The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #261 - Morley Robbins

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. I am here today with a repeat guest, Morley Robins, who honestly has been one of the most popular guests on the show. I actually was looking back through downloads over the past. I don't remember when you came on last time, but I was looking over downloads for the past whatever amount of time and your episode, it's up there for downloads. People love your content for good reason. It is kind of mind blowing and shocking like we were just talking about before we started recording. And so I had Morley back on the show in the past for his book, which actually just got I found out picked up by a traditional publisher and is going to be, I mean, it was already in the big leagues just with sales and downloads and the information it was presenting, but it's going to be, you know, like a real boy, like Pinocchio, like with the publishers.

Morley Robbins:
I love it. That's exactly right. A real boy.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I mean, it was already real boy, but you know what I'm saying?

Morley Robbins:
That's a wonderful analogy. Oh, that's great.

Melanie Avalon:
So are they gonna, are you gonna call it the same title or are they going to rework it?

Morley Robbins:
Yeah, the second edition. Thank you. Yeah, we're, we're quibbling about the, there's a guest writer involved. He's never liked the cover and I'm like, Larry, get over it. That's probably, the cover might change, but I don't think it will, but it'll be the same title, for sure.

Melanie Avalon:
So that is cure your fatigue, the root cause, and how to fix it on your own. And the title, it's like a pun on, I don't know, element graphics is what it is. Does he think it's too, too over people's heads?

Morley Robbins:
No, no, that's that's my outrageous wit, don't you get it?

Melanie Avalon:
I think it's really clever. I'm wondering if he does does he though think

Morley Robbins:
Well, his word that not everyone remembers their biology.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, yes, over people's heads.

Morley Robbins:
And so it's just, you know, putting a box around CU so people see the word or the symbol for copper. It's like, oh, well, I think it's lava.

Melanie Avalon:
I think it's great. I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, oh, that's clever.

Morley Robbins:
It was actually a designer down in Australia who came up with, he did a bang -up job. He was wrestling for weeks, what's the design, and he wakes up in the middle of the night, and that's the cover. He's like, he was so excited, and I understand why, because he nailed it, I think.

Melanie Avalon:
That's amazing. Well, I love it.

Morley Robbins:
I'm going to tell them that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, no, please do, please do. I'll be really interested to see which direction it goes because I remember with my book, I really wanted this one cover that they had and it was amazing. Actually, it ended up being the cover of this podcast because they let me keep the graphics from it, but they actually booked a Barnes and Noble feature and Barnes and Noble was like, you have to change the cover and I was so sad. But I like the new cover, it's all fine. So I'm just warning you, it might be a journey and cover evolution upcoming. Thanks for the heads up. But in any case, so we had that episode, it was incredible, we dived into all things. I was thinking back on it because you talk about so many different minerals and in particular, we've already mentioned copper and the role of iron. I think last episode we dived mostly into magnesium and vitamin D as well as some iron. In any case, I reached out to listeners for questions for you and I got so many questions. So I was thinking I could ask you some of them and we could see where it goes, especially with some of the new things that you found out recently that you were telling me about.

Morley Robbins:
Yeah, well, that sounds great. I'm looking forward to it.

Melanie Avalon:
Shall we do this? Okay. Well, starting with iron and copper, and I think I told you this last time we recorded, but I, I've always been really fascinated by iron in the body because I personally have struggled historically with anemia. And it's just been, it's okay now, but in the past, it's been a bit of a struggle to keep things up there. Although I know, I know you have potentially different views on that. So when it comes to iron, we had a question from Tara and then Andrea and Kelly said they both have the same question as well. So three listeners with this question. Tara wants to know what is the best way to improve your iron level if you have extremely low ferritin results. And she also wants to know if coffee depletes iron. And I realized we probably should also give a foundation about your thoughts on ideal ferritin and iron levels anyways. So do what you will with that.

Morley Robbins:
Absolutely. Great place to start. So let's step back and get everyone oriented to the fact that there are three containers for measuring iron status in the blood. One is a bucket and inside that bucket 70% of it is on hemoglobin and 10% is myoglobin which is very similar to hemoglobin. So 80% of the iron in the human body is tied up as a waiter carrying oxygen. An enormous bolus of iron is a waiter carrying oxygen one way and carbon dioxide another. Then we have another container. You know how big a bucket is, right? So then we have another container that's a teacup. And we're not talking about a Starbucks venti cup, we're talking about a little teacup that your grandmother would have had. And that's about 10% of the iron is tied up in an iron storage protein called ferritin that is supposed to be inside the cell, not in the blood, which is outside of the cell. It's important for people to know that the blood is an extracellular medium. And then the third container is a thimble. Not a lot of people use thimbles today, but it's really tiny, right? No. So we're going from a bucket to a teacup to a thimble. And so 1% of the iron, it shows up in the serum. And when we're thinking about our blood, if you take a unit of blood and spin it down, it'll actually, when you go into a centrifuge, it'll spin down into two fluids. The bottom half is red, and those are called packed red blood cells. And the top half is kind of a murky, clear fluid called serum. And think of it as seawater. And the red blood cells swim in that seawater. And in the seawater are all the minerals and nutrients. The red blood cell is carrying all the hemoglobin and the oxygen. So only 1% of the iron shows up in that serum, and that's on its way back to the bone marrow so that we can make new red blood cells. And as I was sharing with you before we started, we have this recycling program that's replacing red blood cells 2 .5 million red blood cells a second. And it's 200 billion red blood cells every 24 hours. So it's an enormous activity. So we've got this bucket, this teacup, and thimble. And what these two followers have asked me about is ferritin. And ferritin is a very misleading marker. In fact, I renamed it, and I call it erritin, E -R -R -O -R -T -I -N, because that's where most of the mistakes are made as it relates to iron status. So the bookends of ferritin are where the problems are. When it gets above 150 for a woman and above 300 for a man, you know you have inflammation. Most likely in the liver, it could be the kidney, it might be elsewhere, but typically it's the liver is dealing with a lot of inflammation, and usually it's from too much iron. So that's very well understood. And iron do phlebotomies start to get the copper -iron dynamic under control. The ferritin will come right down. It'll hover somewhere between 20 and 30. It's when it gets below 20 that people are being taught to be fearful. And a number of years ago, I had an occasion to talk with Douglas Kell, who's a world -renowned iron biologist. Back then it was Skype. Now we would call it Zoom. But it was a Skype call. And I asked him point blank. I said, Dr. Kell, what's the ideal ferritin for a human being? They have to answer, he's my age, very affable guy. Got a wall of books behind him that was enough to choke a horse. And he's got more degrees than the thermometer. The sky is very well educated. And he looks in the camera and he says, zero. I said, what? I said, what? And he smiled, and he said, Morrie, I want to make sure you understand this. He said, rising ferritin is not a sign of iron vitality, it is a sign of organ pathophysiology. Do you understand what I just said? I said, absolutely, I'm very familiar with your work. I'm pretty well versed in biology and physiology, and it's a mind -blowing thing to hear. So everyone is freaking out now about low ferritin, and the marker that no one knows about, Melanie, is epsilon. I'm sure you've heard of it.

Melanie Avalon:
I tried to get my doctor to order it and he could not.

Morley Robbins:
Well, no, that's the problem. It's a critical, it's a critically important biomarker, especially if you're a biohacker, right? And yet you're not allowed to measure it.

Melanie Avalon:
Like the insulin of blood glucose. I mean, of iron in a way, right? Yeah.

Morley Robbins:
And what it is, it's the hormone that's supposed to regulate iron. Well, what you have to understand is that there's a positive regulator for iron and there's a negative regulator for iron. So let's choose an analogy that you might relate to. And I know this is going to sound sexist, but I need this very sincerely. Growing up, my mom could do 10 things at once, you know. She had a job, but she was doing the laundry, she was making the meals, she was making sure that I got my homework done, you know, stuff like that. So she could do a lot of stuff, just as I'm sure many people listening, they can think back on their mom. Dad could do one thing, but mom was able to do a lot of things. But think of the mom as the positive regulator in the home, you know. She's kind of like the drum beat, if mama ain't happy, nobody's happy, right? But there's also a negative regulator in the home, and that's called a SWAT team. When things get out of control, you call the police and they come with a SWAT team and they're going to shut things down. That's a negative regulator. Well, ceruloplasmid, the protein that is the master antioxidant in our body, is way more important than glutathione, way more important than melatonin, just so people don't know about it. But ceruloplasmid is the mom, it's the positive regulator, and hepcidin is a negative regulator. And so it's hard for people to think in a negative mindset. It's really confusing. But the thing is, hepcidin is made by the hemp gene, HAMP, hepatic antimicrobial peptide. What hepcidin is doing is shutting down the iron recycling system in the event that there's an infection, and it overrides the natural metabolism because it senses a crisis. And so it turns out that ferritin and hepcidin ride on a seesaw together. And so when ferritin is high, guess where hepcidin is? It's sub -basement. It's almost counterintuitive, but it is. When you have raging ferritin, hepcidin's going to be very low. Well, let's flip that seesaw now. If ferritin is really low, where's hepcidin? It's really high. And what does that mean? It means that the individual most likely has a pathogen, most likely a parasite, that's causing the ferritin to look low, and it's kind of an artificial distortion of reality. And so what the literature is really clear about, and this goes back easily 50 or more years, is you cannot rely on ferritin. as a viable indicator of iron status if there's any indication of inflammation. And some very preeminent hematologists and iron scientists and copper scientists have all weighed in on that. And so I'm very skeptical of a low ferritin. I'm always looking for, within the full monty iron panel, we have 12 or 13 different markers. And you need to put the ferritin marker into the gestalt of all those other markers. What's happening with copper and ceruleoplasm? What's going on with zinc? What's going on with vitamin A and D and so on? And the part that really surprised me recently, because this question comes up a lot, as you can expect. And I keep digging, looking for new kernels of truth. And was absolutely stunned to find out that when you supplement with zinc, it increases your hepcidin. Absolutely fascinating. And so we're still burning off what happened four years ago. I think some people are still taking the COVID cocktail, you know, high doses of ascorbic acid and vitamin D and zinc. And I think they are elevating hepcidin unwittingly. They can't measure it, right? And so what's showing up is low ferritin, and then they're being told to take iron, which is absolute worst thing they can do, because they don't understand the full parameters of the copper -iron dynamic. So I realize that's a very long -winded response to a very simple question. But when I am presented with someone who has low ferritin, my first instinct is to question them about parasites, and the second is, are you still dosing on a zinc supplements? And it really helps to have that information. Go ahead.

Melanie Avalon:
You mentioned that basically in the context of inflammation or these parasites that the ferritin might be a false alarm. Are there other things you could look at on your panel to ascertain if that's the case? So like, for example, with me, my CRP, I know that's just one marker, but my CRP is always essentially negligible. Would that be enough of an indicator of inflammation or are there other things you would need to be looking at?

Morley Robbins:
CRP isn't, they call it a marker for inflammation. It's actually a marker for liver infection. So when that goes up into the teens, you know there's an infection in the liver. The marker that I use is the ratio of copper divided by suruloplasm. Ideally, all the metals, copper, zinc, and iron should be about 100 in the blood, 100 units in the blood. And suruloplasma should be 30. That's an ideal level for suruloplasma. So the ion ratio of copper to suruloplasma is 3 .33, 100 divided by 30. When that ratio gets up into the fours, what I've come to realize is that's an indication of inflammation. When the copper to suruloplasma gets too high, there's, it's just a biological response to inflammation and the body's using copper to try to tone down that process. And when the ratio is below three, I know there isn't enough copper in the diet. So it's a pretty cool marker. It's a very simple marker to use. Taking serum copper divided by serum suruloplasma and you can tell a lot just by those two markers as well.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, okay. So if we were doing a case study to kind of apply what we just learned with what you said. So Casey, for example, she said that she had an iron transfusion. Her ferritin got down to a 4. And then after the transfusion, her ferritin went up to 291. Now it's like 48. And then she said she had a colonoscopy slash endoscopy, and they found no source of bleeding. I am 47 years old. I'm still menstruating, but my periods are not super heavy. What could cause low iron like this in your opinion? But it looks like a reframe of this after hearing what you said is that that's not necessarily... Well, A, it's her ferritin. She's saying low iron, but she's giving us numbers for ferritin.

Morley Robbins:
Right. So the thing is, everyone that listens to your show is a copper desert and they likely have iron overload in their tissues that doesn't show up necessarily on a blood test. That's the prevailing copper iron dynamic, certainly here in North America, but it may be as much as around the world. And the shortage of copper in our diet is legendary. And I'm going to put that into context. In the 1930s, our ancestors, in a typical diet, would get between four and six milligrams of copper in their daily food. In the 1960s, a generation later, they dropped from four to six to two to five. So no huge drop, right? But now, 60 years later, the RDA for copper is nine tenths of one milligram. That's a big drop. And what's even more distressing is that 60 percent of people in North America do not get nine tenths of one milligram of copper a day. That's a mind -numbingly low percentage of people getting enough copper. And so the part that's missing in conventional medicine, the meme that runs conventional medicine is uranemic, the copper toxic. They have been for a century now telling people that they are anemic since the first world war, saying that people are anemic. And now, and certainly in the last 60 years, convincing people that they've got to be afraid of copper, that it's a toxin, and it's all a cyops, the whole thing. And I've got the citations. I can prove it that the whole thing is backwards. And what we've got is humans are copper deserts, and they are swimming in iron in their tissue. It can't get out of the tissue because the ferroportin doorway, that's a silly way of saying iron doorway, but ferroportin requires a copper dormant. And if the copper's not there to open up the door, iron can't get out, can't get back into the recycling program, can't get back to the bone marrow to make the next day's batch of red blood cells. And what's really important for people to understand is that 1% of the copper is in our blood, but 47% of the copper in our body is in our bone marrow of our lung bones. That's an enormous indicator of how important copper is for making new blood. Almost half of the copper in the body is found where the new little blood cells are being hatched at a ridiculously fast rate. Again, I'm not sure that's being taught in doctor school anymore. And that's where there's so much confusion as people think, as soon as they hear the word anemia, they think iron. When I hear anemia, I'm very quick to say, tell me about your copper. Let's take a dive into your copper status because you cannot make, you cannot absorb iron in your diet if you don't have copper because it's a two -step absorption. First, you have to get the iron into the enterocyte in our gut, but then you've got to get the iron out of the enterocyte through that ferroportin doorway and get it into the bloodstream and attach it to transferrin to get it to where it's needed. So copper is essential to absorb the iron. Copper is essential to make the heme protein. Copper is essential to drop the iron atom into the center of the heme protein to create hemoglobin. The ferrokylatase enzyme is copper dependent. You cannot mature a red blood cell. Red blood cells are born overweight, believe it or not, and they've got to shed iron. They've got to shed their nucleus. They've got to shed their mitochondria in order to become a mature red blood cell. Well, that same ferro -portent doorway has to open up again to let the iron out. It's really, really important, and you cannot recycle red blood cells without copper. So every facet of iron metabolism is copper dependent, but all people know is I'm anemic, my ferritin's low, I need more iron. And it's just, you know, we're in dangerous territory now where people are getting iron infusions, and all of that iron is going straight to the spleen and the liver. It's not going into the recycling system. People don't understand that that bolus of iron is having a massive effect on the liver metabolism, and we're seeing it in her numbers bouncing around the way they have.

Melanie Avalon:
OK, so a few follow up questions there, and I think I asked you this last time, but it sounds like and it seems that this route of iron infusions, you know, is not the route to go to address this. That said, people will get the infusions and levels will raise and they'll feel better. Is that just because they're putting so much in that there's a residual that some of it does get to where it needs to go to raise? People actually are deficient in iron.

Morley Robbins:
Yeah, and I remember we did talk about this before, but we can't talk about it enough. You put any heavy metal into the human being, and the body will make more redbud cells in hopes of carrying more oxygen to get more energy to deal with the heavy metal. It's just the way we're wired. The hematologist that studied this the most, his name was Robert Hodges, and in 1978, he published a definitive article. It was over a three -year study of humans, it's human subjects, that were denied beta -carotene and retinol in their diet, and what he monitored meticulously was the fall of hemoglobin in their body. And it came down like a rock, and then he did what no one had ever done before in the study. He gave them an iron infusion. And boy, there's this spike of hemoglobin, and it only lasted for about six weeks. He was monitoring their blood status every day. It's really an amazing study. People can really geek out on it. But the thing is, the temporary spike, there's this rise of hemoglobin. It doesn't go anywhere near where it's supposed to be, but there's a rise of hemoglobin from its really very low point, and people would feel better on that spike. And what happens is people get a spike, they start to feel bad, they go back for another spike, they start to feel bad, and they are living from spike to spike to spike. They're not living on proper natural iron metabolism from recycling of the red blood cells. So it's a very dangerous and unnatural way to restore hemoglobin.

Melanie Avalon:
Does hemoglobin have any false positives with all of this? Or is it really just like we're looking at a typical iron panel and we're looking at ferritin, iron, iron saturation, hemoglobin. What can we actually trust as an accurate portrayal of what we should be going for with the conventional ranges, hemoglobin?

Morley Robbins:
It's a wonderful question. So, again, we've got to go back to the fact that where there's a lot of attention being placed on ferritin, and again, it's hard for people to embrace this, but people like Orosio and Warwood, Jacobs, these are luminary hematologists, and people like Kell that I had a chance to talk to, they're very clear in their literature and in their research that the ferritin that shows up in the blood test is empty shotgun shells. You're seeing the protein, but there's no iron in it. And so doctors are being trained that this ferritin protein is an indicator of the iron status when in fact the protein is empty, and they don't understand the totality of the issue because they don't relate the bucket to the teacup to the thimble, and they don't have any awareness of the role that copper and soyloplasmin and retinol, ding, ding, ding. Vitamin A is critically important for making copper bioavailable and for ensuring the synthesis of transferrin, the transport protein for iron called transferrin, the gene is activated by retinol. Well, that's a good thing to know. What are most people eating today? A low fat diet. Why are they eating a low fat diet? Because they're afraid they're going to get fat or it's going to cause heart disease. And so we're still burning the 65 years of being hijacked. When Eisenhower had his first heart attack, Ansel Key said, no more fat in the diet. And people stopped eating retinol. They stopped eating butter. They stopped eating eggs, right? These are really rich sources of retinol in the diet. And now everyone, you know, I still do my research at Starbucks and I love to listen to people order their skinny lattes. Why are they ordering skinny lattes? Because they're afraid of the heavy cream that should be in their drink. And so we've lost this rich source of nutrients, particularly retinol, that fires up the copper pumps that fire up the ability to regulate iron. And so way too much attention is being placed on ferritin as a marker in the absence of these other markers that we're talking about. You need to look at the totality of markers, not key off of one. And so if I have a client who has a normal hemoglobin and a normal serum iron and their ferritin is low, that's a very different discussion than if all three of their markers are low. And it's very rare that someone presents with low hemoglobin, low ferritin and low serum iron. That is a very rare event and people are being misled and mis -said. A pack of lies about ferritin being a viable, reliable marker for iron status just ain't so.

Melanie Avalon:
Going back to the copper, historically, what were we getting copper from in our diet?

Morley Robbins:
nuts, seeds, shellfish in a mollus, organ meats, leafy greens would have been the richest sources. There's some famous studies that were done in the 1920s about the relationship between copper and iron. Two studies in particular in my routinely referenced were done in 1928, March at the University of Kentucky, and then May at the University of Kentucky by James McCarg and his team. He was an agricultural scientist. And they both were zeroing in on the essentiality of copper to enable proper hemoglobin synthesis. And if copper is denied, iron builds up in the animals with it. Both came to the same conclusion. Cornerstone studies that are unfortunately not taught. But Dr. McCarg also studied, and this was in 1925, and I know I drive people crazy, they're like, you know, what's new? Like, I don't care what's new. I like to know what's enduring. Let's go back in time. And so in 1925, he was studying the foods that were rich in retinal and copper. And it's absolutely very entertaining. Because when I was a little boy, I grew up in Baltimore. We got our dairy from Cloverland Dairy. And this was the jingle that I grew up with.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. You're going to sing? Yeah. I'm ready. I'm ready.

Morley Robbins:
milk and butter and eggs and cheese, fresh from the farm to you. If you don't order a cow, call Cloverland now. Northfield nine, two, two, two, two. Well, I'm never gonna make it on Broadway, right? But I remember that, I remember that jingle and guess what the foods were that Dr. McCard identified in 1925 as rich sources of copper in Rat's mouth. Milk, butter, eggs, and cottage cheese and we've lost all of those foods. People are dairy intolerant, people are afraid of butter, so they use spread, which is basically poison. Eggs, people are, they're kind of easy -deasy about the eggs and cheeses, when was the last time you had cottage cheese? Do you even remember when you had cottage cheese?

Melanie Avalon:
I actually, okay, I love cottage cheese and I went through a period of time where I started making my own. So I'm a bad person to ask for this as a case study, but yeah, it's definitely, I feel like it, it definitely, nobody was eating it. And then it kind of came back in favor a little bit with all these TikTok videos and such. But the thing is,

Morley Robbins:
Because the challenge we face now, Melanie, is finding full fat anything.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, that's very true.

Morley Robbins:
Everything's low fat, and people don't understand how essential fat is for our metabolism. And there's actually two axes that run in the body. There's a sugar -iron axis, and there's a fat -copper axis. And there's a very powerful relationship between sugar and iron. And here's an example of it. When insulin presents to a fat cell, to an adipocyte, you sitting down? Yes. When insulin presents to a fat cell, there's a two- to three -fold increase in iron uptake in that fat cell. Well, that's the start of insulin resistance. Ding, ding, ding. And then on the other axis, you cannot absorb copper. If you don't have fat in your diet, and the flip side is you cannot metabolize fat if you don't have copper in your tissue. So people don't realize how diametrically opposed these metal zones and these sources of nutrients. And so I read hundreds and hundreds of articles talking about the mechanics and the metabolism of our mitochondria. I mean, hundreds. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've lost count. I have read exactly one article, one article that told me how much ATP is made when you burn fat. All of the others always reference glucose and never mention the fact that the mitochondria love to burn fat. And that's why we're challenged today is people don't understand the fuel. They know what fuel to put in their car. They have no idea what fuel to put in their body.

Melanie Avalon:
My one caveat to that is that, or my thought about it is, I agree so much about the importance of these fats and nutrients and them being a preferred source of fuel. I get nervous because of how saturated our diet is in processed foods and sugar that if a person is eating a highly processed diet, high in sugar, and then they're told to just add fat to that without switching out fat. I wonder how many of the benefits do they get because they're getting those nutrients versus how much are they just creating more metabolic problems by just adding fat to the system.

Morley Robbins:
I, I'm with you. I feel your pain and that's why I usually typically refer people to study or get involved in the Western A Price movement because they have good ground rules and guard rails and they're pretty good about understanding the original dietary requirements for homeosapiens because we live in a very distorted world as you well know.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it's like it requires an entire paradigm shift.

Morley Robbins:
Oh, it does? No question about it.

Melanie Avalon:
And interestingly, so this is just me being a case in of one, but you mentioned earlier that it's rare that a person has that actual presentation of low everything with the iron. And I mean, that was definitely me. I know we talked about this last time, I was shocked. I was on death's door almost with hemoglobin and everything. But interestingly, I don't, I'm not saying this was the solution, but I, because I was really severely anemic, hospitalized, blood transfusions, all the things got a little bit better. And then kind of like you said, had to go back in for transfusions again, because it was, it was presented exactly like you said. Interestingly, I have not had that issue in a few years. And right now, the primary food I eat as my, the bulk of my food is shellfish, interestingly. So hopefully that's a little bit helpful in my copper iron regulation status.

Morley Robbins:
So what I think we should do, and I've done this with many podcasters, did it with Joe McCullough, Paul Saladino, Wellness Mama, number of people, let's do a full Monty panel, go through the numbers.

Melanie Avalon:
That would be really exciting. What all does that include?

Morley Robbins:
Well, that would include you're going to get a magnesium RBC, you're going to get hemoglobin, ferritin, serum iron, you're going to get transferrin, percent saturation, copper, ceruloplasma, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin D, uric acid, and a whole bunch of ratios that I do from that. And I can tell you that when we go through those bloodworks, it's electric because people love to see the people that they look up to kind of share their experience and see how both how important but how simple this diagnostic workup is, and it just gives people a very straightforward way of monitoring their well -being going forward.

Melanie Avalon:
That'd be awesome. Maybe we could time it when we have you back on for the next book. We could go over it then. That'd be super. Yeah, that'd be great. And then I think people would, like you said, see what they can practically learn if they do these panels themselves.

Morley Robbins:
My goal is to democratize healing. You know, our ancestors did not have anologist for every part of their body, right? So we need to have a finite set of markers that we need to keep track of to say, how am I doing? And I'm telling you, what causes aging, it's very well chronicled in the literature, what causes aging is iron accumulation. Stem to stern from the minute we're born to the minute we die, we're accumulating iron. So I'm 71 and we gain a milligram of iron every day we're on the planet. So I've got like 27 ,000 milligrams of iron and my metabolism is designed for five. Well, I'm meticulously donating iron, trying to stay on top of that and infusing copper to keep the ratios as healthy as I can. But the average person doesn't know that. And so in the same way that iron causes aging, copper causes longevity. And what's amazing to me is none of the longevity experts talk about it. You don't hear Huber been talking about it. You don't hear Sinclair talking about copper, right? You don't hear Adia talking about copper, do you? And so it's, as I mentioned before we got started, copper is the greatest biohack on the planet for trying to improve someone's health and wellbeing. It's just, it's really, it's surprising that more people don't know what it does and we'll obviously we'll get there, but it's just, it is this little giant that has an incredible reach inside our body.

Melanie Avalon:
Actually, related to that, to copper and aging, we had two related questions. Kelly, she said she wanted to know more about copper in general, which I think we discovered. She says, I want to know if it's really true that copper will reduce or eliminate gray hair. I find that hard to believe. And then Teresa also said, is my gray hair really a sign of copper deficiency?

Morley Robbins:
I think the latter is more the case that when, it's actually pretty simple, when the body is confronted with stress, you know anybody who has stress?

Melanie Avalon:
Just a few.

Morley Robbins:
Just a few, right? Like everybody. So when we have stress in our world, we have oxidative stress in our body. Now, what does that mean? What is this oxidative stress? Well, it's a fancy way of saying rust, but let's get real granule about it. The way we make energy, the way we're designed to make energy is to burn oxygen and turn it into water. It's absolutely amazing. This is happening inside the mitochondria, and one molecule of oxygen, O2, becomes two molecules of water, 2H2O. And when that chemical reaction can only happen at a pH of 7, so we're perfectly balanced, and when it does happen, the mitochondria release three energy precursor molecules called 3ADP, adenosine diphosphate, and then they go over to another complex that's spinning at 500 revolutions per second. That's pretty fast. You could probably do one pair of wet in a second, maybe two, but 500 per second. And each time it goes around one full circle, it's making 3ADP. And so we make our body weight in A2P every day. It's amazing. And so the key is being able to appreciate the energy side of it and to realize that if we're under stress, the mitochondria aren't going to be able to make water as efficiently, and oxidants are given off. It's oxidants with oxygen are oxidants. And so those oxidants with oxygen interact with iron, and they create oxidative stress. Well, the first oxidant that gets made is called superoxide, and that's an oxygen molecule with an extra electron. I think it should be called hyperoxide, but they call it superoxide. And there's an enzyme, a copper enzyme, ding, ding, ding, that turns superoxide into hydrogen peroxide. What is hydrogen peroxide? It's a bleach, right? We used hydrogen peroxide growing up to bleach our hair, right? And so there's another enzyme. There are actually two enzymes. One is called glutathione peroxidase, and the other is called catalase. Both of these are copper -dependent enzymes, and they're often in short supply because copper is in short supply. The body has a preference for SOD, has a priority for making sure that that's working, but there's a hierarchy in the body. And so the hydrogen peroxide doesn't get cleared. It causes a bleaching process. The hair gets whiter and whiter. And so the second question, I think, is more accurate. The path back from gray or white hair to color is a little more involved. Copper is important. You've got to have real B5, not synthetic B5, and spermine might be very important. And I think tryptophan is the other... Spermidine. Spermidine, thank you. Spermidine and tryptophan, and I think you'll get your hair color back. It's not a one -size -does -it -all. There are other factors that need to be involved in that restoration of the haircut.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I've always found it so fascinating. I remember when I learned about the hydrogen peroxide being the cause of the white hair. It's just, it's a little bit mind blowing because I don't know, you would think it would be something that you wouldn't be familiar with, but like you said, everybody knows about hydrogen peroxide and to think that that's actually happening with the whitening, crazy, awesome.

Morley Robbins:
just a few minutes ago or anything new, and then it's like, I think I burst out laughing, right? And so another thing that I've really gotten into is color. Think of it this way. What's important for our health and well -being is that our tissue has integrity. Very, very important. Well, I've identified five different characteristics of integrity. One is color, second is energy, third is frequency. Everything vibrates. Is it humming at the right pitch? Fourth is function. Is it able to do its job? And number five is signaling. Is the tissue able to communicate with the tissue around it? Is it able to produce chemicals that can communicate with themselves? And part of our discussion today will get into that process of signaling, particularly as it relates to hormones and neurotransmitters. But as it relates to color, the heart is supposed to be red. The liver is supposed to be brown. The gallbladder is supposed to be green. And the spleen that nobody knows about is supposed to be the color of an eggplant, purple. It's a very majestic color. There's a lot of energy in the color of purple. And I was sharing this with my students at my RCP Institute a couple months ago. And one of the members of the class is a surgeon. And he said morally, I've never seen a purple spleen. Well, you could have heard a pin drop at that point. Because what that means is that the process of maintaining color requires a critical copper enzyme called tyrosinase. And tyrosinase is what enables melanin to be formed. And melanin is what colors everything from yellow to black. And the darker the tissue, the more melanin that's needed, the more copper that's needed. And so we don't have the ability to look inside our organs. But I'm fearful that we're losing our integrity of our physiology. And one of the things that's missing is the color of the tissue. And there's a very graphic image that I think was Paul Saladino was doing a podcast on birthing and the difference of the color of placenta of a vegan versus a carnivore. And it was striking, absolutely striking how different the vegan was more pink, and the carnivore was more purple. And again, that color has vitality to it. There's functionality to that color. So when people start to lose the color of their hair, when they start to lose their hair, that means that there's something biologically changing in their body. And it's just important for people to know that.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, that is fascinating. I've never contemplated the color, especially the insides of our body. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I don't think we answered Tara's, her second part of her question, how coffee affects iron. Oh. People love their coffee.

Morley Robbins:
And I do too. I mean, I think differently when I have a couple cups of joe in my my cranium I think coffee is the most enigmatic Substance on the planet I can find as many articles extolling the virtues of coffee as I can find them saying oh, it's gonna it's it's gonna be your your needy or your downfall as It relates to copper status. It's gonna get sympathetic nervous system all fired up and That's gonna get adrenaline going it's gonna get noradrenaline going you can't make noradrenaline without copper and so I Would imagine I've never really read an article that just isolated copper and coffee But I would imagine the more caffeine the more potential Impact on on now copper and so I think it's important for people to be aware of that You're gonna lose a lot of minerals with with coffee just because of the increased diuretic effect So you got to be on top of your minerals But I think especially you want to be mindful of magnesium and copper as it relates to coffee status

Melanie Avalon:
Do you know Dave Asprey? Have you tried his danger coffee that's re -mineralized?

Morley Robbins:
I mean, I do bloat coffee all the time, bulletproof, danger coffee. I'm not sure I'm familiar with it.

Melanie Avalon:
So, Bulletproof was his old company before he got kicked out. His new coffee is called Danger Coffee and his selling point for it is that it's remineralized. It's really cool. I love it. It tastes amazing.

Morley Robbins:
I'll try a little bolder finger there and try it because that sounds fascinating.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I'll, I'll send you more information about it. But, and speaking of minerals, so this was actually a really good question we got from Maureen. She said, is it possible to get too many minerals? She said, for example, if I drink minerals in my coffee, she might actually be talking about the danger coffee. She said, and I have an athletic greens drink in the same day, are additional supplements still needed? She kind of asked two questions. She said, can she get too much, but also does she need more? How can people know, you know, like how can people know what they're getting with their minerals and if they do anymore?

Morley Robbins:
Yeah, no, that's a great way to approach it. The backdrop is most of the food that's being grown is being grown in dirt, not soil. So what makes soil is minerals and microbes. So it's, you know, we got to be mindful that the food we're eating and ingesting is compromised. So I think being aware of the need for minerals is very important. So she obviously knows that. Is there a point where you can get too much? Absolutely. I mean, I think the body is designed to regulate itself. Believe it or not, the body's pretty smart. And if it senses it's getting too much, you're going to get a physiological response. You're probably going to either get nausea or diarrhea. And so, you know, what really got me started on this whole journey years and years ago, after I read Carolyn Dean's book, The Magnesium Miracle, I wanted to find a source of magnesium that didn't cause diarrhea. And that's really what got me to Jigsaw Health, because that was their tagline then, you know, finally a magnesium that doesn't cause diarrhea, we shit you not. And it was, it was very least, they used to wear these big giant rolls of toilet paper at the extreme conditions. The part that people have been trained to believe is that, as it relates to copper, that it's toxic. And it's alarming that people believe that. I understand why they believe it because it's constantly in the airwaves and on the internet and things like that. But what's important for people to realize is there's elegant regulation of copper. And what copper does, second to none, copper's purpose on this planet is to regulate oxygen and iron without creating static. It's a really big deal. And the average listener doesn't fully understand what I just said. It's just that when iron and oxygen get together, they like to create rust. They react with each other. And copper prevents that reaction. And so when people think they have, quote, copper toxicity, because they've got some level of upset stomach or maybe they've got a headache, what they don't realize, Melanie, is that copper is really good at mobilizing iron. And where does iron hang out? In the stomach and in the brain. And when copper gets into the system, it will mobilize that iron. And it will cause you to feel differently. But what you've got to do is keep your wits about you and realize that if you've never had copper in your diet and then you suddenly start to work with a biolevel before the copper supplement, what I've developed, like the Recuperate IQ, you're going to have a reaction and your body will adjust to it and you will settle down. But I think what people need to do is be more curious than concerned and just wonder, what is my body trying to tell me about my mental status? And I think the most important thing is for people to embrace the fact that the body is incredibly intelligent. It really knows what it's doing. And when you bring the right nutrients, which are laying out in the root cause protocol, when you bring the right nutrients into the body, the body knows exactly what to do. It activates the blueprint for the metabolism and there is a response on the body's part. So I think what's missing is that people have been trained to believe that their body's stupid and that we as individuals need to override our immune system and our digestive system. We've got to do all the thinking. Well, the hypothalamus that runs the body thinks two million times faster than we can think. And it's just we don't appreciate the elegance and the absolute genius of our body's natural ability to regulate itself.

Melanie Avalon:
Another question about the magmuseum because you mentioned just now you mentioned, you know, trying to find a certain type of magmuseum that doesn't have those bowel effects. So do we need different types of magmuseum? So Diane said, does it matter if you only take one form of magmuseum? Is it better if you take multiple forms?

Morley Robbins:
Great question. So broad categories are four different kinds of magnesium that you can take. Magnesium is found in certain spring waters. The richest reservoir of magnesium on the planet is in Poland. And so if you want to get your magnesium in your spring water, go to a Polish market and buy one. They're like five or six different brands. The magnesium in that water is immediately bioavailable. It's really, really cool. There's another rich source outside of the Bay Area. And so it's not exactly down the street from the Bay Area. You've got to take a hike, but it is available. But magnesium in the water, very, very rich source. Anything that's leafy and green, anything that's green is going to have magnesium. So you're going to get magnesium in your diet. And that's a very effective way to get it. Third is transdermal. So magnesium chloride oil or epsom salts. To restore magnesium status, you're probably going to want to use magnesium chloride oil in your bath. Or if you're trying to detox and trying to take out the aches and pains, use epsom salt. It's a very effective detoxer in that regard. And then we get to the supplemental forms. So there are about 25 different forms of chelated magnesium. Albion Minerals, which is probably the largest mineral manufacturer on the planet, they did a study a number of years ago. And they identified that magnesium malate and magnesium glycinate are the two most bioavailable. When you ingest those forms, you're going to get about 80% of the magnesium that's in that product, which is an exceptionally high amount. I am not bullish on many of the other forms. People in Europe love magnesium gluconate. They love magnesium orotate, is another very popular one in Germany. And so if people want to have some degree of rotation, that's fine. But I've been using either malate or glycinate for as long as I've been doing this work. So that's 15 years. And I've never really had any issues one way or the other. I think people need to be very careful of the citry form, because citry is an endogenous inhibitor of subuloplasmic, which is the master antioxidant protein that is so critical for copper metabolism. So I'm not at all bullish on that. And the other one is Magox 400. People have probably heard that brand, thinking that, oh, I'm going to get 400 milligrams. No. No, that. You're going to get 4% of that. So you're going to get 16 milligrams of magnesium in the serving of Magox 400. And so doctors prescribe it all the time, not knowing that it's a paltry amount of magnesium that actually gets into the body.

Melanie Avalon:
that worked well because Stephanie specifically wanted to know about magnesium glycinate, so I'm glad to hear that. Do you have thoughts on—so in my magnesium 8 supplement, we have magnesium, it's bis -glycinate chelate. Do you have thoughts on that form of it?

Morley Robbins:
That's fine. No, that's okay. It just means that there's too glacy being attached to it.

Melanie Avalon:
And what about the relationship of magnesium with potassium? So Olivia said, I'd like to ask about potassium and how to keep it in balance with magnesium.

Morley Robbins:
Very important. Again, let's go back to the fact that we're all stress balls and I'll invoke Mark Hyman's amazing definition of stress. Stress is the body's inability to make energy for the mind to respond to its environment. That's the essence of stress. And when we're under stress, I coined the phrase, we have an increased magnesium burn rate. And so when you know you're going into a storm, you increase your intake of magnesium and the other electrolytes that are important, obviously would be potassium. And magnesium is the regulator of the electrolytes. So when magnesium goes, it's going to dysregulate all of the other electrolytes. That's important to know. And so when you put a primary emphasis on magnesium, then you don't have to worry as much about the others. Here's the wrinkle that a lot of people don't know about though. A lot of people have been told that they are vitamin D deficient, that the vitamin D is low. And so they have dutifully taken vitamin D supplements. Legendary on this planet, the amount of vitamin D that's been taken in a supplemental form. Very few people are aware of the research of John Ferris, who was a professor of medicine at Yale Medical School. Last time I checked, that's a pretty good school. And in 1962, he wrote a very important article about vitamin D supplements causing renal potassium wasting. What does that mean? It means that when you buy the deception that your vitamin D deficient and start taking that supplement, you're going to mess up your electrolytes, especially your potassium. And I can tell in a nanosecond whether someone's been taking vitamin D or not, because on a hair test, the bar for potassium should be at a 10 and it's usually at a one. I've seen this thousands and thousands and thousands of times. And it's tragic. And what happens is people have been taking that vitamin, not knowing that it's putting stress on magnesium status, but it's depleting potassium status. And so then people get worried that, oh, I've got to get my magnesium back up, not knowing that what that's going to do is put pressure on sodium, because there's a relationship between sodium and magnesium in the body. And that's what runs the adrenals. The relationship of magnesium to sodium is very, very important. And that's why we encourage people who are adopting the root cause protocol to take what are called adrenal cocktails, which have vitamin C. They have vitamin C, whole food vitamin C, but they also have sodium, potassium. And we encourage people to take magnesium as well. And the whole idea is to strengthen the mineral status of the adrenals because they love minerals, especially magnesium, sodium, and potassium. And get fat back in the diet because Tom Cowan caused adrenal fatigue. Fat deficiency syndrome took me years to understand why he went there, but it makes perfect sense given the role that retinol plays to nourish the adrenal glands. And so people who are worried about their potassium status need to be aware of their magnesium status, but they also need to be aware that they're far better off taking cod liver oil so they get a priority focus on retinol. They're going to get some vitamin D and don't ever take vitamin D supplements alone because they prevent the uptake of retinol and they cause potassium wasting. So these are just basic principles that people who adopt the root cause protocol begin to learn these basics, and then they're fine. And they don't have to worry about the balancing act, if you will.

Melanie Avalon:
So the vitamin D thing, and I know we talked about it a bit last time as well, but it's just really, really fascinating as far as optimizing people's vitamin D levels, taking into account this problem with the supplementation. What should people do and what should they actually look for? So Diane wanted to know what is the optimized level of vitamin D. She said her recent test showed her level at 43, but her functional doctor recommends getting it to 80. She said that seems high to me. What should people know about on their blood panel? They should be looking for with vitamin D and then how to get there. Is it just through the sun and maybe tanning booths during the winter? Yeah, no, of course.

Morley Robbins:
It's really important. And so there's two forms of vitamin D. There's a storage form that's always measured, and there's an active form that's very rarely ever measured. There's a range shell. The number for the active form should be about 45. It's measured in pico units as opposed to nano units. But the number for active should be around 45, and the number for storage should be 21. So it's just about a two -to -one ratio of active to storage. What people are going to find is that their practitioner very rarely will ever take the time or the money to measure the active. Why? Because I want you to believe that, well, it's a hormone and the active form doesn't, it only lasts for a little while. Well, that's true for all hormones. Every other hormone that's measured in the human body has a storage and an active component. T3, T4, right? T4 is storage. T3 is active. People have been misled to think that both markers for vitamin D aren't important. They are. I grew up in Baltimore. I think the world of Johns Hopkins, and my nickname, by the way, is Baltimorely. Hopkins came out with some very important research back in 2014. Muhammad Amer did a major all -cause mortality study. What he found, much to everyone's shock, and again, this is pre -COVID, I get it, but pre -COVID, there was no clinical benefit to having storage ding above 21, none. And then we come into insanity of 2020. We've all survived that. We're all looking over our shoulder waiting for the next shoe to drop. And people are all familiar with the spike protein, right? We've heard of it. We know about it. We don't know what it is. We don't really understand what it does. But here's what I do know. And it's a very awkward word. It's homologous, which means similar, almost identical. Really means almost identical. The spike protein is homologous to hepcidin. That's an regular regulator, right? And guess what vitamin D does? It lowers the expression of hepcidin. Now, put on your thinking cap for a minute. We've got zinc pumping up hepcidin, and we have vitamin D lowering hepcidin. You think the body wasn't getting confused as people took the COVID cocktail? But what I think the vitamin D did was it lowered the level of hepcidin, which was responding to whatever the infection was that was going around. And unfortunately, we're not really going to understand what happened four years ago. We're still arguing about what happened with the Spanish flu in the early 1900s. So I think the key is for people to at all worried about their vitamin D, they need to start worrying about their retinal status. Retinal was on the planet a long time before vitamin D came on the planet. We've got photons. What are we going to do with those photons? Vitamin D is a light filter. It sunglasses, folks. It kills the light inside your body. You've got to think it through. It's not doing what you think it's doing. And the individual who really figured this out was Weston E. Price. He measured storage D during the course of the year. When is storage D at its peak during the summer months? When the sunlight is at its peak? When is storage D at its lowest during the winter? When the light is at its lowest. Isn't that interesting? Why would storage D rise with the sun? Because the body can only take so much light. And what is absolutely constant is active D. Active D does not vary through this business. But storage D fluctuates, and less than a price is the one figured that out. And what people don't understand is that storage D gets stored in the liver. It's a storage protein. It's supposed to be stored. Where is it stored? In the liver, it's not supposed to be in the blood. We don't know what the storage level in the liver is. All we know is what's in the blood. And I think one of the greatest mistakes that we face in modern society is thinking that the blood work is representative of what's going on in the tissue. And what I've learned in spades is that the blood is a complete distortion of what's going on in the tissue. And we've gotta stop relying on the blood as this be -all end -all indicator of body status. It is one medium, and it's not as representative as people think it is. So I think what people need to do is learn that there's a relationship where, remember there was a relationship between iron and sugar? Well, there's a relationship between iron and vitamin D. And as you focus more on vitamin D, your iron is gonna get stored more in your tissue, and it's not gonna be available for circulation, for recycling. There's a relationship between vitamin A and copper. And what vitamin A does is it activates copper, it enables it to do the amazing things that it does, and by virtue of its ability to make transferrin, it ensures the circulation of iron. They have very opposing effects. And so the simplest thing for people to do is take cod liver well, and during the summer months, take advantage of the sunlight so you can store it, and start to learn about your vitamin A status, and where vitamin D should be around 21, I like to see retinol around 65. So there's a three -to -one ratio of A to D. And people have gotta start embracing the idea that the body runs in pairs. There's a yin -yang to the body, magnesium and calcium, copper and iron, vitamin A and vitamin D, sodium and potassium. These ratios are critically important inside the body, and we have been led down this path of monofocus

Speaker 3
Oh, your iron is low. Oh, your D is low. Oh, your calcium is coming out too fast.

Morley Robbins:
You've never known that it was important to say, well, what if my iron is low? What's my copper status? If my D is low, what's my retinal status? If my calcium is not right, what's my magnesium status? And we've got to start asking the parallel questions because then we become more informed about how the body really works.

Melanie Avalon:
And so to clarify one more time for when people are looking at their blood tests, so like if I'm looking at mine right now, mine's the 250H vitamin D, that's the storage. And the other one is one.

Morley Robbins:
125, one color, 25. They typically will make it OH, but it's OH2D3. When they say vitamin D3, that's the active form. If they just say vitamin D, they're talking about the storage.

Melanie Avalon:
You've touched on B vitamins. We did get some questions about that. Katherine, she said, how about high vitamin B6? There's a lot of information on low B12 and B6. I just tested extremely high on B6, 95 .1, where the normal scale was 2 .1 to 21 .7. I think a supplement might have thrown it off, but it is still so high. Vitamin B12 is normal. And then I have a personal question about B12, but B6.

Morley Robbins:
So B vitamins are best found in B pollen and in liver, not from a bottle. Ones that come from a bottle are made from coal tar derivatives. If you want an entertaining afternoon of reading, look at what coal tar derivatives are all about. It's not, they're not your friend. B6 can be easily thrown off by supplements. And in its active form, it's called P5P, pyridine 5 -phosphate. Now what's important for people to know is that there's an enzyme that turns B6 into active P5P. And that enzyme is called P5P oxidase. What does that mean? It means that the body or this enzyme is using oxygen to capturing the energy of the oxygen and enabling a chemical change to take place. Well, the oxidase enzymes all require carbon. And so the active form of B6, P5P, is a copper dependent on nutrient. And the reason why they sell it in the active state, can you guess why they sell it in the active state?

Melanie Avalon:
because that will that's what will show up on the

Morley Robbins:
No, they know you don't have the copper to activate it. That's why they sell it to you in an active state. So, people don't know that. And the other two that are typically singled out are folate and B12. And many years ago, I was talking with a world -renowned cardiologist and copper expert. His name was Wesley Flavey. He's now 90 years old, still going strong, still publishing. And I said, Dr. Flavey, I have this theory that all of the B vitamins are copper dependent and they regulate iron. And without skipping a beat, he said, Morley, I can't speak for all of the B vitamins. But what I can tell you for a fact is that B9 folate is copper dependent. Well, when you learn that, Melanie, that's a game changer. Because what you're going to find out is that folate is very important for synthesizing vitamin D and breaking down vitamin A. And that only happens when there's sunlight. That's the part that people don't know that there's a natural process of making vitamin D that's light dependent, but it's activating folate to do its work, both in terms of creating vitamin D and breaking down retinol into its component parts. They're called retinoic acids. There's four hormones. Vitamin A has nuclear receptors, RARs, RORs, RXRs, RZRs. All these are nuclear receptors that are essential for gene transcription. And that's very, very important. And there are other aspects to retinol metabolism that nobody knows anything about. So then we come to B12. The 1937 Nobel Prize was given to three physicians because they cured anemia and B12 pernicious anemia with the exact same product. Do you remember what it was?

Melanie Avalon:
I do. It was, um, I do. I remember. What does it start with?

Morley Robbins:
beef liver. And so that's where the B vitamins are supposed to be created. They're really crafted in the intestine, but then they're stored in the liver. And three physicians got a Nobel Prize for curing anemia and pernicious B12 anemia with beef liver. Well, that's an important thing to know. And everyone knows about the intrinsic factor. They've heard of an intrinsic factor for B12. Do you know the actual name of it? It actually has a name. And it's a protein called cubulin. C -U -B -I -L -I -N. Now, you know my penchant for playing around with words. So I put a hyphen between the C -U and the rest of the word. Well, it turns out that cubulin is a copper -dependent protein. And that's what transports B12. So if someone has a B12 problem, do they have a B12 problem or do they have a copper problem? And when you look at the symptoms of B12 deficiency and look at the symptoms of copper deficiency, they're almost identical. So people know part of the story. And what I've labored mightily is to try to get a much more complete understanding of what's going on so that people can surrender to that knowledge and know that there is more to the story. And they need to act on that more involved, more complete version of the story so they can move forward with their decision -making.

Melanie Avalon:
And what about the flip side with B12? This was my question because I'm always really, really high on my labs, like around 1500. That means you can't get in. Yeah, that's, you know, what's so funny is I was talking with my doctor about it and he was convinced I was taking it in some form in like a supplement or something. I was like, I don't know, I don't take any supplements. And I told him, I was like, maybe it's not getting into my cells that I did never occur to him. And he was like, maybe. I was like, well, I feel like that's what's happening here.

Morley Robbins:
The 2019 graduating class at UNC Medical School, yeah, it may be a step or two down from Yale, but it's a really good program. I was shocked when I found out, do you know how much nutritional training they got in their four years of medical school? Maybe like an hour. 25 minutes. And so the thing is, they're amazing practitioners. They know what they know, but they don't know what they don't know. And what they don't know, these are the three things that doctors do not know, which I find a little bit alarming. And I'm not just picking on any one branch of doctor, it's all doctors. They don't know how energy is made, they don't know how blood is made, and they don't know how hormones signal each other. And that's the blocking and tackling of human metabolism. And so I think it's really important for people to understand that all three of those actions, making energy, making blood, and making signals are copper dependent. And that's a great place to start. Start to restore the bioavailable copper status. I would, based on your symptoms, Melanie, we've talked about it, I would get that your copper iron metabolism isn't hunky dory, and it isn't hunky dory in the vast majority of people on the planet. Because all of the optics have been on iron for a century, and they have been methodically pulling copper out of the soil, out of the fluid, out of our tissue for a century. Copper deficiency has been the number one nutrient deficiency on the farm for 80 years. That's a long time. And so if the soil that our food is being grown on doesn't have copper, and the other minerals are important, I know I tend to fix eight on one, but it's because of its supremacy. If there isn't adequate levels of bioavailable copper, the whole system comes crashing down. And copper is central to creating energy, clearing exhaust, creating color, creating connectivity, creating the signaling. I mean, I could go on for about 20 minutes. All the copper does that nobody knows about. And what's the fastest way to compromise copper status in the body? Take supplemental iron. And that's the research of Jamie Collins at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He's done preeminent research about using mouse and rat studies. But as soon as you start to introduce supplemental iron at the levels that we take as humans, it begins to weaken and diminish copper metabolism in those animals. Well, people don't know about that. That's why I appreciate the chance to have these types of conversations because you're seeking to get to the truth of them all and help your followers have a much better understanding about what's going on.

Melanie Avalon:
I am so grateful for what you're doing. This makes me happy. I actually never in all of my journeys with iron issues, I, I think I took supplemental iron, like once everybody kept telling me to take it. And I, I just felt, I don't know. I was, I didn't think that was the answer. So I never really took supplemental iron.

Morley Robbins:
Well, that's good. That is a relief to not do that, but you did take infusions, all right?

Melanie Avalon:
I did. So they had that first time like twice. So the first time when it was severe and then but that was blood as well. And then the second time was just the infusions. Yeah, infusions.

Morley Robbins:
So one of my students had 84 iron infusions. Wow. 84. 84. There is a wow to it. And guess what? Now her iron metabolism is perfect. Why? Because she saw the light through the RCP Institute, restored her copper status. And it's an absolute legendary story of grit to come back from that kind of imbalance. And she's not the only one. There are many people who've done that. But there's a lot of confusion out there, as you well know. And I'm very committed and very, I feel this is one of the most important things I can do is help people understand the nuance of this so they don't make that same mistake.

Melanie Avalon:
One quick question about the supplementing the copper. So obviously you have your protocol and how can people follow that?

Morley Robbins:
People can buy the book. So the front half of the book is what's the problem, back half is what's the solution and the protocol is laid out in the book. If you want to just download the handbook itself, you can go to the website, rcp123 .org or the other way to get there is the rootcauseprotocol .com. I like the short way. But go to resources and donate your email. We will honor and protect that. And we'll send you a PDF that's now 83 pages long that has been spiffed up and simplified so that people can really understand why each aspect of the stops and starts is being done. And the other way is to join the RCP community and just be an active member. We have meetings every other week. People get to ask questions. People submitted blood work. I mean, people are constantly wanting to understand how their body really works. And that's what we devoted that community to, is to give them educational material but then to answer their questions. And then people certainly can sign up for the institute itself twice a year. We have a 16 week program. We'll be starting our classes in about 10 days from now. Thursday at the level, I think is the sign up and for the start. But a lot of different ways for people to get it. And of course they want to work with the RCP consultant. They can do that as well. And those people are available on the RCP website as well.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, we will definitely put links to all of that in the show notes, and I really can't encourage people enough to check that out. Especially, I mean, there's just so many questions out there. I have them, people have them, and I can't thank you enough for the clarity that you're bringing with all of this. My question about the copper supplementation was if people are either still nervous about supplementing copper and or nervous about that, what might happen when you're talking about how it releases iron. Can people go super slow and low in the beginning and slowly build up their copper status?

Morley Robbins:
Absolutely. And that's what I encourage people to do. Here's a here's a final case study. We're going to get a kick out of it. And again, it's another one. I get it. It's anecdotal, but it's very illustrative of a client named Paul, who is 87 years old now. And when I started working with him about 18 months ago, he was having all sorts of mammary issues, muscle aches, insomnia. He was not a happy kid. And so we did the hair test, the full Monty iron panel. I walked him through it and I said, you know, Paul, I think you would really benefit from just taking one of the recuperate capsules. So there's two milligrams of copper bisglycinate, along with desiccated beef liver, along with spirulina and some turmeric in that capsule. He said, yeah, that's great. I'll do that. And that was that was fall of 22 was when that took place. Then I'm going to be meeting with him in March of 23. And he did the blood work before the end. And he said it to me. And again, ideal copper level is 100. And his was like 208. Wow. I was like, that's really hot. So I can't wait for the consult. And so you got a picture of this guy. He's about my size, 86 years old, full of them in vigor. And so the consult starts on Zoom. I said, so Paul, I got your blood work. He said, great. I said, you know, I couldn't help but notice that your copper looked a little elevated. And he leans into the camera. He says, I know. Isn't that really amazing? I said, I said, yes, it is. I said, what have you noticed? I mean, I'm in I'm in panicsville. I don't think I'd want to see the cup of the eye. He said, well, Morley, you told me two things in that consult. He said, you said I was in charge. And you said I should start with one capsule. I said, yes, that's exactly what I said. He said, well, I decided to take six. I said, oh, oh, that's 12 milligrams. That's the upper tellable limit according to the NIH. What we're supposed to get in the day is 12. That's the peak of what we're supposed to get. The copper was definitely high. I said, well, given that it's elevated, given that you took that much, what have you noticed? He leans into the camera again. He said, well, Morley, my insomnia is gone. All of my muscle aches gone. My memory is back. I mean, I was just like, I was mesmerized by it. And I've had a subsequent conversation with him six months later. He's doing great. And he is so excited. And he said, I wish I'd found this 30 years ago. So it's just, again, it's an end of one. But there are many people who find that they've been denied this particular nutrient, especially the copper. But they've been denied a lot of nutrients that are really focused on in the RCP. And when they start to phase them in, and again, I'm right there with you. I'm a low and slow kind of guy. And I typically will tell people, start with one capsule, go up to two, see how you feel on three after you've been doing it for a number of weeks, maybe a couple months. I don't want people to have, you know, a rush of sudden change of how they feel. And for the most part, most people do not have any problems. Are there a handful of people who try to get well yesterday? Yeah, that happens all the time. And so we just have to back them off. And the other side of it is, if people suspect that they might have an iron overload in their tissue problem, then they got to start donating blood on a regular basis. And that's the other side of it. We got to lower the iron footprint in the body. And we've increased the copper footprint. And when you start to do that, and do it gently, and do it responsibly, the body responds beautifully to their process.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. I love that story. Oh my goodness. It sounds like something I would do. Maybe not with the copper, but that's like the type of thing.

Morley Robbins:
And it was just, I was shocked from it. We said, and all these symptoms are gone now. I'm like, praise the Lord, right?

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, this has been so enlightening beyond belief. I cannot wait for listeners to hear it, and don't worry listeners, there is a full transcript in the show notes because I know we talked about a lot, and there will also be links to everything. Yeah, congrats again on your book being published, and I'm excited to have you back for that launch. That'll be amazing.

Morley Robbins:
Well, I'm looking forward to it, and then maybe we can carve out a little bit of time. I've always loved to talk about questions that people have, but I would love to also dive into things that copper does that nobody knows about.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Yeah, that would be

Morley Robbins:
and get people to realize that the body has receptors for this protein, ceruloplasma, that, again, I've been studying this for the better part of a decade, and I just discovered eight days ago that there are receptors for ceruloplasma, and that's been a life -changing discovery. So I think it has significant second and third -order implications as it relates to how people need to focus on this.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, that's amazing. I always find it so fascinating when we find things that are new that we just had no idea about. It's crazy. The last question, I don't know if you remember this from last time, but I just ask it on every single episode and it's because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Morley Robbins:
My wife and I live in a condo community in Chapel Hill, and we've been trying for three years to buy a condo here. We've been running for almost five years, yeah. And we just got approval. So we're actually going to, we're going to get a piece of the rock. It's a little tiny condo, but it's like, that's all we need. But it's just to have the peace of mind to know that it's ours. And I'm immensely grateful that we have the community to be a part of, that we have the money to afford it. To look out our window, you'd say there are other condos, because they basically put buildings inside a forest in such a strategic way that you don't really see the other buildings. It's really very, very special. So I'm immensely grateful for that. And I guess the other is being able to have this kind of in -depth conversation with someone who really cares and wants to really understand this. If you and your listeners remember the TV ads, many years ago, were for the Maytag repairman. And it was a guy who was sitting around because the Maytags were so dependable, they never needed a repairman. Well, that's kind of what it's like to be pimping minerals. It's like, it's a pretty lonely job, because mother nature knows what to do with them. And when they work, they work great. And so I find gaps in my day. So I love to have an opportunity like this to spend a couple hours and really dig in and share what I know. And really appreciate what you're doing to try to educate your community, because it's so, so important out there to get people to be more relaxed about how the body works, and to really embrace the kind of the ancient wisdom that has been lost over the ages.

Melanie Avalon:
No, well, thank you, Morley. I love that so, so much. I really can't express enough how grateful I am for everything that you're doing. And it's shocking how people are not talking about this. And you have spent obviously countless, countless eons of hours actually going through the literature and finding all of these secrets that people don't know changing so many lives. So thank you for what you're doing. I'm super excited to keep it going, the conversation going, and bring you back again in the future.

Morley Robbins:
Look forward to it. Thanks so much.

Melanie Avalon:
Have a good rest of your day. You as well. Bye.

Morley Robbins:
Bye -bye.