The TRUTH About What's *Really* Causing Your Fatigue & The "Root Cause" Protocol to Fix It, With Morley Robbins.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, this is a very powerful triad in our body that keeps all the pathogens at bay, keeps the iron in regulation. We are endowed naturally with these mechanisms, but they're not taught in mainstream medical education.

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled to achieve unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Ben Greenfield: In this episode with Morley Robbins, which was super eye-opening, we talk about the massive myth behind anemia and what really causes it, the surge of copper deficiency and what you can do about it, uh, Morley's root cause protocol, and For anybody who struggles with fatigue, chronic fatigue, tiredness, low energy, this one's a must-listen. Shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/RootCause. Let's dive in. I've known about today's podcast guest for quite some time and never had him on the show. Morley Robbins, he used to be, maybe still is known as the Magnesium Man, but perhaps more popularly of late, he is the creator and the founder of something called the Root Cause Protocol and even wrote this brand-new book that I just got my hands on and just finished reading called "Cure Your Fatigue." Notice how the Cu in cure, if you're watching the video, is the periodic table of the elements sign for copper, which is a big part of this whole Root Cause Protocol and maybe how I got kind of interested in it in the first place. But, Morley has a pretty cool backstory in terms of how he got into all this after getting his degree in biology. And, He's in wellness coaching, he's in nutrition counseling, functional diagnostic nutrition, and has written this incredible book that I think might have some surprises in it for people who are accustomed to the standard ho-hum health and nutrition advice out there. So, all the shownotes including a link to Morley's book and website, I'll put at BenGreenfieldLife.com/RootCause, BenGreenfieldLife.com/RootCause. Morley, welcome. It's been a long time coming.

Absolutely. Well, thank you for the opportunity.

I'm looking forward to our discussion.

Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you know, from what I understand, you know, I stalked you a little bit, a little bit, uh, you used to be like a, like a hospital executive.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay, so, so how'd you go from that to, uh, to this?

Well, I, I grew up in a very sickly family.

Everyone has a backstory, and my mom was an alcoholic, my dad was manic depressive with schizophrenia. And my sister became a nurse, so I was supposed to become the doctor until I got to college and found out, wow, this is a lot of work. I still applied to schools, but there was very little chance I was going to get in given the competitive nature of it.

But if you can't become a doctor, you go into hospital management.

Because it's just, it's just a natural progression. And so I chose to do that, and I worked for hospitals for about 12 years and then worked in consulting firms for 20 years solving bigger and more complicated problems within the hospital field. And it was a phenomenal 32-year career. And then I developed what's called frozen shoulder I couldn't pick my hand up above my waist.

Yeah, I've had a little bit of that from tennis, but it went away pretty quickly.

No, this didn't go away. I was miserable.

And I went to a health food store that I had frequented for many years in the Chicago area. And they told me to go see Dr. Liz. And I put up my hands and I said, I don't do witchcraft, because I knew that meant chiropractor. And They sold me some supplements.

They didn't do anything.

I came back a couple months later.

Not that we want to throw all chiropractic medicine under the bus, but that does happen sometimes.

Well, no, but the long story short is Dr.

Liz is now my wife. And so she healed my shoulder by correcting the pterygoid muscle in my jaw from the inside, I might add. It was a very painful experience, but as she pressed, my arm went up. It was as close to a miracle as I'd ever been. And what really got me into this work, Ben, was she used a phrase I'd never heard in 32 years of working in hospitals. She talked about the innate healer, the healer within. And I looked at her, I didn't say anything. And I thought to myself, if there is an innate healer, I want to find out who that is.

Why do we have millions of doctors around the world if there's a healer within?

And that's really what the book is about. I think that bioavailable copper and the way we present it in the Root Cause Protocol is in fact the mechanism to activate the NAD+ here.

Ben Greenfield: All right.

Well, I cannot wait to dive in here. You have on page 32 of the book, you talk about the keys to having more energy. You distill it pretty simply into a 3-step process that I know has a lot of implications and rabbit holes we'll probably get into. But what, what are the keys, these, this, this 3-step process to having more energy?

Well, the, the real key is, is recognizing that we need to be able to activate oxygen and turn it into water. And that mechanism, that enzymatic process is what releases ADP to go over to complex 5 to become magnesium ATP. And so the key is that that complex IV, which is where the conversion of oxygen into water— it's a, um, it's actually a stove. Think of your kitchen. You've got a stove. And does the stove know what burner to use? Does the stove know what temperature the oven should be? No. Every stove needs a chef. Well, copper, copper is the chef in cytochrome c oxidase. So the heme proteins, heme A and heme A3, basically become a stove to hold the oxygen, but it's oxygen that is slicing and dicing it so it turns into water. And that is the, the critical step. And then it moves over to complex 5, which is a, a nanorotor, as you probably know. Spinning at 30,000 revolutions per minute, 500 revolutions per second. And, and the beauty of our body is we have allegedly 40 quadrillion of these mitochondria supporting our day-to-day activity, which is, I think, absolutely amazing to think about.

And so you're saying copper is kind of an integral part of this mitochondrial production of energy, production of ATP, would you say copper is the most important part?

I think depending upon your sourcing, you might hear about 82 minerals versus 92 minerals. But, the way a lot of people talk about them is it's like they're all of equal importance. I don't think that's the case. I think there's a hierarchy. And, I think copper is in fact at the top just because of the unique properties it has by converting oxygen into water, but also its ability to regulate iron and oxygen at the same time. And all of the, uh, the health problems that we have, Ben, uh, stem from iron-induced oxidative stress. And so it's the copper that keeps those two elements at bay and allows us to have the fullest expression of our physiology.

So, iron-induced oxidative stress, like an internal rusting of the body because copper is protective against that type of oxidation, it would basically be the key. And in your theory for fixing the fatigue that a lot of people deal with, like balancing and modulating copper levels.

Yeah. And again, keep in mind, this is not my opinion. This is a compendium of thousands of articles that I've read. That there are research scientists and clinicians who've come to this conclusion. I've just gone out of my way to make sure people really understand how essential this function is in our body.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Okay, let's explore this whole rusting thing. You talk early in the book about what you describe as the great oxygenation event, which the way I see it might be kind of like the best way to explain how this rusting kind of started in the first place? So what was the great oxygenation event?

Well, it's interesting, um, oxygen was not always on the planet. And it's fascinating that several billion years ago, according to the astrobiologists— again, I'm just going to take it at face value that they know what they're talking about— um, but cyanobacteria began to interact with the sun in the process called photosynthesis. Very, very important part of our life process here on planet Earth. And so oxygen is given off in that process. The oxygen was going into the primordial sea, which was primarily iron and sulfur. And as the oxygen began to build up in the seabed, then it started to go into the atmosphere. And again, according to the folks who studied it the most, when there was 1/10 of 1% oxygen in in the atmosphere. We now have 21%, but when there was 1/10 of 1%, it wiped out 99% of life on the planet because of the— everything was anaerobic. And the importance of copper, again, this is me just sharing what the, what the scientists have written about, but what copper brought to the equation was 3 critical, uh, chemicals that I think are of utmost importance. We've talked about one of them, the cytochrome c oxidase, which is complex IV of the mitochondria. It's— its classification would be it's a multi-copper oxidase, and there's several different forms of that enzyme class on the planet. And that's the class of enzymes that can turn oxygen into water. Very important process on a planet with oxygen. The second critical element that, that was brought about by copper was— you've heard of melatonin, you know, but it's not just a sleep aid, it's actually the master antioxidant inside our mitochondria. It's a really critical part of our physiology, and it's only possible because of bioavailable copper.

By the way, when you say melatonin is only possible because of bioavailable copper, what's that mean?

Just the mechanism of producing it, the mechanism of its action. And then the third element that I think is always a surprise for folks is to find out that cholesterol was one of the first elements that formed on the planet. And its unique properties, as I'm sure we'll discuss, is that it has the ability to be a, a sink for oxygen because it takes 11 molecules of oxygen to make 1 molecule of cholesterol. And it was in 1973 that, uh, a famous cardiologist and copper expert named Leslie Clevey, it's a guy, but in 1973, he was able to demonstrate that lack of copper is what was causing a rise of cholesterol. In society.

Oh, because if you had less copper, you would need more cholesterol to fight oxidation.

Exactly. You got it.

Alright.

Now, you understand cardiology better than most doctors on the planet.

Okay. So, I have a super weird question. I don't know if you've ever gotten thrown this on a podcast, but okay. And, this is going to be a little esoteric for a second because my religious background is Christianity, And so, obviously, a lot of Christians, I have more of a New Earth creationist view of the planet and also the belief in a great flood event. Do you think, and I realize this would require considering that the Earth is newer than the billions of years that is often proposed by by modern science. Do you think there is some— that there's some credence to the idea that some great flood event could have affected atmospheric gaseous conditions and been a potential alternative explanation to the change in oxygen levels that would result in increasing oxidation? And even from a biblical standpoint, the shortened lifespan that we see in humans in a post-flood environment.

I absolutely think there are many ways to explain what, what's going on. Uh, and I think that the research that I've done in the last 16 years has only made me more curious and more open to, are there other explanations for what might have happened? Um, but I think that the bottom line is our physiology, our mammalian physiology is designed to work with oxygen. And iron, and we've got to be able to work with them cleanly so that they don't create static electricity or create rust as we're describing it. And so, yeah, I'm certainly open to that. And like when I'm talking to the Amish in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Indiana, as I have on numerous occasions, they very affectionately refer to me as an evolutionist. And I respect that. That's okay. But what they can't refute is my physiology. They know that within their community, they are rusting out big time. And I think that's— it's a systemic issue around the globe that I think we have to deal with.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people think rusting out and they would imagine like collagen degradation and wrinkles and signs of early aging. But the way that you explain it, if there is increased oxidation, You can see decreased production of ATP in a 14-year-old kid with glowing skin. And, that could result in fatigue simply because there's not enough energy currency being produced absent of some kind of external sign of rusting, so to speak.

Completely. And, I take a very simplistic view about aging. Aging is just iron accumulation. It is not complicated. And, as the iron accumulates in our tissue, it causes this rusting process. And I think the aging community and the longevity community are very slowly coming to that realization, but it was first proposed by Denham Harmon back in 1956. I mean, he was an industrial engineer, PhD engineer that was fascinated by the rusting process that that industry had to deal with. And he decided he wanted to see if it applied to humans. So he became a doctor. Well, he didn't just become a doctor. He went to Stanford to become a physician. And he proposed the free radical theory of aging. And then that was when he was 40 years old. And then when he was 90 years old, he updated his findings in 2006. And basically his, his theory, his whole concept of free radical theories are the most adopted theories for aging on the planet. It's a very simple process.

So, explain this to me. If the buildup of iron would, based on the physiology you've described, contribute to fatigue, why when someone goes to a doctor and presents with signs of fatigue that anemia is one of the things that's proposed as a cause? Which would be low iron levels for people familiar with the diagnosis like that or largely thought of as low iron levels. So, why is it that anemia is thought to be the cause of fatigue? And is it a problem that people are then taking iron?

I've just done two online courses about this very topic. One is just a more basic version, but one's a deeper dive. One's 90 minutes, one's 3 hours long. But, To answer your question directly, a lot of confusion about anemia. And the real issue is we're using a blood test and we're extrapolating to the tissue. So low iron on a blood test does, does not perfectly represent the tissue level of iron. And Bruce Ames, famous physiologist at Berkeley for many years, at the peak of his career, he was the most quoted scientist on planet Earth. But in, in 2004 and 2005, uh, he was able to prove that there's 10 times more iron in the tissue than shows up in the blood. And so the confusion that we have on the planet is that if you, uh, want to adopt the position of the World Health Organization, they'll tell you that a third of the world's population has anemia, some form of iron deficiency anemia, uh, or anemia of chronic inflammation, or, or one of the other subsets of anemia. But they'll tell you that a third of the population is struggling with iron. Well, here's what we have to believe. First of all, iron is the most dominant element on planet Earth. Number one, 36% of the Earth's composition is iron. And I'd like to think that humans are the most evolved species. My, my opinion shifted a little bit in 2020, but let's still go with the assumption that, that people are still the most evolved species. And so in order to accept anemia, it means that the most evolved species has lost the ability to metabolize the number one element on the planet and it doesn't pass the sniff test. And the, the part that's missing in this conversation is the copper protein called ceruloplasmin.

Ceruloplasmin.

Ceruloplasmin. Okay. It's one of the largest proteins in the human body, 1,046 amino acids. When it was first discovered, there were 8 atoms of copper inside it. And over the last 60 years, almost 70 years, we're down to 6 coppers. Some scientists suggest it might only be 5.

Are you saying that we have lost those 3 to 4 copper ions in ceruloplasmin, or when it was originally discovered, it was improperly quantified?

No, I'm just saying that from 1948 to 1975, ceruloplasmin always had 8 coppers in it. Then in 1975 to 2000, it had dropped to 7. And then, and then in 2000 to the current day is down to 6. And I've read in 3 articles now, well, it might only be 5. So picture, picture driving a V8 and having a cylinder go out every few miles. That's what's happening to humanity.

Okay. So you are saying that basically the average levels of copper in ceruloplasmin as measured in human beings over over the past several decades has decreased.

It's in the literature.

It's documented. Okay, got it. So, it's not as though we've found out better ways to somehow visualize or measure ceruloplasmin and we've realized, well, those copper that we thought in it is lower, it's that levels are actually decreasing.

And, I've talked to a handful of copper researchers and said, "What the hey?" And, no one can tell me. They don't know what's behind it. I'm like, "Okay, we live in a very entertaining environment, as you well know. And so what's important for people to understand is how central this protein is to our well-being. And so the model for Big Pharma is one gene, one protein, one function. That's what really drives the Big Pharma business model.

One gene codes to produce one protein, and that one protein has one function. Exactly.

Okay. And so for ceruloplasmin, there is one gene. It's the ceruloplasmin gene, but it, it produces 9 enzymes. There's 9 different functions that ceruloplasmin can engage in. So it's basically a transformer. And what's, what I find wildly entertaining is that, that in medical school, doctors don't learn any of this. They don't learn that there's 15 different substrates for ceruloplasmin.

And what's a substrate again?

It's an element that the protein can work with.

Okay.

And so it can work with iron and oxygen and work with copper and can work with catecholamines and it can work with amines and polyamines. And it's just like, we need to be mindful of this. This is a very powerful part of our physiology that is kind of pushed off to the side in conventional medicine. And in fact, what if you really want to get into the nuance of it? So there's a team of Russian scientists headed up by Basil Vasilyev. Ceruloplasmin actually works with lactoferrin and myeloperoxidase. This is a very powerful triad in our body. That it basically keeps all the pathogens at bay, keeps the iron in regulation. And so it's, we, we are endowed naturally with these mechanisms, but they're not taught in mainstream medical education. And so it's just, we, we are constantly being exposed to workarounds because no one knows about the central importance of bioavailable copper.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, back to the anemia piece which got us on the ceruloplasmin kick in the first place. What you're saying is if I go to the doctor, they test my blood levels of iron, that doesn't necessarily mean I don't have high tissue levels of oxidizing iron and that the reason I would have low blood levels but high tissue levels would be a result of some type of ceruloplasmin deficiency or some way that's not working properly?

That's one factor. It's more likely that, um, what, what I've learned, uh, more recently, Ben, is that if we have any kind of chronic stress, do you know anyone who has chronic stress?

Yeah. A few people.

Yeah. Just a few people, right? Like most of the planet. In the presence of chronic stress, the, the two stress models that are used in science are, uh, chronic social defeat stress and repeated restraint stress. Well, that's what 2020 was.

I don't know what either of those are. Chronic social defeat stress and restraint stress.

Just go back 5 years and see what was life like when we were first confronted with the insanity of 2020. We felt socially defeated and we felt constrained about what we were allowed to do. But what they've discovered is that that uh, social state, that stressful state triggers a response in the, uh, immune system. And we produce higher levels of what's called interleukin-6. It's a very important, um, part of our innate immune system. And interleukin-6 causes a rise in an iron hormone called hepcidin. Ceruloplasmin would be the positive regulator. Of iron metabolism, and hepcidin is the negative regulator of iron metabolism. There's a big difference between positive regulation and negative regulation. To use a sports analogy, a quarterback is a positive regulator. A middle linebacker on the defense is a negative regulator. You shut down plays. And so it's important to know that these mechanisms exist. But if hepcidin is rising under stress, it's going to cause what's called iron sequestration. The, the body is designed to pull that iron out of the bloodstream into what are called recycling macrophages. Very, very important part of our physiology because the body knows that if the iron is available, the pathogens will use it, and then you're gonna have a more significant infection. So Stress is gonna be a major contributor, but just, uh, any kind of pathogenic stress, any kind of exposure to pathogens is going to cause this sequestration of iron. And it's going to look— the iron's gonna look low on the blood test when in fact it's not revealing what's happening at a tissue level. And the, the part that's usually, uh, missing in most people's awareness is that we have a very sophisticated turnover of iron in our body every day. Every second, every second of every day, we have to replace 2.5 million red blood cells. Got to take 2.5 million offline.

Yep.

Got to bring 2.5 million online. And that is the synchronized work of the spleen working with the bone marrow. Spleen's breaking them down, bone marrow is bringing them back online, and there's a tremendous, uh, flux of iron that needs to take place. And every 24 hours, we need to make 200 billion red blood cells, and that requires 25 milligrams of iron. It's not very much. But it's significant. But the important part for, for your listeners and followers is that 24 of those 25 milligrams comes from this recycling system. Only 1 milligram is supposed to come from our mouth. And what's happened in modern society is they flipped the narrative and they want people eating upwards of 20, 30, 40, 50 milligrams of iron. Because we have a very iron-fortified diet and the body can't assimilate all that iron, so it gets put into storage, into tissue, and that begins to throw off the elegance of the iron physiology.

Okay, I want to ask you about iron fortification in a second, but coming back to Hefcidin, um, yeah, just so I understand this correctly, so we're in a straight— we're in a state of stress and it could be social stress, environmental stress, pathogenic stress, et cetera, hepcidin would upregulate and thus more iron would get sequestered in the tissues, the blood levels would, if we were to be tested, would be low, and the more iron sequestered in the tissues would allow for us to do something like fight off infection better?

That's a great question, Ben. It depends on how strong your immune system is. It's a wonderful insight because we can have pathogens both intracellularly and extracellularly. So what this conserved response is, is dealing with the extracellular pathogens. So let's get the iron out of the blood, which is extracellular, and get it into the recycling, uh, macrophages. Then you have the possibility of parasites and other pathogens building up in the intracellular medium, in, in the actual macrophages. Um, and so ideally we've gotta be able to handle both the extracellular and intracellular flux of iron. And the important thing for, for you and the, and your listeners to understand is that anytime you need to move iron in the human body, copper's gotta be nearby. Copper's gonna be the mechanism to open the doorways to allow the flux to take place.

Okay, so you're saying like a copper dysregulator, copper imbalance would result in dysregulation between action of hepcidin and ceruloplasmin, and thus we wouldn't be moving iron efficiently between intracellular and extracellular environments.

That's exactly right.

Chronic stress is what could cause that to happen.

It's been proven to cause it. Absolutely. Okay. And what we're now— what we're facing is not just the chronic stress, but we're facing the shortage of copper and other minerals in our diet. I mean, we live on a very compromised environment.

Ben Greenfield: Well, I'm sure a lot of people are going to wonder what I'm wondering, which is where we replace the copper. But before we get to that, when you talked about iron, you said we get a lot of iron, but you specifically said iron fortification. And I want to know more about that because I consume red meat, I have some iron-rich sources of vegetables. I don't personally supplement with iron, but is there a difference in the type of deleterious oxidation and iron accumulation that would occur from, say, iron fortification and iron supplementation versus, let's say, a person who's having a grass-fed, grass-finished ribeye steak and maybe some liver a few times a week?

Right. So, the important thing to understand is there's heme, which is animal iron, heme, and non-heme. Heme is considered organic. Non-heme is inorganic. They don't want us eating the meat. You know that. I know that. It's pretty— I mean, they're going out of their way to try to make it fearful to eat animal meat. But the accessibility of iron in that situation is far easier to work with than the non-heme iron And when you get into the research around it, it's absolutely fascinating because 95% of, of how we access iron would be through this organic flux. But what they want us to believe is that 95% of it is coming from fortification. And so a lot of, a lot of confusion around that. And the key is that everything really changed in 1941. When England and Canada and the U.S. started to add iron filings to the food system, to the wheat flour where they first started it.

Now, you said that in a very odd way. People hear iron fortification and that sounds good. Adding iron filings sounds disturbing. I guess what are iron filings?

Iron filings are the most inorganic form of iron you can possibly have. And, and this is, uh, profiled in the book Iron: The Most Toxic Metal by Jim Moon, uh, who's a— he, he was a PhD, uh, iron toxicologist who passed away in 2016. So, um, people don't realize what the, the, what the food system has done. And what's also important to know is that, so we have this watershed event in '41, In 1969, the FDA sought to increase the iron level in food fortification by 350%. Wow. We're gonna increase it 3.5 times. And that led to 20-some scientists from around the world, iron, iron toxicologists coming to Washington, DC with one question. What are you trying to do? Kill people? And so in a magnanimous gesture, the FDA backed off and only increased it 50%. What's important to know is that there are 9 different forms of iron being added to the U.S. food system, and all 9 have been classified as carcinogens.

And are all 9 of those non-heme forms of iron?

Yes.

Okay. And I'm assuming non-heme and the bioavailability of that or the way that that's utilized being different would mean there would be a higher risk of it building up in the tissue or creating some type of an iron imbalance versus heme iron, which would be better metabolized or something like that?

Right, exactly. And so, they're actually— and I don't want to get too detailed because I'm going to lose your listeners.

They're smart cookies.

Okay, well, they're separate doorways. They're separate doorways. They're separate doorways for Heme and non-Heme.

Okay.

They're separate exit doorways for Heme and non-Heme. And it's important for people to realize that the research is obsessing about the non-Heme side and they're just ignoring the Heme side, which I think is a mistake in my humble opinion. But the part that people are not aware of is there's zero copper fortification in our food system. There's zero magnesium fortification in our food system. There's zero, uh, retinol fortification in our food system. And so we are, we are exposed to constant, uh, additions of iron and calcium and vitamin D, but no one's talking about their parallel nutrients that are critical because they have a yin-yang relationship.

Yeah. And, we know what copper is. A lot of people know what magnesium is. Retinol, I believe that's a form of vitamin A if I'm not mistaken. Animal-based A, yeah. And, what's the link between the cholesterol piece that you talked about earlier and retinol when it comes to this equation?

Just that September 1955, Eisenhower has a heart attack and Ancel Keys seizes on that moment And he gets people to believe that, oh, it's cholesterol that's causing the heart attack. And so we put everyone on a low-fat diet. So when you go low-fat, you're going to not ingest retinol along with the cholesterol. And so what people didn't know, I mean, I didn't know this until I started to really get into the research. In order to make copper bioavailable, You must have retinol in your diet. And, and retinol is an essential part of the mechanism to— there are two critical copper pumps in our body. One's called ATP7A, it's called the Menkes gene. The other is ATP7B, the Wilson's gene. Well, those two genes produce proteins that can only be activated by 13-cis retinoic acid, which is a hormone derivative of retinol. So if you don't have retinol in your diet, you can't get to the 13-cis retinoic acid, you can't activate the pumps, you can't load copper into the copper enzymes that are critical for the physiology of our body.

Okay, so, so bad— this is back to the cholesterol sink piece, you know, as you describe cholesterol as being protective against oxidation. It would be low cholesterol equals low retinol equals copper dysregulation equals oxidation by iron.

There you go. We should drop the mic right now.

Almost. We're not done yet.

Okay.

So, I'm assuming part of this is don't be fat-phobic, consume good dietary sources of fat. I'm assuming part of this is take adequate levels of magnesium. I'm assuming a big part of this is avoid foods fortified in iron, which would mean cutting out a lot of processed and ultra-processed foods, which is a good idea generally. Exactly. Maybe don't take an iron supplement. Right. And then, the copper piece, that might be a little bit lesser known to a lot of people. Where do you actually get copper?

I will answer that question, but let's make sure people are aware of the medical meme that runs medicine around the world, and that is you're anemic and you're copper toxic. Those are two dominant thought processes that are constantly being pumped out in the airwaves.

Yeah, well, I hear anemic a lot. I don't hear copper toxic as much.

Oh, it's very pervasive. And so they want us to be afraid of the very element that regulates iron, and they want us to believe that we can take as much iron and not, not be worried about it. A good rule of thumb for how much iron you have in your body is to take your age and multiply it times 365. This is not my formula. This is the formula that the iron biologists like Robert Crichton and Douglas Kell and people of that stature— these are the mega stars and in that world of iron researcher. That's what they use. So I'm gonna be 73 in a couple weeks. So I've got about 27,000 milligrams of iron in my body. Well, well, men are designed to run on 5. So I've got a multiple of iron. And so the, the iron footprint is what we've gotta mitigate and we've gotta begin to introduce the copper, uh, at the same time. To bring the physiology back into balance. So then to come to your question, historically the food sources of copper would have been organ meats. Okay. And shellfish. Okay. Nuts and seeds.

Like all nuts and seeds, or like, are there specific ones higher?

Well, cashews are particularly high.

Great. That's it. You didn't even know this is a key ingredient in a new, uh, ketone-based energy bar I just developed. So there we go. You just did free advertising for me. Okay.

Cashews. That's fine. And then we've got leafy greens like mustard greens, collard greens, beet greens. They are very— they historically, again, we're talking historically, were very rich in copper. Unfortunately, we live in a post-glyphosate world. Roundup is worldwide now. Roundup is in the air. It's not just on commercial farms. Proof of that came in 2022 when a study was done in France. Now, mind you, the French were very opposed to the introduction of glyphosate in Europe. They were very resistant to that.

Might mess up the flavor of the Bordeaux or something like that. Exactly.

Yeah. 99% of French citizens are peeing glyphosate in their urine. That was sort of a bellwether study that began— that sent a shockwave around the world that glyphosate is in the air and in the rainwater. And so it isn't just— even organic foods now are subject to this, this event.

So what's that have to do with copper?

Well, it, it means we, we have compromised Sources of copper.

Ben Greenfield: Oh, so you're not saying the glyphosate would somehow— maybe it does, I don't know— impair copper balance. What you're saying is, well, all these copper-rich foods, you're getting some of the other whatever gut-damaging effects of glyphosate or some of the neurological issues associated with glyphosate if you're going out of your way to eat a bunch of non-organic dark leafy greens and whatever meat from cattle that are eating things that have been sprayed, et cetera?

Well, actually it does affect the availability of minerals in general, but let me, let me introduce a thought before I get there. It's important for people to know that in, again, take the time machine back to 2020. A lot of people are doing what's called the COVID cocktail, and that was high doses of ascorbic acid, high doses of vitamin D, and high doses of zinc.

I did that.

Okay. Well, yeah, that's— it's the perfect triad to kill the bioavailability of copper. Oh, shit. And so it was April of 2020 that I renamed what COVID stood for. So COV stands for copper's vanished and ID stands for iron's dysregulated.

Oh, man.

And so the research that would be important for you and your followers to know about was in 1928 2 separate studies, March at the University of Wisconsin, May at the University of Kentucky, where they purposely withheld copper from the animal's diet and the liver filled up with iron. They've known this since 1928. It's very well-established biological fact that copper is instrumental for regulating iron in the animal's body. It's a very, very central function, uh, that that a lot of scientists have known. It's just not taught in one place, medical school. And so, um, back to your point about, um, the impact that, that glyphosate has on minerals, uh, there's a famous scientist named Don Huber. He's in retirement now, but he's at Purdue University, and he studied glyphosate for the last 30 years of his career. And, um, he studied the speed with which minerals are chelated from the soil being exposed to glyphosate. So you're familiar with earthquakes. An earthquake of 3 is, you know, dishes rattle but no one dies. Earthquake of 12, no one survives that. So what, what Dr. Huber was able to document and he's done several studies to this, that glyphosate is pulling calcium and magnesium out of the soil at a speed of 3. It's pulling iron and zinc out of the soil at a 9.

Yeah, you're gonna tell me copper's a 12, right?

Copper's a 12. Yeah. And so here's the significance of that. That means that copper is coming out a billion times faster than calcium and magnesium and 1,000 times faster than iron and zinc. Now, here's the problem we've got, Ben. When I was in college, my mom had a Mercedes 350 SL, and I drove that car in Florida twice the speed limit. I was going 140 miles an hour. It was a wall of green going past. By the grace of God, I didn't get caught, but that was twice as fast. When I was a little boy, a guy named Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and he was going 10 times the speed limit, went 750 miles an hour. You and I don't know what 1,000 times faster or 1 billion times faster is. And what we tend to do is, well, I don't really understand that, so it can't be that important. No, this is very, very, very important. And what's happened, Ben, is We as a species have become Swiss cheese because we're missing minerals and our nutrients, and we're eating Swiss cheese because the food is missing the nutrients.

Yeah, maybe French cheese.

Okay, but the point is we have a compromised diet and we have a compromised physiology. And the whole purpose behind this book is just to wake people up to this reality that minerals are critical for our physiology, but especially copper and magnesium because we're seeking to make energy to respond to the stress that we're constantly under.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, obviously, a major takeaway from that TED Talk on herbicides and pesticides is if you're going to choose these copper-rich sources that you talked about, select the source carefully. But then, what about— I have two follow-up questions related to that. Copper supplementation, can you just buy and supplement copper? And then also, I hear bee pollen is a really good source and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on bee pollen.

We highly recommend bee pollen and rice bran. Again, but it's with the acknowledgment that to some extent that particular source of nutrients, bee pollen, has been compromised. Everything's been compromised now.

Well, actually, no. So, I interviewed the people, and this is not a commercial, they're not sponsoring this podcast, but I interviewed Carly from Beekeepers Naturals and they source all of their bees now in Europe in totally non-sprayed environments because the issue with organic in America is in many cases the bees are just traveling to a bunch of inorganic sprayed farms, but they have a source in Europe. So, I know Beekeepers Naturals, according to them, like they have a clean version of a bee pollen.

That's beautiful. That's exciting. I think it's important that people recognize that the study in 2022 would suggest that glyphosate is more prevalent than we want to believe. And certainly the research that Stephanie Seneff has done certainly has implicated a lot of chronic problems are stemming from She'll refer to glyphosate in her writing. She doesn't get down to the copper level until you're face-to-face. It's a different story.

Okay, got it. Now, what about copper supplementation? Do companies sell a good form of copper that you could take if you just don't have good dietary sources?

One of my contributions to society was to make a copper supplement in 2021.

I didn't just throw you a softball, by the way.

I know. No, no, no. But there, there are, there, the, the whole key though is I want people to realize that name of the, the supplement we came up with or that I inspired is called Recuperate.

So that's great.

But the point is that is a bioavailable form of copper. Just taking a copper supplement isn't enough. You've gotta be able to have the nutrients that copper's looking for.

Oh, you mean like, uh, this would be called like cofactors in the supplement industry?

Absolutely. And, and so copper is a fat-soluble mineral. It loves to be in the medium of fat. And in order to metabolize fat, you have to have copper in your physiology. That, that's the yin-yang of copper, is there's a, a copper-fat axis and there's an iron-sugar axis. And so, they've been dumping us full of sugar knowing that it's going to build up iron in our body. What's been missing has been the copper and the fat for decades.

Interesting.

By the way, the iron-sugar axis, I'm going to hypothesize that has something to do with sugar shifting you into a more anaerobic state and increasing the amount of iron saturation in the tissue.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Got it.

Interesting.

Interesting. Okay. So, the last thing about copper that I'm wondering is, can I get some kind of a blood test or some type of evaluation that tells me, gives me an accurate picture of my copper values? And, I guess I should throw in there because people are going to wonder, ditto for iron if blood is giving you an inaccurate representation.

What I cobbled together is what's called the Full Monty Iron Panel. It's nothing. What's unusual about it was, was to introduce copper markers and zinc and vitamin A and vitamin D into a fairly standard iron panel. And you can order it, uh, any in— any individual can order it from a, uh, website called requestatest.com. And, um, it's, I've, I've trained about 1,000 people now in the, uh, Root Cause Protocol. And so there are people out there that can help you introduce it. But what I would, uh, propose is that if you decide you wanna do that, I have, I have no control over the cost. It's $275. But if you decide to, to do it, I would love to, uh, interpret the results. We can either do it offline or online depending upon how you wanna approach it. But I think you'd find it fascinating to see what your body's revealing. And it's the interaction and, and the interpolation of those markers where I can begin to get a sense of what level of oxidative stress could be taking place inside your body. And, I imagine given your commitment and focus, it's going to be a different level than what I typically see with a lot of people that I work with.

Yeah, maybe. Is that a blood test?

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Okay. What about the— you hear a lot of practitioners now using hair for a mineral analysis. What do you think about that?

No, I've worked with hair test for 16 years.

Because I'm assuming the blood test that you just talked about, if you say it's all iron, It's not gonna tell me copper, or it does?

No. No. No. The, the blood test is gonna help you. There are multiple media for discerning what's happening at a nutrient level in the body. You can use blood, you can use urine, you can use feces, and you can use hair. Those, those are the typical sources. The hair is very, very easy medium to work with. Here's the, The beauty is its simplicity, but there is a downside to it. And again, I've worked with a hair test for 16 years now. The beauty of the hair test is it will tell you right away if you're dealing with stress because you're gonna get back a saber-toothed tiger report of different levels of minerals throughout the hair sample. But where I think the hair test really shines is, uh, there's a way to measure whether the body is in fact able to make energy in the face of that stress. There's an adrenal ratio and there's a thyroid ratio. Adrenal ratio is the ratio of sodium to magnesium, and the thyroid ratio is calcium to potassium. And those are very helpful to get a sense of what's the energy produ— producing capacity of, of this individual.

So it's not just levels, it's the ratio.

Yep. Ratios are very, very important in mineral analysis. And here's the part that a lot of people don't know about with the hair test. They do measure the metals, especially the zinc, copper, iron, and molybdenum are the 4 principal metals that they're gonna look at. Excuse me, manganese. But they also do measure molybdenum. But the first thing they do with a hair sample is they burn it. It's the very first thing they do. I've, I've been to the labs, I've watched them do it. And so what that does is it oxidizes the valence of that metal. Well, zinc is unique and only has one valence. It's +2. Copper has at least 3. Iron has at least 4, and manganese has 6. And so what we're— everything gets frozen to a +2 valence. And we don't get a, a complete understanding of, of what's happening inside the body. I've— the other thing that you can't do with a hair test, Ben, is you cannot measure ceruloplasmin in a hair sample. It does not show up in a hair test.

Does that blood ceruloplasmin?

Yeah. Only in the blood. Gotta do it in the blood.

Is that part of the iron panel that you run? Do you have ceruloplasmin on that?

Absolutely.

Okay.

And, and again, back to the ratio, it was some hematologist from Harvard back in 1960. It's a very entertaining series of studies they did, 9 different studies of ceruloplasmin. They chose to do the research at Bell Laboratories in upstate New York, not in Cambridge, Mass. I've never understood why they did that. But, but what they introduced the world to was the ratio of copper to ceruloplasmin is very, very important. And the, um, the great scientists of the 1930s have studied these metals very carefully, and they were very clear that zinc and magnesium and copper and iron should all be at 100 in the serum So the, the copper, the zinc, and the iron should all be around 100. And these are based on numerous studies by numerous scientists back in the day. And then the ideal for ceruloplasmin should be 30, and the ratio should be 3.33. And when there's a deviation from that, that's when you begin to get into the nuance of what's going on in the person's world.

Okay. And I, I assume your test results give those ratios. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Alright. So, you have a really intriguing page in the book. And, by the way, just so you guys know, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/RootCause, I'll put some helpful shownotes to you and links for the things Morley and I are talking about. But, we are, just so you know, we're an hour in and we've covered maybe 20% of the book. So, if you want the full meal deal, read the book. But, I really like this chapter this page where you go through what a suggested daily schedule would look like for the Root Cause Protocol. And, I'm assuming you might even do this in your own life. So, walk me through the supplements that you're taking to balance things out and why you're choosing specific items. We don't have to take a deep dive, but just the general overview of what a day in the life of the Root Cause Protocol looks like to balance out the copper issues, the iron issues, the ceruloplasmin, everything we've talked about. So far?

So the whole basis of the protocol is that it's built around stops and starts. And there's about a dozen different nutrients that we tell people to stop taking, like stop taking iron, stop taking calcium, stop taking zinc, stop taking supplemental D. And those are very controversial, but we can back up the reason why we take that stance. But then what you're referring to is the, the daily schedule that we've developed over the years just to give people a guide for how to introduce these critical nutrients into, uh, your routine so you begin to get the full benefit of having bioavailable copper and having balance in your minerals. And what we're really doing, uh, in the initial stages, we break it down into phases. We have Phase 1, 2, 3. And then we have what's called Phase X so that people, you know, doing what you're doing right now, this very regular, steady movement, it's very, very helpful. Get out in the sun, things like that. But the goal of Phase 1 is to really begin to address the prevalence of mineral imbalance in most people's body because people have not been aware that minerals are the spark plugs of life, and they are.. And so we're bringing the adrenal glands back online. We have an adrenal cocktail that we developed that introduces sodium and potassium and magnesium along with vitamin E— excuse me, vitamin C— just to nourish the critical glands that rest on top of our kidneys and get them back in the game of dealing with the stress. But then we're also introducing like the copper is the last component of that phase 1. But we're trying to get people focused on real food wherever possible, food-based supplements wherever possible, and do it in a phased format so that they're not overwhelmed by the process of transitioning from the conventional worldview to— you made reference in in some of the wording that you use that I had created the protocol. Well, actually, I like to think of it as Mother Nature created the protocol, I just happened to dust it off.

Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah, you did say whole foods. I'm reading around whole food vitamin C, whole food vitamin E. Correct. You said whole food supplements. What's a whole food supplement versus an average everyday supplement?

Yeah, so with vitamin C, uh, we've been trained to believe that ascorbic acid is vitamin C. And so vitamin C, the whole vitamin C complex, is like your car where it has an engine, a steering wheel, 4 wheels, and a cover. That's the design of a, of a whole food vitamin C complex. Ascorbic acid is just the COVID of the car and no moving parts. So it's a very different complex than what we've been led to believe. The vitamin E, typically what they'll sell you is alpha-tocopherol, when in fact there are 4 tocopherols and 4 tocotrienols, and very often there's selenium at the core.

Oh, okay. Yeah, so this would be like— I did an interview with Dr. Barry Tan, and he described like the difference between synthetic vitamin E and like taking a natto plant extract. Which is the 4 tocopherols and the 4 tocotrienols.

Exactly.

Exactly. Okay. And so the, the Mother Nature designed those vitamins that way for a reason. The interplay of those parts. And what's important for people to know is that everyone that knows about ascorbic acid would assume that it was Albert Szent-Görgyi who got the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid. Well, that's not at all what happened. But, but the important point is that he he got the Nobel Prize in December of 1937. He wrote an article, a letter to the editor, Nature Journal, on July 4th, 1936. And I have the letter in my files, and he made a very clear statement. He said, ascorbic acid does not cure scurvy. He was not working with ascorbic acid. He was working with hyaluronic acid. And, he was working with Hungarian peppers which have the whole complex. And so, the world has been led astray by this deception around ascorbic acid versus the whole food vitamin C. Okay.

So, if you're taking vitamin C or vitamin E, look for the whole foods version. Absolutely. You, of course, have magnesium on there. Rice bran, that's rice bran and bee pollen, those are probably listed as forms of copper and liver also.

They're rich sources of B vitamins.

Oh, and copper or just B vitamins?

Well, I would argue that the copper is probably woven in there. I had a conversation with Dr. Clavé many years ago, and I said, my theory is that all of the B vitamins require copper so they can regulate iron. And he said, well, more of that's a great theory. He said, I can't speak for all of the B vitamins, He said, but what I will tell you for a fact is that folate, B9, is copper-dependent. And when you understand the role of folate in our physiology, that's a very profound piece of information that totally changes our understanding of vitamin A and vitamin D metabolism in the body.

Yeah. And, you know, looking at this, it seems like it's something someone could pretty easily stack onto their current diet. Take magnesium, cod liver oil, a lot of people have access to that, some kind of trace mineral, bee pollen, beef liver. I know a lot of people don't like it, but you can take capsules even though I like to cook it. I love beef liver steaks. Rice bran, diatomaceous earth, a couple times a day this adrenal cocktail that you mix in fresh-squeezed orange juice or water. It seems like you wouldn't have to This isn't a doom scroll for people to overhaul everything. It's like stop taking a certain number of things, start adding these in. And then, the last thing I was going to kind of ask you that I was wondering about related to iron, what about giving blood to jumpstart the process? Do you have an opinion on phlebotomy like that?

Yeah, we regularly recommend that. What we really are proposing is that we need to lower the iron footprint in our body. We need to raise the copper footprint in our body. And you and I have a very different profile than our great-grandparents. I can assure you that they were eating different food than what we eat. I mean, I think you have a tremendous discipline and rigor about yours, but the average person doesn't have— they're not eating the types of foods that their ancestors ate. And so the ability to release the iron from the body to lower the oxidative stress. And, and so the, the whole concept of Cure Your Fatigue was based on the work of Douglas Wallace, who's a famous geneticist at Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania. He wrote a very important article in 2005 where he was challenging his, his clinical colleagues and his scientific peers. He said, You all don't seem to understand how energy is made in the body and how if the oxygen doesn't become water, you have an opportunity cost. You can't recover that oxygen. You've got to neutralize that oxygen or that oxidant. And so if we don't turn the oxygen into water, we sub-optimize our production of energy. And there we have what he called cellular energy deficiency. Well, fatigue is a little easier to say. And, and, and it turns out that there are 20,000 symptoms that are profiled in the Merck Manual. And guess what they all start with? Cellular energy deficiency. That's the focal point of every condition.

Wow. Wow. And I mean, you know, this is, this is new stuff for a lot of people who have heard like take an iron supplement, pop a bunch of vitamin D. But, in reading over your book, I finished the book 2 weeks ago. I've definitely got some things to experiment with and I'm sure some people are going to want to do this test to see where they're at and some people are going to have questions, comments, feedback. I'll sit down after this and help make the show notes nice and juicy for you if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Ruth. Root cause. The book's not super hard to read. I think if you really want to take the deep dive, you can get through this in a week or less. I think it's worth looking into. Morley, this is fascinating stuff. And, I want to thank you for coming on the show and for doing the work that you do.

Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share it. And, what I think is important in this particular edition of the book is we've taken a deeper dive around the copper, copper. We've introduced a whole chapter on women's health, which a lot of people don't realize all revolve around this copper-iron crisis. But, the footnotes that are there are ones that you can hand this book to a doctor and say, "Do you wanna understand copper? Here's the book to do it." Yeah, very well-researched, 290 references.

So, worth checking out, you guys. Here's what it looks like, Cure Your Fatigue. It's now available on Amazon, pretty new. Second Edition. BenGreenfieldLife.com/RootCause is where I will put the show notes. Morley, thanks so much, man. This is good stuff.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much for your time.

Alright, folks. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Morley Robbins signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an incredible week.

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