Some very thought provoking research on the importance of iron - copper - magnesium in maintenance of health.
Summarising a huge amount of documents / videos the implications are
Restrict a list including iron ,vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc supplements amongst others to the absolute minimum and get them from natural sources eg sunlight / OJ to avoid binding available copper which is critical in health.
One thing I had not picked up is vitamin D use linked to cancer risk
This I suspect will be highly controversial for many who regularly supplement - but he is highly critical of the vitamin industry as I think some are here anyway over being very selective in which supplements to take
As those who read these boards know I started adding water C recently and I have now decided to desist
I will continue to read further and report back - he is a strong believer in ray peat ideas from a while ago eg no PUFAs, gluten
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Danielj1
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Danielj1, 'get them from natural sources eg sunlight / OJ to avoid binding available copper'
I know absolutely nothing about the copper issue, nor about Morley Robbins, but I'll look him up as I like the sound of his theories from what you've said here.
As someone who is totally intolerant of even minimum dose vit D supplements, I have no choice but to wait for the sun to shine on my skin. I also don't drink OJ due to its high sugar content. Kiwi fruit has more vit C and less sugar than oranges! 😊
The Root Cause Protocol is based on his ideas I believe and for a while I tried to follow it but not completely as I was pretty broke. I have an issue with some of the blanket claims made.
The protocol advocates dropping all iron supplementation and furthermore, donating blood regularly. Nothing is suggested for people who are anaemic or suffering very heavy periods. I believe also that high ferritin levels are discouraged, and low levels encouraged but unless you go digging much deeper no description is given for what is 'high'. The suggestion is vitamin A is responsible for iron and supplement this with high dose cod liver oil.
The Vitamin D argument is something I've heard before, but again at what levels are we talking where supplementation becomes undesirable? It isn't stated. So again if someone severely deficient and with say dark skin takes the advice at face value, they could be potentially keeping themselves sick with extremely low levels. He overlooks the fact that in countries with long winters getting enough sunlight can be tough as say compared to somewhere like the tropics. Vit C he says get only from Camu Camu.
I know again natural sources are emphasised, and it's always good to get vitamins and minerals from diet as much as one can. But I actually saw little in terms of dietary advice to achieve this and no recognition that for people with underlying gut dybiosis or illness, they may need supplementation because they cannot adequately extract their vitamins from food and may be coming to this advice with years of deficiencies causing ill health that diet alone isn't going to help them catch up on.
I'm not a sciencey person, so I think it's irresponsible from that point of view, of not asking people to test their levels first or making claims that for someone without prior nutritional knowledge, but desperate to get well will take as verbatim. I mean if you are a woman with heavy menstrual bleeding and low iron levels should you go off and donate blood?
In one video he actually says the reason women live longer than men is because they have a menstrual cycle, completely overlooking the ill health associated with regular bleeding and low iron and ferritin.
I also didn't see much to explain some of the other recommendations like consuming diatomaceous earth. I think you have to watch some pretty heavy videos to really understand the reasoning behind the science completely.
That criticism aside, yes, I do find a lot of what MR says compelling and very interesting. The copper argument particularly (again though there are populations particularly hashimotos populations with lower zinc than copper) It's pieces of a puzzle. I have cut back on the amount of vit D I consume, as I was taking very high doses before.
He has a video on youtube about the relationship between histamine and copper which was quite good and recommends eating liver and kidney if you have histamine overload but blames it on iron. I found it interesting hat he cooks uses iron pans though.
I have to admit a year or two back I looked and failed to grasp it - having now spent a lot more time I do.
The copper link is for me the critical new news from anything I have read to date
My “one line “summary is you need iron to carry red blood cells /process oxygen for basic life but iron has a huge downside that it creates disease if not regulated effectively (rust analogy)- copper appears in Morley’s view to be only possible way that the downside of iron can be easily managed (blood draws are an option but. It always practical)
The crisis in farming is that many commercial weed killlers bind copper and make it useless when absorbed from fhe farm produce
vitamin d, iron vitamin a supplements, zinc and absorbic acid also bind up the available copper from our bodies a d so are hopeless for us all- hence the argument that vitamin d adds to cancer risk and does not detract
Also explains the confusion over why ACE supplements had so little positive impact on health when marketed as the “big thing” a few years ago
Well I have bought a copper bracelet will move to copper pans and will try some low dose copper supplements
I have felt so much worse since starting on zinc vitamin c and vitamin D supplements since Christmas and I hope this now all explains it
Redapple - this recent interest in copper was only brought about by my wife’s intrigue in a farmer trying a new way of farming to create more copper in his products to improve everyone’s health - and so it made me think again about Morley and what he was trying to explain over copper
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