearts begin to enlarge (enlarged heart, congestive heart failure, I’m sure people have heard of that), aneurysms, blood vessels need of collagen and elastin, which are made possible by lysyl oxidase in order to work properly. So if someone has a stroke, it’s caused by a lack of lysyl oxidase. So that’s a very important mechanism.
Another biggie that I’ve mentioned before, like PAM, the energy regulation at the extremities is very important. The hypothalamus is constantly monitoring the environment and the body to say, “Is evthign okay?” Well, if it doesn’t have the copper, you can’t properly regulate temperature in the extremities, which becomes a very big issue for people and a lot of discomfort as a result of that.
Another biggie is – I alluded to it earlier – but a key step in the production of neurotransmitters is to take tyrosine plus a key enzyme called dopamine beta monooxygenase, which requires copper and that turns it into dopamine. That’s a very important step to take place in the body because dopamine is very important for the drive, just that desire to want things and to keep it in a healthy balance.
When there isn’t enough copper to do that, you get dopamine deficiency and that’s what’s behind all craving – craving for sugar, craving for alcohol, craving for drugs, craving for gambling. You name it, dopamine deficiency is at the center of all that. So that DBM enzyme is pretty darn important for the proper functioning of the body.
I think there are some very key mechanism that allow the body to work properly and if copper is not present, that’s just not going to happen. The body begins to act out and begin to behave in a very untoward way.
The enzyme that I just mentioned a little bit ago, the copper-zinc SOD, that superoxide dismutase is profoundly important inside the cell. There’s a lot of research that’s coming out now (most of it outside of this country, by the way) that is beginning to realize that that mechanism of copper-zinc SOD, if that’s deficient, the cell begins to basically fall apart.
And that’s where a lot of metabolic dysregulation takes place right there with the lack of that one. Between SOD and the cytochrome c oxidase, we can bring the cell basically to its knees all because of a lack of one mineral, all because of a lack of one protein called ceruloplasm. It’s kind of mind-boggling when you think about it.
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah, I know for myself when I started taking copper, I could not believe how much better I started feeling.
Morley Robbins: Yeah! See, the thing is yesterday, I was reading this fascinating article about autoimmune disease. Everyone is talking about autoimmune diseases – multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s. These are all autoimmune diseases. Hashimoto’s, autoimmune disease.
And what this particular author is suggesting is it’s caused by a lack of copper and that the way he described is what I thought was very funny. He was talking about his partner, zinc is really important for immune function. It turns out that copper, zinc and iron are all three very important for immune function.
But in his explanation, he was saying that think of zinc as sort of the mechanic repairing your car. When the mechanic start to act out, the last thing that you want to do is start to give the mechanic a bunch of coffee, which is only going to make it more excited. He’ll start destroying cars at an even faster rate.
What’s really needed is the copper to calm down the immune response. That’s ones of the roles that it plays, help modulate that zinc that becomes hyperbolic.
I thought it was a very apt explanation for it. But think of all the people who have these conditions that they think are a disease when in fact, it’s just a mineral that’s missing, but it happens to be a really important mineral. And like in your own case, Wendy, you found out that, “Boy! I feel a lot better when I have some copper.”
So I was reading further in this article and they started to describe the copper that’s available in the liver. It was comparing beef liver to chicken liver to turkey liver to lamb liver to goose liver. There was an, “Oh, my God!” moment when I realized that there’s a huge difference in the amount of copper that’s available in a calf’s liver or lamb liver or goose liver, which are very, very high, maybe three times higher than daily dose versus what you would find in beef liver or chicken liver or turkey liver.
And then you look at what people talk about, these copper-rich foods like avocados and cashews. There’s just little pittance of copper in those products. But the real concentration is in the liver, which makes sense because that’s where the liver is stored – principally in the brain, in the liver and the kidney of most animal’s bodies.
It’s just fascinating that we don’t think about, “Well, there’s a reason why it’s stored there, because it must need it.” For the metabolism of the brain and the kidneys and the liver to work properly (and we shouldn’t excluded the heart), for these major metabolic organs, they must have a constant source of energy. They must have a constant source of taking away the oxidative rust that’s taking place as a result of all that energy production. And copper is working both sides of that process.
It’s phenomenal when you think about the role that it plays in the body, yet it’s been held as a demonic force from Mars. It’s like it doesn’t make any sense.
Wendy: So speaking of liver, so you recommend that people eat various kinds of animal livers.
Morley Robbins: Yeah, I do it regularly. One of the world’s authorities on copper as I’ve mentioned earlier is Leslie Klevay. She’s now retired. She’s a brilliant MD, PhD who focused on copper. I was talking with him several months ago and I asked him, I said, “So, how do you get the proper balance of zinc, copper and iron?” He said,”Well, there are certain foods you have to eat.” I said, “What would those foods be?” He laughed, he said, “Well, probably the best source is liver because it’s a perfect balance of copper, zinc and iron.”
Now, the challenge is finding the right source because you don’t want to eat commercial. You’re going to want to get a grass-fed animal that has been raised properly, but that’s what our ancestors did. There’s not one person who’s listened to this that doesn’t know – either their parents or their grandparents that ate liver at least once a week. There’s a reason why they did that. Our ancestors knew that those animal organ meats were very rich in minerals and played a very important role in supporting our metabolism.
And if I’m offending the people who are vegetarian or vegan, forgive me, but there’s a rich legacy of research via Weston A. Price and others who pretty much established that we are dependent on these animal sources of protein, animal sources of oils and fatty acids.
And also, what I’ve come to realize – I can’t prove it, but I have this theory now, Wendy – the copper that you get out of a liver is completely different than the copper you get out of an avocado. I think the copper in that liver is already bound and isn’t as problematic as the copper in that vegetable that doesn’t have the ceruloplasm. It can’t because it’s not an animal. Only an animal will have the ceruloplasm molecule.
Wendy: Yeah. Like you said for iron, there’s non-heme iron in plants that are not as bioavailable and the heme iron in red meat that is immediately usable by our body because it’s in the correct form.
Morley Robbins: Right! Now that you brought that up, just so that folks understand, you cannot make heme without copper. It’s impossible. And so, iron gets all the notoriety, but the heme molecule is absolutely dependent on copper for its production – not an insignificant thing to know.
The level of confusion about the copper-iron issue is staggering particularly in the allopathic community. They have it completely backwards. And the word that I am now coining to talk about allopaths is the fruitalia that you get at Starbucks is called affogato. That means ‘backwards’ in Italian. They’ve got it completely backwards. They’re totally affogato about copper and iron.
Wendy: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about that. This is one of the test that reveal copper deficiency is testing ferritin levels. Let’s talk about that and any other test that you like to perform with your clients to reveal copper deficiency.
Morley Robbins: Well, the easiest task to at least get a grip on what’s going on is certainly the hair test. And in many situations, the majority of situations, people have low copper. Occasionally, you’ll find people with super high copper, which is a clear indication of a toxic situation. But even with the low copper, you can pretty much bet that there’s copper being stored in the liver.
So what I’ve done and what I think other practitioners like yourself are beginning to do is do blood testing to further validate what in fact is taking place. That’s where we begin to get into what is the magnesium status, so we get a sense of where’s their stress level. So a mag RBC will be very indicative of what’s the inverse of that as it relates to ACTH.
Look at the zinc, the plasma zinc and the serum copper, see what the dynamic is between those two minerals. Look at the serum ceruloplasm to see how well they’re producing it.
I would say easily two-thirds of the clients that I’ve tested have low ceruloplasm and almost every one of those is directly the result of hyper-supplementation with vitamin D. It’s pretty striking.
And then the other side that you’ve just alluded to is on the iron side, to begin to look at ferritin molecule and the protein. It’s the storage protein for iron, but it’s copper dependent as are all of the other iron proteins like ferroportin and transferrin and hephaestin. I’m forgetting a couple of them. But even the iron hormone, hepcidin is copper dependent. And that’s the part that doctors don’t understand. These proteins require copper in order to function properly. And that’s one of the quirks of the human body.
So anyone who has low ferritin, I would strongly encourage that they get a serum iron and a percent saturation, which is going to be looking at the transferrin to find out what their overall status is because very often, what will happen is people have normal iron, normal transferrin (which will show up as normal percent saturation) and they’ll have low ferritin. And then the doctor will say, “Oh, you need to be taking iron supplements,” which will then shut down the copper metabolism.
What is far more effective and actually metabolically correct is the person’s – that’s an indication that they are copper deficient and that what they really need is whole food vitamin C. That vitamin C molecule will help to stimulate the absorption of iron and allow then proper restoration of the ferritin as a storage protein.
Wendy: So just to be clear, listeners out there, if you have low ferritin, it’s a likely sign of copper deficiency.
Morley Robbins: Yeah. I mean, who connects those dots? So just to have some fun with it, if folks wanted to become farmers of an orange grove to make oranges, what they have to do is make sure there’s a lot of iron in the soil for those citrus trees. You think, “Okay, so why is that important?” Well, iron in the soil is what allows the citrus tree to make oranges that have vitamin C in them. It’s actually the iron in the soil that allows the copper to get inside the vitamin C molecule that’s inside the oranges.
You think, “Okay. Well, that’s pretty cool. So now, let’s eat the orange.” So you eat the orange, it’s got the vitamin C molecule and what happens? That vitamin C molecule goes into the intestine and it’s greeted by a protein called hephaestin.
Hephaestin is the protein in the duodenum that in fact takes the iron out of the food. But what activate the hephaestin is actually the copper in the vitamin C. And so then that hephaestin, once it’s activated by the vitamin C molecule carries the iron to transferrin. And then the transferrin carries it to ferritin.
And all those hand-offs are made possible because of the copper ion that was in that vitamin C, which was inside that orange.
And that’s the beauty of the iron-copper metabolism and how interdependent they are from the soil into the soil of our body called our intestine.
Wendy: I love these explanations that you have. I love talking to you so much, Morley because you always break things down, difficult subjects in a really simple way that helps people to understand the concepts.
Morley Robbins: Well, I do it because that’s the way I need to understand. I don’t understand it if I read it in a scientific article. It drives me crazy. I’ve got to break it down, so I can understand it. And if I can understand it, then maybe others can understand it.
Wendy: And so another test that can reveal copper deficiency is histamine levels. So can you talk a little bit about histamine levels and what someone is going to be looking for on their test to show that they’re deficient in copper?
Morley Robbins: Yeah, good point. Histamine is a critical molecule. It’s designed to protect us from our environment. It’s very natural. It plays a very key regulatory role. But what it gets out of control, that’s when it becomes a problem. The term that’s used now is ‘histamine intolerance’.
It’s fascinating that the histamines are stored inside cells called mast cells. Well, mast cell production increases when people are under stress. Actually, the trigger is magnesium deficiency. It leads to an increase in mast cell.
And what’s a known fact is that people who are magnesium deficient are more sensitive to their environment. Well, that greater sensitivity is translated into more mast cells, so that when exposed to foods or chemicals that either have high histamines or trigger a histamine response, there’s this incredible explosion of histamine through the body.
Well, the body also has enzymes to break down the histamines. They’re called anti-histamines. We’ve heard that term probably since we were little. Well, the two enzymes are DAO (diamine oxidase) and HNMT (histamine n-methyltransferase).
So it turns out that DAO works on histamines outside the cell and HNMT works on histamines inside the cell. Well, both of those enzymes require three nutrients to work properly. They require copper, magnesium and vitamin B6. Ding, ding, ding! And what happens when people are under stress? What do they lose? They lose magnesium, B vitamins and the copper goes rogue. And so they lose the very nutrients that they need to make those enzymes work to control the histamine response.
And what happens is people can be on both sides on histamine issue. Histamine levels can be really low because of too much copper in their body or those histamines can be really, really high because of copper deficiency.
The individual who really did the breakthrough work on this is called Pfeifer. He was an MD, PhD. I believe he’s a psychiatrist. A lot of work is in a center in Princeton, New Jersey. He coined the phrase histopedia and histadelia (I think is the other term for the high). Histopedia is low histamine and histadelia is high histamine.
What he was able to do was link the histamine level to someone who had tendencies towards schizophrenia or depression. It’s absolutely fascinating. And if your blood histamine levels are below 40, you have very low histamine, which means you have excess copper and if your histamine level is above 70, it means you have excess histamines from two little copper.
And those are the flip sides of the histamine coin. But the key, what’s missing are copper, magnesium and B6 that is causing a complete disruption of the histamine response.
There’s a wonderful article at the American Journal of Critical Nutrition. The author’s name is Maintz. I think it’s from 2008 and it’s called ‘Histamine and Histamine Intolerance’. You can Google it and then the full article will come up.
I would encourage the listeners to study figure one in that article and your jaw will drop when they realize that histamine intolerance is behind this wide spectrum of chronic disease that they had no idea – heart disease and neurotransmitter issues and gut dysbiosis, all of the allergies and stuff that we would expect.
So many other chronic conditions are from a histamine issue and there are four histamine receptors (H1, H2, H3 and H4) and those receptors get affected by this (which they do) that that is very disruptive and very problematic for people to have a normal metabolism when they’re not able to break down the histamines properly.
Wendy: Yeah, I think I found this really, really interesting when I first started studying hair mineral analysis and adrenal fatigue, et cetera that adrenal fatigue causes the copper dysregulation and that causes high histamines and food sensitivities and multiple chemical sensitivity and these people are on a healing program like we do using hair mineral analysis and balancing of the minerals and healing of the adrenal glands, people’s food sensitivities and allergies go away within the first year.
Many, many of my clients who had really severe food allergies and food sensitivities and histamine intolerance, they just slowly, but surely disappear once they fix these copper issues and related adrenal fatigue issues, et cetera.
Morley Robbins: Yeah, once you restore the mineral status and the vitamins that are very much a part of it, you would actually expect the body would go back to normal regulation.
I mean, this whole idea that there’s such a thing as medical disease, it’s so laughable. There really isn’t. I refuse to believe that there is such a thing as medical disease. There’s a lot of metabolic dysfunction and all of that has caused by mineral deficiencies, but this notion that there’s a disease?
I mean, this whole idea that there’s the germ theory? Pasteur was a fraud! The New York Times had an amazing article about it. I think it was in 2008 (something like 2008 and 2010 time frame) where a medical historian took all 10,000 pages of Pasteur’s work and realized that he was a fraud. And that’s what the headline was in the New York Times, ‘Pasteur was a Fraud.’
But yet, everyone has this conviction, “Oh, I don’t want to catch the flu.” You don’t catch the flu, you allow the flu because your mineral imbalance is such that you don’t have the proper mineral composition to create a proper immune response. And yet people have been so conditioned that disease comes from outside. It’s very sad that people had become so programmed the way they have.
Wendy: Yeah, I agree. I think the more I learn about the true underlying cause of disease is just nutrition deficiencies and heavy metal and chemical toxicities and that you can reverse these and you can reverse disease. I see it every day in my practice. It’s unbelievable!
Morley Robbins: Yeah. No, absolutely, I totally agree. And I would not have believed because I was raised in a very allopathic family. My sister is a nurse and worked for the industry for a long time and I worshipped at that altar. And now, with what I know, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh! This infrastructure, this medical, industrial complex is mind-boggling.”
Wendy: It’s a scam.
Morley Robbins: It is a scam.
Wendy: It’s a complete scam.
Morley Robbins: It’s a total, total scam.
Wendy: Yeah.
Morley Robbins: And that’s why I tell clients that if the doctor that they go to has an MD, that degree stands for ‘mineral denialist’. They refuse to believe anything you and I had been talking about for the last 60 minutes.
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think if I get in a car wreck, I want to go to a hospital if I have some sort of acute injury. If I do, God forbid, get cancer or something, I want to go to a doctor to get diagnosed, not treated. I think medicine is very good at diagnosis, but healing disease? Not going to happen. They manage diseases with medication. I think surgery and meds, they’re last, last, last resort after you’ve spent years using natural means to address your health issues.
Morley Robbins: Well, that’s what I think the MD degree stands for, they ‘manage disease’. They don’t cure it, they just manage it because that’s where their cash flow comes from, by managing the disease.
Wendy: Yeah.
Morley Robbins: Pretty straightforward.
Wendy: Well, that is the end of part one of copper dysregulation with Morley Robbins. The podcast was two hours long, so sorry if I burst your bubble there. I cut it off right in the middle. But we’re going to continue next week with part two of copper dysregulation with Morley Robbins.
If you want to learn how to heal copper dysregulation, how to address copper dysregulation and all the issues that we discussed today on this show, you definitely want to check out my program called Mineral Power at MineralPower.com. It’s a comprehensive healing program using proper diet, proper supplementation customized to your body chemistry, lifestyle changes and detoxification. That’s a very, very important component missing in many people’s health regimes.
This is a program that I’ve used to help regulate my copper that I use with my clients to help regulate copper. So I definitely urge you to go take a look at it.
Listeners, thank you so much for taking this hour out to listen to the podcast. I really appreciate your support so much. I have so much fun doing the shows. I would so appreciate it if you’d take just two seconds out of your time if you enjoyed what you’ve heard today to leave me a review and rating in iTunes. That helps me get up in that search engine so that I can spread my message on health to more and more people. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
