Morley Robbins on Copper Deficiency and Mineral Balance

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics, your gut health superstore. Nourish Me Organics is the premier store in Australia when it comes to gut health supplements, probiotics, prebiotics, and home fermentation kits. So do head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code happygut for 10% off. Hey guys. Criben Gavender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science and also a registered nutritionist. And today I am so honored to have this gentleman in front of me, Morley Robbins. I actually came across Morley because a mutual friend and I were having some coffee and some actually it wasn't coffee, it was deuterium depleted water, for want of a better word, because he actually refused to drink coffee at that time. But so it was deuterium depleted water. And then the root cause protocol popped up in the conversation and this very interesting character, Molly Robbins also popped into the conversation. And after that conversation with my friend and getting a taste for Morley's work, I went and did some research on his root core protocol, root cause protocol. And I thought I have to have a conversation with Morley to get it from the horse's mouth on all the stuff that he's talking about because I think. And he'll tell you all about it in a second. But I think copper, iron, magnesium, they're so important. I'm a gut health man, microbiome type of focused character and also mitochondria. I think Molly will tell you in a sec. But I think copper is a huge part of the mitochondrial function. We have to dig deep into this conversation. Firstly, Molly, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you crib. I'm very happy to be here. Looking forward to the repartee and the, the give and take. It's been a lot of fun.

Absolutely, Molly. And what I like to do at the start of all my podcasts is to get it from the horse's mouth. Who is Morley Robbins?

I'm a recovering hospital executive who has become a wellness coach who at the tender age of I'll be 67 in a couple weeks, have spent the last decade retooling myself and becoming a self taught mineral expert. Never imagined that I would be doing this at this point in my life, but it's now become my passion and my purpose. I just learned yesterday that people with purpose have hope and I do have hope because I've really been able to uncover some very interesting things. I, I get up every day and read from 5:00am till 8:00'. Clock. And I do that seven days a week and I have for 10 solid years. So I've read a lot of articles. And as you know, and as I think your listeners will soon appreciate, minerals are very, very important for the function of the body. And I think it's fascinating that they're about 9,000 minerals. Excuse me, 9,000 enzymes. I apologize, 9,000 enzymes. And they all work just like the cars we drive. So the reasonable conclusion would be, well, if there's 9,000 enzymes, there must be 9,000 minerals. And there's not. There's only about a handful that really run all of those 9,000 enzymes. And the key question is, when was the last time you drove your car without a key? Well, unless you're Wilma Flintstone or Fred Flintstone, it's very hard to do that. And it's hard to fathom that, like one mineral, magnesium, has sway over 42% of our enzymes. And so when we're under stress, as most of us are, by virtue of our work schedule or relationship dynamics or our worries about money or the diet that we tend to be focused on or whatever it happens to be, we lose minerals really fast. And you were talking about someone not wanting to drink coffee. Coffee is a great way to deplete your body of minerals. It's like. And if you know that, you know, to replete those minerals. But most people that go to Starbucks, where I hang out don't know that. So it's actually, it's, it's comical to watch almost. But who am I? I'm really someone who believes that people deserve to learn how to gain health freedom so they can get medical independence. And there's a lot of information out there. I think one of the phrases that people love to ask me is, oh, what's new? And what I invariably will respond with is, well, let's talk about what's enduring, what's been around for a long time. And I think what's important for people to realize is that what I really like, I cut my teeth on magnesium and was fascinated by what I was reading. And then suddenly I knew why everyone was in the hospital, in those hospitals that I worked in. But of course I thought that if you just gave them magnesium, they would perk up like a plan. Well, they don't. And my continued research got me to copper, only to discover that it's both usable and unusable, depending upon whether it's complex with its protein, which we'll talk about, I'm sure called ceruloplasmin. And the people who can pronounce that correctly will get a free consult. But that knowing that there's usable and unusable copper got me to iron. And that became a watershed event. When I was. I'd really specialized in understanding how stress caused magnesium loss. And I, And I called it the magnesium burn rate. And, and we all have a. We have varying degrees of magnesium burn rate depending upon the. The stress level. But I was reading an article by a famed Italian researcher, iron researcher. And in the opening passage of the article, he said, the greatest stress to the human body is iron stress. And suddenly it was like, boom. I went, oh, my gosh. That's what the whole problem is. And. And I began to take this deep dive into iron. What is it? What composition does it have in our body and what does it do with oxygen? And that's where I'm settled in now, is really understanding the dynamics of oxygen in the human body. And there are only two metals that work with oxygen. They're called redox active metals, if you want to get really stuffy about it. But iron is a waiter, and it carries oxygen. That's where 80% of your iron is in hemoglobin and myoglobin, carrying oxygen for the mitochondria that I'm sure we're going to talk about. And so we, we've all been to restaurants, we know what waiters are. But every, every really good restaurant has what a chef. And what does the chef do? The chef activates food, so it can be an experience. That's why we go to the restaurant, not the waiter. They're nice and they talk to us, but we really want to know what's. What's the chef got up his sleeve today? And who's the chef in the mitochondria? Well, that's copper. Copper at Complex 4 is the make or break enzyme to turn oxygen to activate oxygen into two molecules of water. And when that happens, there's three precursor energy molecules called ADP that go over to complex 5, which is a rotor called ATP synthase for the gearheads in the audience. And that rotor is spinning at 9,000 rpm. And every time it goes around a cycle, it can complete. 3. Magnesium, hyphen, ATP, because that's how the body spells it. Always puts a magnesium in the front of it. And so every. Every second or so, every minute, we're making 27,000 ATP. Okay, that's. That's a lot. But let's put that into perspective. Every beat of our heart requires a Billion ATP. Wow. And so if we don't have enough bioavailable copper and we have too much iron, we don't make enough energy. And I think everyone in the audience can relate to feeling fatigued, relate to not feeling, you know, like they can get through the day. And what's really important.

I'll pause you there for a second. Are you able to repeat that previous phase? Because I think it's really important to get that crystallized in people's mind about the energy.

Yeah, no, every.

That statistic.

Every. Oh, every. Every beat of the heart requires a billion. With a b. A billion ATP. So there's some big numbers that we can get into in the course of this discussion.

And then magnesium. And then you mentioned something about magnesium and copper.

Yeah. With magnesium instrumental for complex 5 of the ATP electron transport chain. And copper rules complex four. And complex four is the. It's called the terminal destination. I'm not sure why they don't include Complex 5, but it's the terminal destination for the electrons that get attached to oxygen that then become water. Very important function in the body. And so people are always fascinated by mitochondrial dysfunction. Like it. Like it's coming from Mars. It's not coming from Mars. It's coming from iron. Toxic bodies. And most people, Most people think they are anemic. And what does the word anemia really mean? It means not in the blood. Iron is not in the blood. Okay, well, where is it? It's in the tissue. People don't. People think, oh, if it's not in the blood, it must be in the toilet? No, it doesn't work that way. And there's a very elaborate and very sophisticated iron recycling system in our body. So, Cribbin, you and I have bodies. Average male has about 5,000 milligrams of iron. Average woman would be about 4,000 milligrams. And that's supporting 25 trillion red blood cells in our bodies. And every 24 hours, the body loses about 1% of his red blood cells. So 250 billion red blood cells have to be replaced every 24 hours. Well, 24 milligrams. It only takes 25 milligrams to support that. Believe it or not, it's amazing. But 24 milligrams of that iron comes from the recycling system. Again, for the. For the elite, the academics in the audience called the reticulo endothelial system. It took me over a year to figure out that actually means recycling. Thank you very much. Why do they use these words? I mean, it's Just crazy. But the point is 24 milligrams every 24 hours is done internally. And we need one milligram of iron each day. Only one milligram. And the, the dietary standards are, oh, you need 18 milligrams a day or you need 26 milligrams. I had one client from Australia who was taking 350 milligrams a day at her doctor's direction. She was a hot mess. But, but the point is the body doesn't need a level of iron as long as there's bioavailable copper to allow the iron to get out of the recycling macrophages. And those are the PAC men who gobble up those dying red blood cells. One of the most important jobs in the body. And the dorman that releases that iron is called copper. It's the ferro oxidase enzyme function that's essential. And it allows the iron to hook onto what's called transferrin, which is a transport protein which takes it back to the bone marrow where the nurse cells inside the bone marrow hatch the next day's red blood cells. It's, it's absolutely amazing and it's elegant to really piece it together, but it's not taught in many places that I know of. And it becomes the linchpin of breakdown because so many people are told that they're anemic for all the wrong reasons. And there really are three ways to measure iron status in the body. Hemoglobin we've talked about is that's, that's iron carrying the oxygen and there are bazillions of hemoglobin in our body. I can't remember how big the number is, but it's enormous. And there's a second way to measure iron. It's called serum iron. And that's the iron that shows up as a result of this recycling program. And I'm going to use US units. I apologize. I should be able to convert it to international, but I don't always have command of that. But in US Units, the amount of serum iron for a woman should be a hundred. I think it's micrograms per deciliter. And for a guy, it should be 120 micrograms per deciliter. But think of that number as miles per gallon. And again, what conventional medicine nutritional loves to talk about are ranges like, oh, your body temperature should be between 92 and 108. No, it's got to be 98.6. Right, we know that. We absolutely know. There's one number that determines whether we're healthy or not, whether we have a good metabolism or not. Not this range that we could drive a Mack truck through sideways. Well, all the iron panels have these ranges that. That don't make any sense at all.

So I'm going to pause you there for a second, just so we take a bit of a breath and just summarize what we talked about, because we're going into some pretty heavy stuff. So in terms of my understanding of what you're saying, we've got too much iron going on in our bodies, which could be causing dysfunction, specifically. An example is in the mitochondria. Magnesium is absolutely fundamental, and it's depleted if we're too stressed. And copper is almost like this very important mineral that assists in the removal of iron from the body. Is that what. Roughly what you're trying to say? Or it's reducing the amount of iron in the body.

It's regulating. So a lot of people know that there are 94 minerals in the ocean, and then we know that there's 18 essential minerals. But within that 18, I've come to conclude that there's a hierarchy. And we've got to have clarity about the fact that the minerals that are working with oxygen are supremely important. So that's copper and iron. And magnesium has a relationship with oxygen, but not in a catalytic sense or not in a reactive sense. When magnesium is not present, the chance for oxidative stress rises. But copper and iron have a very supreme role around moving oxygen and activating oxygen. And copper is the only metal on the planet that can activate oxygen and turn it into water. Absolutely the only one. And it has special properties beyond that. A lot of people are familiar with antioxidants like vitamin A or vitamin C or vitamin E, things like that. Well, there are antioxidant enzymes that play a very instrumental role in maintaining a degree of regulation of the oxidative stress in the body. So we have reactive oxygen species. That's where the oxidative stress comes from. Oxygen is being turned into oxidants. So oxygen that has an accident is an oxidant. So we have reactive oxygen species and we have antioxidant enzymes. These are supremely important parts of our body, and they are powered by bioavailable copper. Ding, ding, ding. So copper is activating oxygen to make energy, and it's deactivating oxidants to lower exhaust. And what happens in the human body is if the reactive oxygen species start to build, we don't have a requisite rise in the enzymes. That's called oxidative stress. The production exceeds the elimination of oxidants. If that production rises even higher, it's called inflammation. Inflammation is stage two of oxidative stress. A lot of people don't know that. It's a significant amount of oxidative stress. And then there's stage three, that is called cell death. There's so much oxidative stress and there's so little antioxidant enzyme. Cell can't, can't make it. And so then the cell is taken offline either through apoptosis or necrosis or some other mechanism. But, but that hierarchy of oxidative stress was studied and very carefully delineated by two world renowned iron biologists in England, Gutteridge and Hallowell. And once you understand there's a hierarchy there, you begin to appreciate the importance of these enzymes. And you've got to be able to make more and more of these enzymes. Well, the only way to do that is to have more and more bioavailable copper.

So just to clarify my understanding, so reactive oxygen species, they play some form of function in the body, but then you've got these enzymes that are almost balancing out all these antioxidant enzymes that are balancing it out at a healthy level.

Exactly. There's always going to be. So the mitochondria are the source of 90% of the energy and 90% of the exhaust. They produce an enormous amount of oxidative of oxidants in a healthy cell with healthy mitochondria, there could be a couple hundred in a cell. In the heart cells you might have a couple thousand. But they're able to keep things in balance as long as the minerals are being sustained. That's the key. The minute you get under stress, and we all know that sensation of stress, when our stomach knots up, that's when we start to lose minerals at a very significant rate. And maybe this is maybe a heretical thing for me to say on this show, but you're talking to a guy who does not believe in medical disease. It doesn't exist. There is stress induced mineral dysregulation that creates metabolic dysfunction. And what do we do that? Metabolic dysfunction becomes symptoms. Headache, stomach ache, you know, my joint doesn't work right, whatever, my eye isn't focusing right. We take that bag full of symptoms into the doctor's office and we dump it on their desk. And what does the doctor do? They look it up in the Merck manual. Oh, you got this and this symptom and say, oh, well, you have XYZ syndrome. And because we're human, we're very gullible and we believe that there is no, there is no disease. Once you understand redox chemistry and the function of copper and iron to manage oxygen, that accidents do happen. There is no disease, but there is metabolic dysfunction. That's a function of the stress of our lives. And it's absolutely amazing.

I have a burnt. It is amazing. I have a burning question. Why do you think it might just be a theory as well? So why do you think that the body consumes so much magnesium when it's stressed?

There's a whole series of enzymes called kinase enzymes and they are reacting to oxidative stress and they're poised with phosphate groups. And when that phosphate group gets activated by some stressor, it could be heat stress, oxidative stress, some other, maybe heavy metal stress. The kinase enzyme changes its structure and magnesium is lost in that transaction and phosphate is given off as a source of energy to respond to that stress.

And it could be purely, just speculative. But do you think if we're pushing the body into almost a parasympathetic state, kind of fight or flight, the body's almost prepping for this big burst of energy or something like that?

Oh, yeah. And again, so there's, we have a central nervous system and then we have an autonomic nervous system, or some people like to call it the automatic. And that that autonomic system is ruled by the electrolytes. And so we have a, we have a sympathetic on and a parasympathetic relaxed. And we as a species, we're designed to be 90% parasympathetic. Well, that's not modern society. Modern society has flipped that. So now we're 90% sympathetic. And how do you turn on the sympathetic nervous system? You got to have calcium. Calcium will turn it on faster than anything else. How do you turn it off? Magnesium. How do you turn on the parasympathetic nervous system? Potassium will turn it on. And what will stop potassium in its tracks? Sodium. So what kind of a diet do most people eat in the world? A very calcium rich with lots of salt. And they never think about it. And so they've got this always on sympathetic system where the parasympathetic is blocked. And where do a lot of people get their meals? Fast food drive through. Our ancestors would be shocked to see how we eat today, that we don't take the time to relax, have, have communion, have conversation, allow the food to digest well, that we don't have time for that you know, I've got. I've got clients that take pride in the fact that they, on the way to work, they're putting on their makeup, listening to the news, checking emails, and talking to someone at the same time. And they think that, they think that's normal. Well, that's, that's activating the sympathetic nervous system, which is causing massive loss of magnesium.

My apologies. I think I might have confused the two. So the sympathetic one is the overly stressed one, and then the parasympathetic is more relaxed.

Exactly. That's exactly right.

So what you're saying is because you've got a lot of these minerals like sodium, calcium almost regulating these responses or involved in these responses that were pushing it almost chemically to one direction versus the other.

Absolutely. And the reason why magnesium is so important is that it has a relationship with the other three electrolytes. There are three hormones that regulate calcium levels. There's calcitonin coming out of the thyroid, there's parathyroid hormone coming out of the parathyroid, and then there's hormone D, which we're being trained is just a vitamin, when in fact it's not. It's the oldest hormone on the planet and it's the most powerful hormone in our body. But all three of those, they're called calcitropic hormones. They regulate calcium levels, respond to magnesium status. And if magnesium is not right, the management of calcium is not right. And what people need to know is that if their calcium level in their blood work shows either high or low, it's a sign of not enough magnesium in the body. That's an established physiological fact. And magnesium has sway over sodium and it influences the level of potassium in the body. So it has a magical position as it relates to managing the autonomic nervous system. And that's why it's so critical for managing stress in general.

So in layman's terms, firstly, we've got to have, for optimal health, have some form of stress management practice, so we're not depleting magnesium from the body. And then the second part of that story is having enough magnesium through the diet or something like that, or to.

Even supplement with it to make sure that you're getting enough. The best definition of stress that I've ever heard is by a physician here in the States. Many of your listeners probably know Mark Hyman, written many books, and he has a wonderful definition of stress, which is stress is the body's inability to make energy for the mind to perceive its environment or to respond to its environment. It's a really powerful. It connects the body and mind, connects energy, energy. And so if we, if we aren't able to make energy, we get stressed out. And if there's too much iron in our mitochondria, we can't make energy. And the impact can be 20% loss of energy, 40%, 60%, 96% loss of energy. I've seen five different studies, five different levels of impact, and what people need to understand is that there's a German iron researcher, his name is escaping me right now. I think it was Schultz, but I'd have to verify that. But in 2001, he wrote a very important paper where he made it very clear that the iron that's being added to the food system that started back in the Second World War in England and Canada, U.S. but in 1941, they started adding iron filings. Not organic iron, iron filings. But that iron immediately goes to the mitochondria. Most people don't know that. And what's, what's important to understand about the mitochondria is, is it's the terminal destination for oxygen and iron. And if the mitochondria can't manage that oxygen and can't manage that iron. That's the very origin of metabolic dysfunction, because energy production goes down. And when that happens, think of it as a bell shaped curve. When the PH of the cell is at 7, you have optimal energy production. Things are humming, everything's great, PH is seven. We're right where we need to be. Everything's good. But if you come off of that optimal, on either side of acid or base, the energy production goes down, the frequency of the cell goes down. And when the frequency of the cell goes down, there goes the electric fence keeping the pathogens out. As soon as that frequency of the cell changes, that's when the pathogens wake up. And that's the work of Jerry Tennant, who's a physician here in the US he's over in Dallas, Texas, and his book is called Healing is Voltage. It's a really powerful paradigm, but that's the, that's the essence of it, is if we can't make optimal energy, we can't have optimal health. And it requires minerals to make that happen.

What do you mean when you say frequency, Molly?

Well, again, we are, we are, you know, energy and light beings. And whenever you're producing energy, there's going to be a vibration to that energy. There's going to be a, if you will, a hum. We can't hear it, we can't feel it, but the energy workers around the world know exactly what we're talking about right now. And if that, if there's just a minor change in that vibration in our tissue, pathogens wake up, they're like, oh, it's again, equipment, it's tied to the pH. Think of, think we know that PH stands for potential for hydrogen. It's really the potential for energy, it's really what it stands for. But think of spelling frequency instead of starting with the first letter F, make it a ph, P, H, R, E, Q, U, E, N, C, Y. And that's a different way of thinking about physical. There's a different vibration at the pH of 1 than there is at the pH of 14. Another way to look at it.

Okay, so we've unpacked iron. So iron is coming from food, people adding iron to the food. So we've got too much iron. So just to recap, what is too much iron doing?

Too much iron will get stuck in the recycling macrophages. So give people a sense of where they are. 80% of the macrophages are in our liver and there are macrophages all over our body. They start out in circulation and they're called monocytes. And then they take up residence in, in tissue and they're called macrophages. And they are incredibly intelligent beings. They have incredible awareness of their environment. They're the first responders to infection, they respond to inflammation. They're in a position where they can go from what's called M1 function, which is an inflammatory response or response to infection to try to kill the pathogen. And they can flip to what's called M2 response, which is wound repair. Well, when you understand the chemistry of responding to a pathogen, which is completely different than the chemistry of wound repair, and only an intelligent tissue, and only intelligent cells can manage that. And they are very dependent on copper for their work. And they're working with iron especially the recycling macrophages are working with iron all the time. So when it gets stuck, when iron gets stuck, it creates oxidative stress. A mitochondria. When we're in complex four of the mitochondria, we're turning oxygen into water. What's a two step engine? The first step turns oxygen into hydrogen peroxide. So we're going from O2 to H2O2 and then there's a second step to complete the cycle and turn H2O2 into two molecules of water. So we basically have two H2O, so we have four hydrogen and two oxygen. If that mitochondria can't complete the cycle, it's going to put out too much hydrogen peroxide. And that's called inflammation. Hydrogen peroxide is synonymous with inflammation. It's also synonymous with hypoxia. People have heard that term. And hypoxia does not mean absence of oxygen. It means lack of availability of molecular oxygen. And if that molecular oxygen keeps being turned into hydrogen peroxide because the cycle is stuck, that's called inflammation. And people don't know the chemistry of it, but it's very, very significant. And what's a great way to create hydrogen peroxide? Ascorbic acid, vitamin D supplements, sugar. These are the things that are so, so very destructive in our, in our daily diet.

And I'll side note there, I mean, those are really common food additives, isn't it? Or supplements. And the other interesting thing, Morley, is that hydrogen peroxide is one of the most common antibiotic agents used in the food industry. So imagine if the body's under inflammation, producing all this hydrogen peroxide, that is killing, killing microbes potentially in the gut as well.

Absolutely. No question about it. That's true.

That could be. I also hypothesized this a while ago, but hydrogen peroxide is very common when you have things like allergies as well. They've detected elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide, which leads me to believe that maybe this could be a mechanism for dysbiosis in the gut as well. If your body's spitting out these antimicrobial agents and this is. It's going to knock out a lot of bacteria in the gut.

So let me take a quick sidestep to explain what I think will come back to support what you're saying. Yeah, so we, we live on a planet that's been around, some would argue, for billions of years. The. And let's just accept that premise for now. So the Earth supposedly started about four and a half billion years ago. It's a long time. I have no idea how they clock this. At some point you just have to accept. But the Earth had no oxygen when it started. And for several billion years, there was no oxygen. And then mysteriously, phytoplankton in the ocean started splitting water and created oxygen. And it's called the Great Oxygen event. And when that happened, when that. When the level of oxygen builds up on the planet to such a degree 2.45 billion years ago. Again, why did they put this decimal point in. But they did. So it's, it's called the Great Oxygen event. When that happened, 99% of life disappeared because it was anaerobic. It was living on iron. Iron was the source of electrons in an anaerobic environment. So when that did happen, three things emerged simultaneously on the planet copper, because you got to work with this oxygen thing. Secondly, a very important enzyme family called multi copper oxidases. And these are the class of enzymes that turn oxygen into water. And so that complex 4 in our mitochondria is part of that class of enzymes. Very important. And the third thing that emerged, something called cholesterol, goes all the way back to the beginning of time.

Wow.

It takes 11 molecules of oxygen. 11 molecules of oxygen to make one molecule of cholesterol. So what is cholesterol? It's an oxygen sink in a body that can't metabolize oxygen. Mother Nature is pretty smart. Now, why did I bring that up? Because in our gut, to your point, Cribbon, are over a thousand different bacteria that express multi copper oxidases that turn oxygen into water and allow our gut flora to work properly. And that's a really important part of our digestive system that nobody talks about. All these bacteria that express this critical enzyme to give us energy or to enable energy to be produced. So it's just, it's fascinating and I'm excited that you're very mindful of that as part of your work that you do and the discussions you have with people around the world.

Totally. And if you look at the. I'm not sure you've ever come across the work of Jesus Jim Khalil on the quantum biology side of things. But according to their work, the things that they talk about is enzymes almost being the precursors of life. So that's in total agreement to what you're talking about. About almost like this evolutionary pathway of how multicellular organisms formed. So, yeah, it's really interesting stuff, what you're saying.

There's two ways. There's two ways to describe the dynamic between minerals and enzymes. Minerals allow enzymes to work. And there's a whole group of people who feel that enzymes enable minerals to work. And what. And again, you're getting into quantum physics. Well, most, most medicine and most nature, nutrition is at a Newtonian level, big particles, you know, we can touch it, we can feel it, blah, blah, blah. When in fact, what runs the human body is quantum mechanics, quantum energy, and that's the energy of minerals. Only minerals can bring that kind of electron movement. And that's completely lost on a lot of conventional practitioners.

Totally. I think over the coming decades we'll see a shift of that because there is A groundswell work happening in the quantum biology space, which will lead to quantum doctors and quantum medicine. I'm sure people listening back five years later will probably think, well, these guys are crazy. But I think it's all coming. It's all definitely coming. Because the laws of physics also apply in biology. And people separate chemistry, biology, physics, but those are the fundamental laws of nature. You can't have one without the other. So the quantum realm, the very small particles, have a huge part to play. Yeah.

And what I really try to do in my work and the teachings that I do and what I write about, I really emphasize. You asked the question, who is morally. What Morley's trying to do is bring people back to the very essence of what is it like to have life on this planet? And if we can't properly manage oxygen, we got a problem. And so we've got to be able to activate it or deactivate it. And what happens to your point about hydrogen peroxide? It's. It's a very long live lasting oxidant. It can go anywhere in the body it wants to go. It can go across every membrane that's possible. But when hydrogen peroxide mixes with iron, we have an explosion. It's called the Fenton reaction. And then what gets created is called the hydroxyl radical. It's a. An OH group. It's really grumpy. And it's the most destructive biomolecule on the planet. Wow. And it only happens when you've got hydrogen peroxide and iron playing not so nicely together. And it's very common in the body because it causes. It causes dings to DNA, it causes proteins to be changed and it causes something called the carbonylation. It's like, what the heck is that? It's just. It's a defective function in the cell is what it is. And the carbons are. Are being altered because of the presence of the hydroxyl radical.

Sure. Look, Molly, time is flown by so fast. It was such a fascinating conversation. If you wouldn't mind, I've got a couple more questions. I know your time is precious.

No, no. Happy to do it.

I think we need to cover off copper in more depth. I think people now get the importance of iron and having too much iron in the body and what it's doing now. What's the copper story? Why don't we have enough copper to keep iron in check, to regulate it?

That's a great question, especially for Aussies. You guys should be freaked out about how little copper you have in your soil when I really got into this, I was thinking, okay, so people down under, the minerals should be falling down, right? And they should collect in the Australian continent. But they don't seem to do that. Although our favorite form of minerals is from Aussie. It's from Australia. They're called Aussie Minerals, bottled over in Perth. But what's happened is farming practices have gotten in the way. People are familiar with npk. It blocks copper absorption. Then we've got the introduction of, I guess I would call it modern warfare farming with the introduction of Roundup and GMO products. Well, one of the things that I learned from Stephanie Seneff, scientists that many of your listeners probably are familiar with. I was at a meeting in Chicago, April, a year ago, and we were at a breakfast table and she said, morley, would you like to know why Roundup is so dangerous for copper? And I went, yes. Well, it turns out that Roundup will chelate copper down to a pH of 1. Their stomach acid is 2. So what does that mean? It means that Roundup can take copper out of any living organism without any resistance. So it's, it's taking the copper out of the soil, out of the plants, out of the animals, and out of the humans eating the plants and the animals. So it's becoming, becoming a very serious threat to our survival and our copper status. There are. There was a team of Swedish physiologists, Holmberg and Laurel, who just discovered this ceruloplasmin protein in 1948 was the first article they wrote about it. And in that article in the second paragraph, they talk about how ascorbic acid is very destructive to this copper protein. Now, the difficulty that we're going to have in this conversation as we go forward is most people have never heard of the protein. And they're like, yeah, how serious can it be? How important could it be? And it's a really serious part of our anatomy. It's the biggest protein in the human body. It has eight kappa atoms inside it. There's no other protein like that. And I'm at the point of. I've reached 25 different forms, functions that this protein can express. So one gene produces one protein, but it can do 25 different things in the body, most of them directed at stopping iron induced oxidative stress. And so ascorbic acid is a major destroyer. Ceruloplasm, well, so is sugar, so is insulin, so are antibiotics, so are birth control pills. There's a whole series of medications now that I think maybe inadvertently, but they have the ability to destroy this protein. And then we've got copper coming out of that protein. And to an untrained practitioner, they call it unbound copper. And it's toxic. It's not toxic, it's just unbound. And it can be rebound. And so there's. The social meme on this planet now is that we are anemic and we are copper toxic. And so there's a whole class of actions that practitioners recommend. Coffee enemas, you know, take molybdenum, you know, take as much ascorbic acid as you can, because ascorbic acid will block the absorption of copper. And there's, there's, that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are many different strategies that are used to try to get rid of this unbound copper. And it's incredibly destructive to our metabolism because then we're faced with oxygen that can't be activated or oxidants that can't be deactivated. I'm like, this is not taught in practitioner school. I mean, in your training, Cribbin, how many times did they use the word ceruloplasm in class?

Not once.

Yeah. And so again, people say, well, who's this bloke from the States? What is he talking about? And I mean, how can I, how can I trust him? Well, go, go on. Magnesium advocacy Facebook group. Go to the rcp123.org website and knock your socks off. We've got 82 articles about it. I've got over 100 videos talking about this. And it's just, you know, it's amazing that this isn't the cornerstone of practitioner training, but it's not. And then we know why it's not. Because there's no money in a cure. That's really what ceruples. It's, it's the solution to what ails us. And so copper has been demonized. Copper has been processed out of foods. Like, why do you think they have refined wheat? Gets rid of the minerals, gets rid of the vitamin E that's so important. Gets rid of a lot of things. So then we have people probably know about high fructose corn syrup. I don't think you use it down under as much as we do here in the States.

Not as much.

But what high fructose corn sirup does is it blocks a key import protein in our gut, going back to gut dysbiosis, and it's called CTR1 copper transporter 1. And high fructose corn syrup shuts it down. So copper can't get in the body with copper. Can't get in the body, they can't get in the gut. You're going to have gut issues because what, what keeps. If these are the enterocytes of the gut, what keeps them stuck together? It's called energy. What enables them to have energy? Copper. Thank you very much. And it's just. It's amazing that this lowly little mineral we were talking about 5,000 milligrams of iron. Well, all we need to have a healthy body is 90 milligrams of copper. So that's a 60 to 1 ratio. Think about that. So for every copper atom, there's 60 atoms of iron that need to be regulated. That's how powerful and how intelligent copper is. And by working through that protein, ceruloplasmin, that has eight coppers inside it, it's keeping track of about 500 atoms of iron. That's something to be very grateful for, that we have that capacity in our body.

I've got to unpack one thing, one burning question because. And before we move on to how to get more copper in the diet, which I think is fundamental. Now, ascorbic acid is a really interesting one because people often get confused with vitamin C and ascorbic acid. Now, ascorbic acid is one of the most commonly used food additives on the planet. Planet. Like if you look at tomato paste or tomato sauce or anything that needs an antioxidant to give something more vibrancy in its color, commonly they'll be using ascorbic acid. It's confusing because then people say, oh, we need more vitamin C to boost our immune system. Vitamin C is good for mitochondrial function, so it's really confusing. So how do we differentiate between real vitamin C and the scorbic acid? Or are they both bad in terms of that copper iron story?

So the origin of the confusion goes back to the 1930s. Albert Sven Gorgi.

Yes.

Got the Nobel Prize in 37 for that work. He was actually studying hyaluronic acid, which is involved in wound repair. And then he started studying hexuronic acid. They sound the same, don't they? Hyaluronic, hexuronic. And lo and behold, he gets the Nobel Prize for hexyaronic acid, which is another way of saying ascorbic acid. But his real passion was hyaluronic acid. So we've got ascorbic acid and. And then what's called the whole food vitamin C complex. So let's look at it in terms of a car. So the whole C complex is like your car that has an engine and a steering wheel and four wheels and then a shell covering it, that's the vitamin C complex. Ascorbic acid is the shell of a car and no moving parts. And if people knew that one company, hoffman LaRoche, makes 90% of the ascorbic acid from GMO corn and sulfuric acid. You may not be so excited to use ascorbic acid, especially when you begin to understand more about ceruloplasmin and cribbon. You're absolutely right. It's, it's ubiquitous in the food industry. Do you think that's an accident? I don't know. Let's, let's just say it was an accident. It's a very destructive accident and it has a devastating effect on the structure of this protein. And when it gets tweaked, when the ceruloplasm gets tweaked, coppers leak out. Then we have unbound copper that we can attack. And that's where a lot of the confusion is. So people need to know that there are sources of this vitamin C complex. We, the, the folks at Ancient Minerals has a, they have a wonderful form made from. Is it Kaduka plums?

Oh, kakadu.

Kakadu.

I gotcha. Yep. Something like kakadu. Kakadu plum or garbinji I think is the aboriginal word. And also camu. Camu is amazing for bioavailable natural vitamin C from a plant.

So people need to stay away from ascorbic acid and ascorbate because they're derivatives of each other. And so it's very important that that engine inside the vitamin C complex, an enzyme and it's called tyrosinase. And tyrosinase is a three sided pyramid with copper at all four points. And that vitamin C complex is delivering copper to the body. It's very, very important function that vitamin C in its natural state, in its intended state provides to our tissue.

Wow, that's incredible. So hopefully people get it now. Certainly I'm one of these people who are very unaware of this information. I'll be making some changes in my own regime and certainly going back to using food sources of vitamin C like camu, camu or kakadu plum.

I find in these conversations, cribbin, it takes three or four conversations to, to really, as you say, unpack it. And so I know what's going to happen. Your listeners are going to go wild with questions and so happy to come back when it's convenient for you just to make sure people fully understand this Dynamic, because this is a parallel universe of natural healing that is in conflict with what people think is conventional healing, which doesn't. It isn't based on what. The dynamics that we're talking about.

Totally. And I really wanted to get into root cause protocol, but we've totally run out of time. So if you wouldn't mind coming back for around two, just go through root cause protocol in depth. It's an amazing system that you've developed to address a lot of these issues that we're talking about with excess iron and getting more copper into the diet and various other strategies that you have. But, Molly, how about we wrap up there? We'll start to wrap now. Firstly, I want to give you the opportunity to. I'm sure there's going to be so many people that want to connect with you after this conversation and ask you more questions. So, firstly, how do people actually find you?

I have a Facebook group called the Magnesium Advocacy Group. There IS website, it's rcp123.org and you can go to that website and you can download the protocol. You just have to provide your email address and then you'll get access to the protocol then. What usually freaks out hosts of these programs is when I give my email address, it's my first and last name, morleyrobbinsmail.com and then just to give you a heart attack, Cribbin, I give out my phone number.

Oh, my God.

It's area code 847-922-8061. For the folks down under, you have to put a 01 in front of that. And I get calls from Australia all the time, so I'm not troubled by that. I figure the people who really need to get a hold of me will be very judicious about reaching out and I'm very happy to take the time to talk with them and answer their questions. So, again, I'm a man on a mission. I have absolute conviction that this is a very powerful and very fundamental way of bringing the body back into balance based on the principles of Mother Nature, as people like to say. Morley's the man behind the root cause protocol. And I say, well, actually, Mother Nature is the woman behind the root cause protocol. I stole it from her. It's just I dusted it off with some research and it's amazing how effective it can be in helping people regain and rebalance their bodies.

And totally, if there's one thing, Morli, if someone can do to improve their gut health, because it is the Gut Health Gurus podcast and just your top recommendation to improve gut health, what would it be?

I think that the. Where a lot of people get into trouble is this diet versus that diet. I think what's important is an ancestral diet. Go back to the basics. And I think a lot of people who have gut issues, and I mean, I say this with the greatest respect with your followers, but anyone I've ever worked with who has gut issues also has an unresolved emotional issue that they haven't dealt with, and there's something that they can't stomach. And what I've learned over the last decade is that every physical dynamic in our body starts with some unresolved emotional issue. So I would encourage people to go back to the basics in your diet. Eat real food, Eat food that your ancestors would recognize. Eat food in season, but deal with your issues that are the origin of the dysregulation in your gut. And I'm very well versed in gene issues, very well versed in metabolic issues. But at the very base of it is some unresolved emotional issue that really needs to be attended to. And I'm a big fan of emotional freedom technique. There's Bowen technique, there's motion code. But these are proven modalities to help people bring that dynamic under control so they can resolve the physical issues as well.

Totally, Molly. 100% agree. For me, in my own journey with gut dysfunction and depression anxiety, which I struggled with for practically my whole life, the key thing was exactly what you're talking about. And my journey was actually taking up an acting technique called the Meisner technique, which is almost a form of cognitive behavior therapy. So 100% agree.

Yeah.

So we definitely resonate with what you're saying, Molly.

That's great. That's beautiful. And so people need to know that if they have anxiety, if they have gut dysbiosis, they got too much iron in their system. It's an absolute lock. And that means there's not enough copper to regulate the iron that's creating the oxidative stress that's causing the gut dysbiosis. So we can talk about that maybe the next time we get together.

Absolutely. Morley Robbins, thank you so much for being so generous with your time.

Absolutely.

Huge appreciation. You have yourself a great day.

And you as well. Enjoy, as I like to say, enjoy your tomorrow. Okay? Take care.

Take care. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast with the amazing Molly Robbins. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share far and wide with your friends and family members and leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts Guys, we have a vibrant social media community on Instagram. On Facebook we have an amazing Facebook group with more than 14,000 members who share amazing recipes, advice on gut health and so much more. So please come and join our community and our social media uthealthgurus for the most amazing gut health supplements, prebiotics, probiotics, fermented foods kits. Do head to www.nourishmeorganics.com au and use the code root cause for 10% off until next.