The Iron Overload Epidemic: Why Copper Is the Missing Key to Your Health – with Morley Robbins

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa Podcast, where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers, and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission, and wisdom with you. Together, we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. Well, hello, everyone. I am so honored to be here with my dear friend, Morley Robbins. You've been on the podcast a few times. It's been a while. It's been probably a year.

Yeah. And it has been. Yeah.

And I know you. Morley's actually stayed at my house before. And when he says he does research every day, he's not kidding. Three hours every morning. I've seen it with my own eyes. Where he will find either some new piece of research or something that continues to enhance how he views the world of minerals, especially around copper and iron dysregulation. So I am excited to dig in and to learn what the heck you've uncovered over the last year, because every time I see you, you're like, oh, my gosh, I've got to tell you about this. So tell us, like what. What the heck's been going on over the last year and what. What new pieces of information discovered just.

Over the last year? Okay, that's no problem.

Yeah. You know, it's like, wow.

No. What. What things stand out?

Well, first of all, happy Thanksgiving.

You too.

Very grateful to have you in my life. And vice versa.

No, you know, I think what's really.

Coming increasingly coming to light is just how simple this whole issue is. And it's very unsettling for people to hear that because it seems daunting and overwhelming.

And again, I think there's this tug of war in the world of healing that there's two schools of thought. There are thousands of reasons why we get sick, and then there's one reason we get sick. And it seems to be more comforting for people to believe that there's thousands of reasons.

As opposed to what?

Again, I think within the. The root cause protocol, we feel pretty strongly that there's this three ring circus between copper and iron and oxygen, and it's this constant interplay between those three elements that set the stage for all sorts of symptoms, which get labels, you know, go to the merck manual. There's 20,000 labels in there. And because we're human, we're very gullible, and we believe that there's 20,000 reasons why we get sick, when in fact it's all one mechanism, lack of energy. You know it as well as I do. You see it in Your practice, you see it in your business and it's very disorienting to think that's it, that's, that's the, you know, what's it all about, Alfie? And it takes place in all over the body and that, that creates the illusion that it's, oh, it's some other mechanism, but it's, you know, it isn't just that pathogens are in play, it isn't just that heavy metals are in play. It isn't just the toxins, endotoxins.

It isn't just EMFs. It's like what are they doing? What is that sea of external influence doing to destabilize the Three Ring Circus? It's, it's always going to come back to that, that dynamic and I think what to, to really begin to pick at your question. What, what have I learned over the last year? This journey started 16 years ago with magnesium. You know, that's where I got the, the, the nickname, the magnesium man. And then I started to look into.

Well, well, why is magnesium always being lost?

What's the magnesium burn rate all about? And it's this torturous dynamic between iron and oxygen and, and the oxidative stress, the, the rusting of tissue and, and it affects magnesium because there's a lot of enzymes, they're called kinase enzymes that hold magnesium structurally. And when you're under stress, the body needs to find energy so it cleaves off a phosphate. And when that happens, magnesium goes right into the urine. It's like that's the mechanism of the magnesium burn rate.

Well then it's like, well why, why.

Do we have this problem with iron and oxygen? And then of course I stumble upon this element called copper.

And when did you discover copper? So you started this journey 16 years ago. How, how long into the magnesium unraveling did you discover copper was at play here?

Probably about a decade ago. Yeah. Okay, about 20, 2015. And, and I think, I think we've long known that iron is a problem. I think what you know, when you're.

Asking about, and yet it's still being added to our food, being added to.

Our food, being added to our supplements and we have this mind numbing programming. You're anemic and you're copper toxic, constantly playing in our psyche and we, and it's very hard to turn that messaging off. But I think that you're asking what, what did I learn in this last year?

It's kind of a, a wholesale reinforcement.

Of what we understand about, about the Three Ring Circus. But what really has come to light is that it isn't just adding copper or other minerals like magnesium into our diet. It's we've got to deal with the iron footprint in our body. And to reinforce that message again, if you want to know how much iron you have, simply multiply your age times 365. You're going to get a five digit figure. That's how many thousands of milligrams of iron in your body. And guys are designed for 5,000 milligrams and women are designed for 4,000 milligrams. So you have a multiple probably four times five times, maybe six times more iron in your body than you realize. And we just kind of take that for granted. We don't think about that. And that formula is not my formula. That's the formula used by iron biologists all over the world. Douglas Kell, Robert Crichton, Gutteridge and Hallowell.

I mean these are, these are the.

Big names and iron biology and.

What.

What came to light.

It's, and it's absolutely fascinating how I.

Stumbled upon this research, but it's by a, a Greek engineer and his name was Constantine Adras, a D, R A K, T A S and he was born in 1940 in Athens, Greece. He was a bit of a smarty pants, came to, to the U.S. and got his bachelor's and master's in engineering at MIT. Okay, so he's smart guy, went back to Greece and he's the guy who invented the first electric automobile. He was the, the Tesla of his day. It was very successful.

But when he was about my age.

He developed a condition called myelodysplasia syndrome, MDS and it's a, it's a progressive condition of iron accumulation affecting the bone marrow which then results in defective red blood cell formation. And it's a, it's an insidious condition that is often treated by.

Blood transfusions and, or iron transfusions because the iron is just not showing up in the blood. Because, because of a defective process of iron recycling.

And.

Constantine adoptes, went to, found a hematologist in Greece that was willing to do the absolute opposite of that. And he used iron chelating drugs, desfroxamine in particular. And because he was a meticulously trained engineer, he recorded the, the level of iron in his tissue that was coming down over months and months of iron chelation. But he was also keeping track of his copper and his ceruloplasmin.

He knew about copper and ceruloplasm.

This is, these Articles appeared in the. The 2012, 2015 time frame, okay. And they show up on a website called academia.academia.org I think it is. And just like out of the blue, and this goes back about six months now, out of the blue, this first article by Constantine Ada shows up, and he presents this amazing chart documenting iron status, documenting copper and ceruloplasm status.

But what he.

What he discovered is after about four or five months of iron chelation, getting rid of this excess iron that was in his tissue, suddenly his copper and.

Ceruloplasm popped up to physiological levels. And it was like this, like taking a cold shower.

It's like, oh, my gosh. Some scientists talk about the. The impact. Like Jamie Collins is very adept at talking about the suppressive effect of too much iron in the tissue on copper metabolism. But he was a very accomplished engineer documenting it. And what he also discovered is that the. The world of hematology, that's the world of, of physicians who study blood, that they have this bias against copper, that they won't. They won't talk about copper, that everything is an iron.

Why is that? Why is that? Is it just muscle memory? Is it. You know, because usually people are fairly interested in learning and evolving their theories, right?

And again, I look back at the. The individual who wrote the first textbook on hematology. His name was Max Weintraub, who's originally from Canada, came to the States, ends up at Hopkins. He's got an MD, PhD, ends up at Hopkins in 1942. He writes the first textbook on hematology.

And he's a copper guy.

And he, he relocates to the University of Utah, and he inspired about 30 years of research in copper status in human physiology. And most of it's been swept under the rug.

So I, I had occasion to go.

To Salt Lake City more recently. I was speaking at the Weston A. Price meeting in October, and I went. I decided to go to the Marriott Library to look up his 142 boxes of research.

I got through three boxes.

Pretty, pretty humbling. I mean, the guy was just.

He was brilliant.

But. But the important point is that in the early days, I think people recognized that copper was the general.

And.

And it was Weintraub who really emphasized that. That aspect. But it has been very progressively kind of erased from the, the physiology. And now we've, you know, we've got this Constantine hocus blowing the whistle. Back in 2015, hematologists refused to talk about copper. And he was very frustrated by it. And he lived for about seven or eight years after this breakthrough procedure and then he, he passes away in 2020. And I would guess it was because of COVID That would be my theory. There's no documentation of that. But I think what it.

What his insights did was really galvanize this issue, that.

There is, there is a three ring circus. I'm absolutely certain of that. But we've got to deal, it's almost like we have to deal with a simultaneous equation. We've got to lower this iron footprint at the same time we increase the copper footprint.

And I think I have a question for you after you finish this. Yeah, I think it's an important one.

Yeah, no, it's just that I think.

It'S, you know, there's a big joke about Congress. Congress can only pass one bill at a time. They can't multitask. And I think that's the dilemma of humanity, is we're so stressed out now we can deal with one issue. Don't give me two issues.

And that's really what I'm, I'm coming to realize is that it is a simultaneous equation.

We've got to embrace the stark reality that we have too much iron because of the environment that we live in, the food environment, the supplementation environment, the medication environment. And we've, we've got to lower that iron footprint and we've got to raise the copper footprint.

That's really what I think has been.

The biggest insight over the last six to seven months of this year.

So where does it start and how young? Right. So you know, you just made the comment, which I see in my practice all the time, that this constant fight orf flight, I mean, we are truly living in fight orf flight as a humanity, as a species. You know, we get up, we're on the go, we're, we're running. We're not sitting down to have family meals the way we used to. We're out the door, go to school, go to practice, come home, rush to eat, you know, get the homework done, get in bed. Right. So it's starting younger and younger, this constant pressure that's on the system. So when does that switch happen in the human. Right. I'm, my, my sense is intuitively that it used to happen much older, but now that the environment we're living in, the stress, stressful conditions, the food, the air, the water, everything, we're getting hit, you know, from a thousand different areas. When does somebody realistically need to start paying attention to this? And what age does that like flip where it becomes, starts to become a problem?

No, I just.

It is a great question. I want to just make a quick observation. I'm enjoying the bridge on your poster that's connecting your mind to my mind right now. It's no. No surprise there, but I think it's a very symbolic indication of we are connected. I also want to say, just for the record, that this was not a setup.

Question.

Jen does not know the article I read yesterday. That's exactly what she's talking about. Happen to have it right here.

And you probably can't read it because.

No, it's really blurry.

I'm so sorry.

Because of your blurry background, I think.

Yeah, blame my background.

I'm blaming your background.

Yeah, it's from 2009 and it's by Dornellis. D O R N E L L E S is the lead author and Schroeder, S C H R O D E R is the last author.

Notice all these wizards have the strangest names.

I know, right?

Yeah. The article about.

There you go.

The article is about MRNA messenger.

There must be something on your cord because it comes in, then it goes out. You were saying the messenger rna.

But it.

Sounds like you're in a tin box. See, still trying to be contained.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, you can hear me now?

Now I can hear you now.

You can hear.

Yeah, It's. It's okay. Not. Not great, but.

That'S better. Whatever. You know, taking the headphones off is helping.

All right.

So this is a wonderful.

Article about messenger RNA expression of proteins involved in iron homeostasis. That's very fancy terminology for how does the body regulate and manage the iron?

And they're looking at.

They were looking at three different brain regions in little neonatal. Neonatal rodents, rats and mice.

And they were looking for.

When does iron loading become a problem to cause neurodegeneration?

You have to understand is that the.

Lifespan of a human is 25 times that of a rodent. So where they might have a lifespan of three years, we typically have a lifespan of about 75 years. Okay, so it's about 25 times longer.

And what's really, really, really unsettling is.

That what they identified in this study is a three day window in these neonatal pups from day 15 to day 17.

That if.

If there's an infusion of iron in that three day window.

The adult.

Okay, I just lost you again. The adult rodents, something.

The adult rodent will develop neurodegeneration.

Okay, so the adult rodent. There you go.

As a Result of the iron infusion at day 15.

And.

Why is this important?

Because there's 03.

Yeah. So, so what they discovered is that if they infused iron, iron supplements and it's not a lot of iron, but in that 15 at day 15 there's three brain regions that get altered and it's like, like, it's like putting a.

Grid of sand in a oyster and.

And it takes years for the pearl of, of neurodegeneration to form. And so day 15 is very early in the neonates life. So multiply that times 25. And that's what we're up against in humans. So when the infant is getting iron fortified milk in their formula, I mean the thing is in, in natural breast milk, it's 0.3 grams per deciliter of iron in mother's milk, mother's breast milk in infant formula, there's 40 times more iron in the, the bottle fed formula. That's a lot of iron, right? Yeah. And so.

Exposing an infant to that level of iron after birth is going to affect them 70 years later, 60 years later, maybe 50 years later. And that's a, that's a very unsettling idea that.

Because of the conditioning, because of the programming that we're anemic. The, the, the sea of humanity is convinced they need more iron. And if they don't get that iron from their, their practitioner, they'll just self medicate. They've been taught in a very insidious way that if you have any level of fatigue, well you need more iron. That's what's missing. And so it's, it's the inverse of the truth. And it's very hard to get people to realize that they've been fooled. Right. And, and what do smart people do when they find out they've been fooled? They'll double down and, and believe the narrative because well, they couldn't fool me, I'm too smart for that. And we've got this, this global crisis where the, the World Health Organization, which is arguably a questionable entity right now, but the World Health Organization, I think the Most recent is 2021 study that 3 billion people on planet Earth are anemic.

Yeah. So let's talk about that. So here we are, we're in this iron overload period on our planet. Right, Right. And yet all, and I see it especially in young women, you know, oh, my doctor says I'm anemic, I'm anemic, I'm anemic, I need to add more iron. So they are putting gasoline on A fire.

So talk about that process. Why, why? What's the mechanism where these people are showing up as anemic when we're in iron overload?

Right, Great, great question. So we have, there's three ways to measure iron in the human body. Three, three accepted ways. We can, we can measure the amount of hemoglobin in the blood. And for a woman it should be around 12 and a half to 13 and a half with, you know, grams per deciliter.

That would be considered, or 125 to 135 depending upon where you are in the world. But those, that's the, the window.

And.

The hemoglobin is a, is a mechanism, the process of making hemoglobin. And we're, we're turning it over at 2.5 million.

With actually 2.5 million red.

Blood cells per second.

And there's a ton of hemoglobin in each red blood cell. The numbers get very big very fast. And it, it gets to the point where it gets so big that just goes right over our head and say, well, I don't really understand that, so it can't be important. But in fact it's very, very important. And.

So hemoglobin is accounting for about 80% of the iron in our body. When you account for hemoglobin and myoglobin, it's about 80% of the iron. And that iron is basically a waiter carrying oxidant. That's really its primary function, about another 10% of iron. And this would be measured in a blood test. It's called serum ferritin and.

It should be around 20. 20 to 50 would be considered an acceptable norm. The world of convention wants that number closer to 100, but that's not recommended. And in fact, the alarm bells start to go off when that number gets above 150 in women and above 300 in men. And as we're going to talk about in just a minute, it's when it gets below 20 that it becomes a problem or it's perceived as a problem that you have low iron because your ferritin is low. And we're going to come back to that. And then the third mechanism for measuring iron is called serum iron, or sometimes called total iron. And back in the 30s, the leading scientists identified that that serum iron should be about 100 in an adult, both men and women.

And the unique situation in woman's body is because of the menstrual cycle that serum iron fluctuates. And at the, you know, after following mensis that iron level is going to be much lower, and just prior to mensis, it's going to be much higher. And so what's really important for people to realize is that, especially for women, that if you're curious about your iron status, you want to measure it on day 14 or day 15, mid cycle, which is where you're going to get the most representation about where it is in your body over an average lifespan. So the key is there are only three factors. Hemoglobin, ferritin, and serum iron. The problem we've got is that from the Civil war, from the 1860s to about 1972, doctors always measured hemoglobin. It was the only protein to measure iron status in the body. And then in 1972, a group of Welsh hematologists, who apparently don't believe in copper.

Started promoting this thing called serum ferritin. Now, you, you and I have had enough conversations to know that I've renamed that protein AIN because of all the errors that result from its interpretation. And what's happening is.

Low ferritin is now being called anemia, low iron. That the, the technical definition of anemia is the lower than ideal level of hemoglobin in the, in the red blood cell. And now it's. Everyone's got iron deficiency and they, they'll play games with the walnut shells. It's iron deficiency anemia. It's anemia with or without iron deficiencies. And it, it gets very confusing very fast. But the fact of the matter is a lot of people now are finding that they have what the doctor calls anemia, when in fact it's low ferritin. And the ferritin protein is an iron. It's billed as an iron storage protein, when in fact, I think what it really is, it's a, a marker for the immune system. It's, it's not the storage locker indication that people think it is, because the ferritin molecule, the ferritin protein, is supposed to be inside our tissue. It's not supposed to be in the blood, which is outside of the tissue. And that was the important thing that I learned from Douglas kell back in 2018 when we had our first conversation about this very subject. I said, Dr. Kell, what's the ideal serum ferritin in a human being? And he said, zero. And I almost fell out of my chair. And again, he had this wall of books behind him that I don't have. But, you know, he's got more degrees than a thermometer. And when he says it should be zero, I, I understand and respect that. And that is not being taught in practitioner school. And so now the world is awash in this perception that, oh my, ferritin's low. That means I need more iron. It's absolute deception. And what it really means is that the iron recycling program that drives our body is defective because of a lack of what? Copper. Copper's down. And so the recycling system doesn't work right. There's a, the recycling center in our body are organelles inside the cell that are called lysosomes. Lysis is cutting. It's the, it's the mechanism by which the, the cell cuts up, chops up components of the cell to recycle them there. Our body is incredibly efficient and it's designed that way. But all of that recycling requires what?

Copper.

The major copper centers in the body are the mitochondria, the lysosomes, the endoplasmic reticulum. These are terms that people might have heard of, but. But no one really talks about.

But they don't know how it all fits together. Yeah, they don't know how all these.

Pieces and they don't know how copper dependent it is. All these, all these little organelles, like there's, there's hundreds, hundreds, thousands of mitochondria in, in cells throughout our body. It isn't just one or two, like, like we saw in our high school biology textbook. And so there's rampant confusion about.

What ferritin is. It is not an indication of iron status in, in the body. And I, I just found an article again this week, so at your.

It's really, it's really interesting how our, our little mini postponement allowed me to find some really cool articles. But, but this particular article clearly said it's a copper issue that's causing the lysosome issue, which is causing the low serum ferritin issue, which is now being misinterpreted as a anemic state. And it's just this constant battle with, with insanity because the public believes the simple lie. They, they really resist the complex truth. Because we've been talking now for about 30 minutes trying to explain some very simple concepts, but they're flying in the face of the narrative and people are more apt to believe the narrative than some. Gosh, that's really complicated, all these different words you're using morally to explain this. But it's like it's really it. This is me finding these amazing articles by these amazing scientists who've been screaming about this for decades. I mean, I can't imagine what Max Weintraub went through during the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, when he was most active, most prolific, and he's meeting this wall of resistance by the world of convention that. No, no. Every, every iron mechanism is iron dependent, when in fact, no. Copper is the general and iron is the foot soldier. And, and it's important to understand the role of generals in an army. Don't have to be in the military to know how important they are. And so the. What's really in play is subtle forms of iron overload that don't show up on a blood test.

Yeah, so that's what I want to get to. So, yeah, I want to get to. You've got an amazing program called the Root Cause Protocol. I was fortunate enough to go through your program, and that's how we met. Gosh, that's been four years now. Three. Four years. Right, so let's talk about that. And let's talk about, you know, you've got a, you've got a whole system of what to start and what to stop. But for people that are just starting, that aren't ready to go through your program, what are some simple things, simple decisions they can make around their food choices, around their supplements to start to change this dynamic? Because what I see in my practice, and I'm sure you do too, is when people start to see some changes and they start to feel better, then they're willing to keep going, right?

Absolutely.

So what are some foods, what are some, you know, simple ways for somebody to start to shift that dynamic in their own body so that they can keep going?

I think the, the starting point is to start to read labels and be on the lookout for what is being added to the food that you don't need. So when you see something that says it's iron, iron fortified, or it's enriched.

It'S being enriched with iron, you do.

Not need that fortification, that enrichment. It's, it's a very toxic form of iron. It's non heme iron.

And you see it in organic foods, too. I mean, I, I used to believe enriched with men. Oh, it's adding something good that I need. Right. That was my belief before I woke up and started reading labels and said, wait a minute, what is this?

Yeah. And they started adding iron filings. It's not, it's not organic iron, folks. It's iron filings to wheat flour back in 1941. That's when it started. It ramped up again in 69, and it's been, it's unabated now, and.

When.

You look at the, at the nutrient content of food, they'll always tell you about the amount of calcium is there, the. The amount of sodium that's there, the amount of iron that's there, and the amount of vitamin D. And you think, okay, that's pretty complete. No, that's only half the story. They don't tell you about the magnesium. They don't tell you about copper. They don't tell you about retinol. They're leaving out critical co factors and minerals, as you well know. And so it starts with reading the label and realizing that what you want is food that's not being fortified. That's really where it starts. And so ideally, we should be buying our food from our farmers. Go to farmers markets. That's where it begins. If you can't make it to a farmer's market, go to a supermarket. But shop the perimeter of the store, not the aisles. Stay away from the aisles. Stay away from the processed food, the frozen food, the canned food. Gotta be really careful about that. And so that's where really it can really begin. I would say second to that would be eat food that your ancestors would recognize. And, and so I remember years ago having a conversation with my oldest daughter about real food. She was in college at the time. And it went back and forth, back and forth. And, and finally, God bless Lizzie, she asked the right question. She said, dad, what's the label look like on real food? And I said, thank you. There is no label on real food. She went, oh, I get it now, okay? And. And to her credit, she really did. She. She started to shift her diet and, and her family is benefiting from that. And so that's. It's a simple change, but it's a. It's a monumental change.

So we know, we know what foods have iron, but I've never seen any foods highlighted that actually have copper. So.

No, you won't. You won't know that.

So what, what are those foods? Can you share a few of those? Like the top three? Five.

Sure. I mean, historically, copper has always been found in shellfish, in organ meats, not the muscle meats, the organ meats found in nuts and seeds and leafy greens like beet greens and collard greens. They're very rich in copper, or at least historically, they have been. And again, what people are drawn to are nutrient tables that tell me, what are the minerals and vitamins in such and such food? Well, folks, those nutrient tables haven't been updated since the 1950s, so they've got all sorts of eye candy online. They look really cool. But the, but the data is corrupt because of the changes in the farming system, changes in food processing, changes in pharmaceuticals. The minerals are being stripped out of our body via the lack of minerals in the soil, via the lack of minerals in the food reading. And again, it's just it, we live in a very different time. And so.

The, the key is recognizing that we are Swiss cheese and we are eating Swiss cheese. We have holes in our nutrient profile in our body and in our food. And so you just need to be very vigilant about finding real food like what you would find at a farmer's market. Join your local chapter of Weston A. Price Foundation. They're very devoted to the ancestral diet. And it's not, it's a, it's a global perspective that they bring to what is real food. It's not just what you find in North America. It's absolutely a wonderful organization that takes a, a very international perspective and you just begin to make better and better food choices. But then if, as you begin to feel more comfortable with that, then you can really begin to step into the stops and starts of the, the Root Cause protocol, which will challenge your belief system because it's going to question supplements that you've been taking for years. Going to say, no, you shouldn't be taking iron supplements. No, you shouldn't be taking calcium, you shouldn't be using ascorbic acid. It's very different than whole food. Vitamin C, you shouldn't be taking vitamin D alone. You really should be taking a, a blended form which Mother Nature created a long time ago called cod oil. But even within that, there's probably a hundred different brands of Carnival Oil. But we only recommend three brands. So either Rositas, you know, Formula IQ or Jigsaw Health. Those are three that we know are going to deliver the goods. And as you begin to step away from this programming and then begin to embrace what, what Jen is referring to is, well, there don't seem to be any foods that are adding copper. Well, in fact, it's, it's being challenged because of the farming system and food processing. So we've got to supplement certain nutrients. We've got to supplement with minerals in general. It's really important that our, that our water have minerals in them. It's very important that wherever possible we find food that has been grown properly. Find a regenerative farmer and you've got, they're worth their weight in gold because they understand how important these nutrients are. But I think we're also faced with the need to supplement minerals and vitamins, but wherever possible, do it in a food based form, right? Get your, get your magnesium, get your copper, get your B vitamins, get your vitamin E, get your cod liver oil, your vitamin A and D, very, very important. And begin to realize that it doesn't take a lot to fire up the metabolic pathways in our body that produced energy and keep our immune system in play. But it requires discipline and discernment to say, okay, I want to, I want.

To get off this narrative of the.

Of the world of convention and I want to begin to introduce more historically accurate, more ancestrally based truths about how, how food is supposed to be and how we're supposed to have access to these minerals and these vitamins so that the body knows what to do. The body really does know what to do. There, there is a blueprint.

Yeah, yeah, the body, the body. I, I believe that our bodies are always trying to come back into homeostasis, to come back into coherence, right? And if you give the body what it needs and you move out of the way, what's in the way, the body can, can create wholeness and health like that. But we've, we've got to make the right choices. And it's fascinating, you know, I, I love what you say that. Look at how our ancestors lived, look at how they ate, right? I remember my mom complaining about liver. They had liver once a week, right? We don't eat liver anymore, but now some farmers are coming out with organ blend meats, which, that's one, one thing I do, that's how I get my organs. And then my dear friend James Berry, who owns a company called Pluck, right, he found a way to mix organs into spices. You don't even taste it. It's not our parents and grandparents way of eating, but it's still a way to get the good nutrition that we need, that our bodies need without throwing us off balance. Because right now all the processed foods, all the things that we're eating.

We don't even know where they come from. And in many cases they're not even from the US they're from other countries and full of, full of fillers and heavy metals and all kinds of things. So.

Question. So two things.

One is.

You know, I hear people say cod liver oil isn't that rancid. Isn't all cod liver oil rancid? So they don't want to take it because of that. So can you talk about that?

Right?

And then the second thing is around the the shellfish. Right. If shellfish is a way to truly get copper. But full of plastics, like, I, I feel like people are making trade offs today. So how do we support people and guide people to not feel like they have to make a trade off?

No, it's a, it's an important point.

At some level, you have to, you don't have to do anything. The only thing you have to do is die.

Right?

So at some level, the choice we get to make is, do I believe.

The narrative that's being thrown at me?

Do I believe that I have low vitamin D? Do I really believe that I am anemic? Do I really believe that copper is toxic? Do I really believe this? And that we're constantly being pummeled with messaging from the system, and the system is called the Internet. It's the greatest source of, of disinformation on the planet, only. Only to be exceeded by AI, which maybe we'll talk about that as well. But if people think they're getting the truth from AI, no, got it. You got to really step away from it. And I think what has surprised me the most over the last five years is I would have thought people would wake up as a result of COVID No, they're even more asleep now. That's a very disheartening thing to think about. But I think a lot of people got so spooked by what happened again, they doubled down, said, look, they didn't fool me. And in fact, they did. They're really good at it. And all we really have to do is question the messaging that Jen is talking about. That as soon as they say that you're anemic, they think, okay, actually, I'm drowning in iron. Is that what you're trying to tell me morally? And that's exactly the message. Because it's not showing up on the blood test doesn't mean it's not in your tissue. That's the, that's the key. There's a difference between a blood test and tissue. And they're, they're spectrums apart. And.

It'S a well documented fact that there's 10 times more iron in the tissue than is found in the blood. So that's, that's a very uncomfortable fact that was identified back in 2004 and 2005. But the, the point is.

The, the concept of cod, of oil being rancid is like, again, it's just more programming to keep the, the vitality of that nutrient away from you. Our ancestors grew up with cod oil. And I, I'll give you a graphic example. The day I was born in.

My mother's father, my grandfather was 72 years old. He was born in, in 1879.

And when I was 20 years old, he was 92. And we were weeding the hillside of his property and I remember getting tired and Dada was like a machine. He just kept pulling those weeds, pulling those weeds, looking over at me, but why are you so tired?

Like he, he grew up with real food. He grew up on a farm with real food. He had cod live oil. I remember him talking about that. And it's like that was that generation and then the subsequent generation and then they started to mess with the food system. So this idea that it's rancid, it's like, let's, let's be a little bit more discerning. Let's dig a little deeper. Let's find out how some of the best cod liver oil is made like Rositas, which is a family run business out of Norway. And what, what companies like FIQ and Jigsaw have done to try to make it available in a, in a very clean and pristine form. And it's, it's amazing what it delivers in the way of, of nutrients, not just the vitamin A and vitamin D. So that, that's one thing we've got to just embrace that, that disinform. A constant din of disinformation. What was the other, the other one that you had mentioned in terms of.

I was asking about cod liver and the blah, blah. I don't remember. It's okay.

Well, the, the thing is what we've got to do is question the narrative. And, and it's very unsettling to think that maybe my practitioner doesn't have complete knowledge of what's going on. Maybe they, maybe they didn't get a lot of nutrition training. Maybe they, they don't have time now. I mean, these are incredibly talented individuals that are very gifted intellectually, emotionally. They're very, they're very compassionate people. But their training is not the truth. They got a very scripted education, very, very much based on the bias of pharmaceuticals, use of pharmaceuticals.

And that's true even of nutrition, right? That's true even of their nutrition. They get one class maybe as a doctor on nutrition or you know, maybe even less than that. A few hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing is, they're also constrained by the, the system. They have seven minutes to find out, quote, what, what the problem is and then they're supposed to come up with a pharmaceutical solution. Well, I think you And I approach these situations with our clients the same way. We'll spend upwards of an hour, hour and a half to really learn the story of the individual. Find out what stress they're under, find out what, what is their diet, what is their lifestyle, what, what is their environment that both, both their nutritional environment but their self talk environment, how is that affecting their, their health and well being. And the, the average practitioner doesn't have that kind of time. They, they literally have seven minutes and so you can't.

And they have to see 40 people a day and, and all of the things. And I, I think. Go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say that there, there's a very tight expectation that the outcome is going to be recommending a medication.

Right.

In fact, maybe it's a better diet. Maybe it's deal with, deal with the stress in your life as much as anything.

Well, and I think that, you know, we're not, not only are we up against a wave of a narrative, but also in addition to that we've become more disconnected from ourselves and right. Like you said, one day somebody will say raw milk is good, one day somebody will say no, humans aren't supposed to drink cow's milk. Right. So you get bombarded with pieces of information that are contradictory. And what that does to the human being is it creates a sense of chaos and confusion. And so then you grasp the first thing that feels like it might work right. In hopes, but there's no tapping into this vehicle. There's no like, hey, how does my body feel? It's just right. It's just tell me what to do, give me the fix and I'll go do it. So we also have lost our way as humans, not just externally, but internally, you know, and I know, that's why I believe I'm still alive 10 years after a very severe diagnosis. Because the, the narrative felt so off inside of my body. And for the first time I listened to my own intuition to what my body was telling me. And I grew up in a family. No pain, no gain. Don't cry or I'll give you. Right. All this messaging of disconnect, disconnect, disconnect. And I think it's a both and is how do we start to trust what we innately know and then get guided to the places that are going to bring us back into wholeness and into balance. And I keep using that word, wholeness because I think we're a very fractured as a humanity, as a species right now.

Absolutely right.

And it's. How do we find the guidepost so that we can keep energizing what's inside of us and following truth and not following these random things that are thrown at us to confuse us and keep us off balance.

No.

Very well said, Jen. And the key is that most vast majority of people, I would put the number around 98%.

Want to be told what to do. They won't think for themselves, which is a very, it's almost insulting.

But, but after doing this for 16.

Years, you begin to see a pattern. And it's only 2, maybe 3% of people who are like, actually, you know, I think I'm going to think for myself. I'm going to do a little digging and, and really question the narrative. Again. Just don't assume that because it's coming from the Internet, it's coming from your doctor, it's coming from your neighbor, coming from your family member, that it's a source of truth. You, you need to independently verify famous Bedouin expression over in the Middle East. Trust Allah, but tie up your camel. You gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta get beyond the narrative. And the, the challenge we've got now is we've become vaccinated, we've been, we're surrounded by all these facts, when in fact most of the facts are opinions. The Internet is just this vast sea of opinion. Very rarely will you find someone who will ground their statements in research like you and I would, would do. And so another major aha moment for me. You're talking about what, what did really learn this past year? Well, we've known that stress is very hard on the body, but, but now we know the mechanism of action. And it turns out that there's two models of stress that have been used since the 1980s to understand mammalian physiology. One is called chronic social defeat stress, and the other is called repeated restraint stress. So they take little rodents and tie them down and expose them to stress and they, their body just explodes with chemistry. Well, again, this, these models of stress go back to the 80s, but when were they put into full tilt juice? Oh yeah, around 20. 20.

20. 20.

2020. And so when you get into the research, what you find out is that the, these two models of stress that we are swimming in now change iron physiology. And there's a very important.

It's an immune marker. It's a, it's, it's called interleukin 6. And interleukin 6 shows up with inflammation, but when interleukin 6 rises, it, it causes an increased production of a iron hormone. Called hepcidin. And for the gearheads, people are like, oh, I'm digging this. Like, yeah, I've heard about hepcidin. It's like, okay, but hepcidin is not our friend because hepcidin shuts down the iron recycling program. And so what, what we've learned, what's really come to light in the, in the last few months, is that stress, chronic stress, repeated stress, changes the, the amount of interleukin 6 in our body, which changes and increases the amount of hepcidin, which causes. The technical term is iron sequestration, the removal of iron from the blood and putting it into the recycling macrophages. They're really important parts of our physiology. And so then the iron does not show up on a blood test because it's stuck in the tissue of the recycling macrophages. That's the very mechanism of action.

And we, we found a half a dozen. I, I think it's up to eight now, eight different studies that document this from different points of view that we've often said that when you're in a state of, of chronic stress, you're dealing with fear. And we spell it differently. Fe, hyphen, ar. And that way you see the symbol for iron. And it's really what fear stands for, is iron's always rising. In a state of fear, you become a magnet for iron. And that's what's behind this confusion around serum ferritin is this constancy of stress that we're dealing with now. And people don't realize that this, when we have stress in our world, we have oxidative stress in our body. And that, that's the key. That's, that's what brings us back to this three ring circus. Copper, iron and oxy. Oxygen not being managed properly. And the oxidative stress is, what it's revealing is that the oxygen is not being activated properly to become water to release the energy so we can stay in homeostasis. That's the very pivot point for where all the confusion is. And I think it's important for people to realize that, as you well know, nature provides, right? And you have a, you, you have a whole spectrum of products that allow people to deal with this iron confusion in the body, to deal with this oxidative stress confusion, deal with this lack of minerals and other nutrients. And that the, the beauty is that mother Nature does know how to bring us back into balance. We just have to have the right diet, the right focus on our daily discipline of what we eat. And be able to deal with the stress. And it's very, very important that we, we've got to recognize that stress, there is a price to pay for stress. You know, Han Selye, the, the father of stress, the grandfather of stress, knew this. Back in the 30s, he was heralded as a genius. He was heralded as the Einstein of, of medicine. Back in the 1950s, he did 30,000 animal experiments to document what stress does to animal physiology and animal anatomy. Very powerful. But he did not talk about. What the current research is revealing is that, wow, it completely shuts down iron recycling. Wow. That's when all the problems start. That's when, when there's this energy block. If you're not recycling iron, it's going to start to accumulate not just in the macrophages, it's going to start to accumulate in the mitochondria. That's not a good place to put iron if you can't, if you can't recycle the iron in your mitochondria. And all the mechanisms are copper dependent. Wink, wink.

They really are.

It's absolutely amazing. But, but the thing is, if you can't recycle that iron, it will build up. It's, it's called iron accumulation. It creates all sorts of oxidative stress. It, it rusts out the lipid membranes of our cells and our mitochondria and all the organelles. And that's the very origin. And it all originates from the stress that we're under. And the stress has only grown since 2020.

Gotten worse and worse. Yes. And now it's hitting children younger and younger.

Absolutely.

Where we could go on and on and on and on. We could talk for another 10 hours, but we are top of the hour. So any, any final words and where can people find you? I know you've got root cause protocol rcp. Where else can people find you? What is the best way for them to learn more from you?

Yeah, with certain the website rcp123.org or if you want the long version, it's the root cause protocol.com either one will get, get you there. Go to the resources tab and just look up. We've got a community that you can join. We've got the institute that Jen is talking about. We've got, there's 81 posts on Iron toxicity. We now have hundreds and hundreds of videos out there, podcast conversations like this. There's like, I think like 350 conversations out there. So if you're at all intrigued by the conversation that Jen and I are having, there's lots and lots of documentation. I think what, what's really important you ask, you know what, what advice would I have for people?

Be courageous. Be more curious. Spell curious. C U hyphen R I O U S Look for when, when you're getting pummeled by the narrative, there's a simple question to ask. What else are they not telling me? Is there more to the story? Should, should I begin to look at the edges of this narrative and see, are they missing something? And let me give you an example of why I say that. I, I've alluded to AI a little while ago. It does not stand for artificial intelligence. AI stands for one of two choices, always incomplete or arrogantly incorrect. Don't, don't assume that because this search engine is, you know, mega search engine is throwing back a lot of information.

Basically what you're doing is you're playing poker with a computer and it's like seven card draw and three cards are down. And what AI is waiting to find out is what do you know before I'll reveal what I know. And so a couple weeks ago I was with a colleague who's very adept at AI research and we asked about this specific mechanism that I knew involved Copper. I wanted to see what AI would say and it came back with this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but no mention of Copper. So then I said to, we were using perplexity. I said, you've completely ignored Copper. And the response back was staggering. Oh, you know about Copper? Okay, well, this is what I can tell you now that I know that you know about Copper.

I'm like, interesting.

And so, wow. No, it was really a stunning, like, oh, we're playing poker now. And, and, and it's waiting to see how much I know before it'll tell me what it knows. And the, the way Steve Gant, who's, who's my colleague who was helping me, way he explained it, he says it's an algorithm. And if there's a hundred articles on this mechanism and 98 of them involve iron, but there's two that involve copper, it's only going to focus on the 98 because that's the bigger number.

Right?

I said, but the truth is in the two to our. I know, but, but there, but that's not what, that's not the algorithm that drives AI. It's numbers driven. It's not truth driven. So I think I would really some real quick recommendations, question the information that you're, you're making your decisions on. Dig a little Deeper. I would encourage you to be more curious about copper, a little, a little more fearful of the amount of iron in your environment. And know that there are products out there like Jen's that are incredibly supportive of what our physiology is designed to do. And know that the body does have a blueprint and the blueprint runs on energy. And the energy is driven by our mitochondria that are swimming in copper. They're designed to swim in copper.

There's a little swimming pool there that is filled with copper. And so the key is know that there is this truth out there. It does take time and discernment and discipline to harness your lifestyle around it, but it's incredibly rewarding. I mean, Jen is a, is a supreme example of someone who could have ignored the signaling. She could have just ignored what, what she was feeling or, or the fact maybe there's more to the story. And because of her curiosity, she got really deep, really fast and discovered that, oh, there's a whole nother world, it's a parallel universe. And that's really what these conversations are designed to reveal, is that there is more to the story and embrace that as an opportunity to grow. Not as, oh, it's too much information. No, it's, it's a, it's a stepping stone so that you can get closer and closer to the truth. So I, I would just encourage people to be.

Question the narrative and be more curious about is there, are there other sources of information that maybe I've never thought to ask about? And wherever possible, try to get more of these minerals, these key minerals like magnesium and copper and the food based B vitamins, things like that are immensely important. Boron. Oh my gosh, we could have a whole show on just boron. But, but it's not a hundred items. It's a handful, maybe half a dozen nutrients that are really, really important that will flip that energy switch on and then you can get back into balance. I think that's really what's, what's key in this process.

Well, and it's a journey, right? Not a destination. So it's, and that's what I love about root cause protocol is you have kind of a process laid out of what things to stop before you just start throwing things at the body. And what I find is you got to move those things out of the way that we shouldn't be putting in our bodies so that our bodies are in a state to be able to receive what they need. Right. So it's this process and it takes patience and curiosity and trusting Your body, your body knows what to do. And being willing to look at the narrative and what we're being told and being able to put that aside and know that the narrative is keeping us off balance.

One of the first things I do with clients now is I'll give them a 30 day diet of the Internet. Stop. Stop going to the Internet. Just leave it alone. And that's. It's a very scary space for people to go into. But it's like if there is a world of information out there, but it's not going to be tapped into by Google, a Google search engine. Got to be really careful about that. And I think that's what you and I have really perfected is a willingness to look at the source research, not the interpreted research or the, the opinionated research. And I think that's the key is we don't. Everyone does not need to become a research scientist. You just need to be willing to say, I'm curious. Yeah, you just need to go deeper, that's all. It's just, it's a simple process of, of digging and finding that. Oh, actually there's a bedrock of information I didn't even know about.

Well, as always, it's always a pleasure to learn from you and to continue to deepen what I know to be true that minerals, stress, iron, copper. There is this whole thing that's been going on and it's peeling back one piece at a time. And thank you, thank you, thank you for you. One day we're going to read articles that Morley wrote. I know it. People are going to say, oh, remember that guy Morley Robbins way in the future because you're going to be around a long time. But thank you for your wisdom and your research and for everything that you share with each of us.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation. Thank you for your curiosity and thank you for your will willingness to kind of beam this out to your community. Really, really appreciate that.

You got it. All right, thank you.