The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #200 - Morley Robbins

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. It is with a legend in the world of minerals, and friends, if you are interested for a paradigm shift in your world, get ready for today's conversation. The backstory on today's conversation, I actually have been getting requests for quite a while to have a conversation with this man. I'm here today with Morley Robbins, and many people in my Facebook group kept reaching out, saying, have you heard about him? Especially because I actually have a history of anemia, so we can talk about what that actually means. And so, experiencing that and I often talk about my issues with iron supplementation and just fixing that issue. So many people were saying, please get Morley on your show. I think the reason I'm pausing and hesitating is normally now with the shows people reach out to me about coming on, but I think I reached out to you. I think I sought you out I think, I'm pretty sure.

Morley Robbins: Nine months ago.

Melanie Avalon: It's been a while, [laughs] so yeah, I'm pretty sure I did. That's how you know, I mean, I love all the episodes on this show, obviously, but that's how you know, I really, really wanted to have this conversation. So, I read Morley's book. It's called Cu-RE Your Fatigue. But Cure is written like Cu RE. Wait, that's for copper, right?

Morley Robbins: Yes absolutely.

Melanie Avalon: Silly question. The Root Cause and How To Fix It On Your Own. I read the book and okay, there's a lot of stuff in here, a lot of potentially controversial ideas, and like I said, paradigm shifts. So, I have so many questions. I'm really excited to dive in. So, Morley, thank you so much for being here. Also, I wish listeners-- well, I don't wish listeners could see us, but we are having audio issues, so we have a very rogue set up going on right now. Like, I'm literally talking through my phone. Yeah. So, it's a whole thing.

Morley Robbins: We're nimble, we're resilient, we figured out a way to have the conversation, I'm very excited, delighted to be here. I'm sure we're going to have some interesting discussion no doubt.

Melanie Avalon: I think so. To start things off, you do talk about this in your book. For listeners who are not familiar with your work, what led you to doing what you're doing today? Did you have an epiphany one day? What was your role like as a hospital executive? What all happened?

Morley Robbins: Yeah, so a real quick thumbnail sketch. I was born into a very sickly family. My mom was an alcoholic and had three heart attacks and a stroke. My dad was manic depressive with schizophrenic tendencies and just all sorts of aunts and uncles and grandparents were in and out of the hospital. My sister became a nurse while I was supposed to become a doctor, right, so we could take care of the family. Everything was cool until I got to college and realized, "Oh, wow, this is a lot of work." I wasn't quite the academic back then that I am now. In fact, if people saw my college transcript, they'd probably run the other way.

But the thing is, if you can't be a doctor, then you become a hospital executive so you can boss them around. Well, that's the path I took. So, I did that for 12 years. I was never the CEO, but I was always a senior executive and reporting to the CEO and I was focused on planning and strategy and marketing and the growth of the organization. After I did that for a dozen years, then I went into consulting, where I was solving bigger problems for bigger organizations and moving all over the country. I was on the road probably three or four nights a week for 20 years and very stressful lifestyle. And pretty much burned myself out.

But after pulling a suitcase behind my back for 20 years, I created what's called a frozen shoulder, and I couldn't pick my hand up above my waist. I went to a health food store which I had frequented for about 20 years, and they said you need to go see Dr. Liz. Well, that I knew was code for a chiropractor. They said I don't do witchcraft, sell me some supplements and they sold me supplements. They didn't do anything. I was in such pain, I couldn't sleep. Finally, I went back after couple of months. I said you must have something stronger. The owner of the store looked me in the eye and she said, "Morley, we love you. Go see Dr. Liz." With my tail between my legs, I went to see Dr. Liz, who is now my wife. So, it was a rather monumental experience. But she healed my frozen shoulder by going on the TMJ joint, where there's a muscle in the joint inside of your mouth.

And with the full weight of her body, she pushed on that. As she pressed on that, my arm lifted. It was as close to a miracle as I've ever been. I couldn't believe how much pain relief there was. One thing led to another and I became her Girl Friday for two years. It was a fascinating experience to be in a chiropractor's office helping to run the show. But I was able to do research, and for some reason I was drawn to minerals. I don't know. I really, to this day, Melanie, I don't know what the real initial attraction was, but somehow, I honed in on magnesium.

Then I honed in on the fact that magnesium has a relationship with iron, iron has a relationship with oxygen. Oh, my gosh, there's this thing called copper and that was 14 years ago and it's been a whirlwind of daily research, 2 to 3 hours a day seven days a week for 14 years. I'm just amazed at what I've learned, what I've been able to share with people, and it's led to what's called The Root Cause Protocol, which is described in the book Cu-RE Your Fatigue. The front half of that book for those who are interested, is "What's the problem?" and the back half is "How to solve it." It's a very different paradigm as you're alluded to. But I think what keeps me coming back is every day I learn something new. I'm absolutely humbled by how much there is that I don't know. It is a miracle that none of this information is taught in doctor school. I think that's part of the kind of crazy world that we live in. But I think if people knew how straightforward our physiology is and how mineral dependent it is, they'd be running down the streets like their hair was on fire saying, "Why haven't they told us this?" There's no economic incentive to tell people how the body really works. And so, we're left in this very nefarious, Byzantine state of fear coupled with poor-- The quality of the food, as you know is just Byzantine bankrupt and corrupt. People are just not aware of what it takes to ensure and guarantee healthy metabolism. So, it's just been an ongoing process.

Melanie Avalon: That is an incredible origin story. I have a really quick question, I don't mean to go on an entire tangent, but I just learned the other day hospitals, are the majority of them actually privately owned. like, they're not a government institution?

Morley Robbins: Oh, yeah, absolutely. They're private. There's a small segment that are owned by county governments or maybe state governments, but for the most part, the vast majority are privately owned.

Melanie Avalon: That's really interesting. I think that's a paradigm shift for people. I think most people assume it's all government.

Morley Robbins: I think the thing that people need to know, and again, people can say I'm a conspiracist, but I'm not when I can prove it. But people need to know that the money you have in your checking account is not yours, it's the banks, and that came by way of the Patriot Act. But what happened during COVID is when you go into a hospital and you sign the forms that they give, you're waiving all of your rights. I think it's important for people to know how draconian it has become in the hospital setting. So, it's just a word of warning. When people do go to the hospital, I want you to know what you're up against. First thing they're going to do is give you antibiotics. There's going to be some procedure usually that involves surgery. There's going to be pain medications that involve fluoride, and you're going to get the worst food you've ever had in your lifetime and no sleep. Those five assaults are really devastating to the healing process.

Melanie Avalon: Well, I mean, to that point, I will say and it's relevant and extremely relevant to today's episode. The time that I was admitted and hospitalized for multiple days it was for anemia, so it was for blood transfusions. I'm very grateful because they-- and we can maybe circle back to this later because that did really help me. But the experience there was like, I think I still have so much trauma from it. I was like, "I'm never being admitted to the hospital again." We can circle back to all of that.

Morley Robbins: I think that would be a really important cornerstone of this conversation.

Melanie Avalon: We can definitely circle back to that. So, a foundational question to get started. I find this really interesting. Do you think there are a lot of parallel universes where different minerals and vitamins are focused on? And what I mean by that is there are so many vitamins, so many minerals. You talk in your book about how there's like 92 known minerals, but for some reason, or maybe there is a reason, we focus on a few key ones, I feel like. So why do you think that is? Are we focusing on the right ones? What are we not focusing on? Could it have been a different way?

Morley Robbins: Absolutely. What people listening to this conversation can't see is, it's a beautiful piece of artwork that's in the shape of a triangle. It's actually depicting Egyptian healing. It's a really cool piece of artwork. In any event, it's a triangle for a reason because there's a hierarchy. I'm absolutely convinced that even though there're 92 minerals in the sea and there's 82 that are really important for our body, only three that we really have to keep track of, and those are magnesium, iron, and what I call bioavailable copper. It isn't that I'm discounting the importance of things like selenium or boron or calcium or the electrolytes, what have you?

When you start to try to focus on 82 minerals, it's overwhelming. One of the anachronyms that I created as a consultant, I turned the word focus into a strategy for my clients. The word FOCUS stands for Finite Objectives Create Unlimited Success. And when I got my clients to focus on two or three objectives, they had amazing results in their organization because they could communicate two or three ideas from the C suite all the way down to the personnel that are keeping the hallways clean.

I think what is missing in medicine and nutrition is that sense of focus, sense of priority, sense of rank order of importance. The tragedy we've got, Melanie, is over the course of the last century, there's been this inordinate focus on iron, sugar, and vitamin D, and people don't realize what that has done to copper and fat metabolism and retinol, which it basically runs the body. But vitamin D has been glorified and vaulted into this amazing status as a nutrient, when in fact, it's regulated by retinol. All of the attributes of vitamin D, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive for vitamin D are just a misnomer because it's not storage D that matters, it's active D.

A lot of people don't know there're two different forms of vitamin D, but storage, think of storage D as parked cars. Think of active D as cars on the Autobahn. There's a big difference. Have you ever been on the Autobah? It's an amazing experience, going 120 miles an hour and you're kind of standing still. So, active D is where it's at. But active D needs a driver. It's called VDR, vitamin D receptor and that's magnesium dependent. They need a nuclear receptor called RXR, retinoid X receptor which requires retinol in the diet.

Well, if you're pounding down high doses of vitamin D, the receptor for uptake is binary and it can't take both A and D, it's got to decide. If you're flooding the body and the diet with D, which has been the mainstream objective for the last 20 years, you are not letting any retinol into the system and therefore you can't create retinol.

So that the triad, active D, vitamin D receptor, and RXR, that triad is what's essential to make the immune system different. Nobody knows about those levels of details. All the optics are on storage D. Well, storage D doesn't always turn into active D. It gets into a very uncomfortable realm because over the last three years, as we well know, people have been wildly distracted by taking certain supplements to avoid a certain condition. And what people didn't know is that a cocktail of ascorbic acid, vitamin D, and zinc destroys the bioavailability of copper.

Well, the meme that runs medicine, the meme that runs nutrition is you're anemic and you're copper toxic and that's narrative. The truth is the world has become completely copper deficient and they are drowning in iron. The reason why it's such a controversy is when you were told that you were anemic, it wasn't a lack of iron in your body, it was a lack of iron in your bloodstream. And the iron was stuck in the recycling macrophages in your liver and spleen because no one ever told you that the iron recycling system has a back door. The door is called ferroportin, iron doorway, ferroportin.

And ferroportin requires a copper dormant and if you don't have copper in your diet and you don't have copper in your tissue, the iron recycling system can't work right, and then the iron is going to start to look low in the bloodstream. The reason why this is so important is that every second of every day, we need to make 2.5 million new red blood cells because every second, 2.5 million are dying. In the course of 24 hours, we need to make over 2 trillion red blood cells. Trust me, that's a lot of red blood cells. But what will surprise you and what will surprise your audience is that it only takes 25 mg of iron to replace 2 trillion red blood cells.

Now, the average person should have about 4000 mg of iron. So, 25 of 4000 is what's needed to replace the iron that's in 70% of the body iron. I'm throwing out a lot of numbers, I'm hoping you're following. The bulk of iron in the human body is tied up in red blood cells. It's 70%, it's a bucket of iron and then there's a teacup of iron called ferritin and that's a storage protein for iron that's supposed to be inside the cells. It is not supposed to show up in the blood. The ferritin that shows up in the blood is empty shotgun shells. Not my idea. The work of some of the most preeminent hematologists on the planet and so people don't realize what's really going on. And then there's a thimble of iron and it's called serum iron. Very tiny, it's 1/10% of 1% of the iron in the body is tied up in what's called searum and that's the seawater that red blood cells swim in.

So, when you spell it S-E-A-R-U-M you'll remember that's the seawater and it's supposed to have the mineral composition of seawater. I don't think that happens in today's world. But the point is depending upon what marker the practitioner used for you would have dictated why there may have been a complete misunderstanding about your iron status and when you got the infusion you felt better probably for about six weeks. And this has been well studied. Probably the best example of studying this was by Robert Hodges in 1978, and it was a three yearlong study of the reality of beta-carotene and retinol versus iron infusions as to which really drove hemoglobin recovery.

It's a very important study for people to know about because iron infusions will work. But it's a very temporary dynamic. And what is a permanent solution is having retinol and bioavailable copper to run and regulate every facet of iron metabolism. And that's a very unique point of view that is based on 14 years of research and reading and reflection. I would add case studies with thousands of clients over the last 10 years. Does that make sense? I just downloaded a lot of information and I apologize, but I think it's important for people to really question the narrative of mainstream medicine, even alternative medicine because I don't think people understand the true relationship between copper and iron.

Melanie Avalon: No, this is great and I have so many follow-up questions. Before getting more into the iron part, going back to the vitamin D piece, when people get a vitamin D test, that is the serum vitamin D and I'm assuming that's the storage form. So, what do you think is happening? Because especially with COVID and they were doing this beforehand as well, but there's been a lot of studies on vitamin D status and, like, susceptibility to COVID or COVID recovery, and they typically conclude that higher vitamin D is protective or helping. So, what do you think is happening in those situations?

Morley Robbins: Yeah, I've been studying this for about four years trying to figure out what it is. I think I may be on the cusp of-- I've got my foot in the door now. Folks have heard of gout. We think about relatives in the past or we may have had direct experience with it. But gout is a very serious problem right now in society based on the dysregulation of uric acid and what I just learned. What's, today? Yeah, Wednesday. On Monday-- [laughs] It's called just-in-time learning. On Monday, I learned that vitamin D inhibits uric acid metabolism. And that's not a good thing. I mean, it's a big deal, Melanie, and this is my working hypothesis. It's probably going to take me six months to piece all this together as one person says, "Morley, you're a student of your own work." And that's true. I keep chipping away at issues until I feel confident about them.

But I have a feeling that what we witnessed between 2020 and 2022 was a suppression of uric acid that allowed people to deal with the condition. What people need to understand is that uric acid is like, it's the size of Mount Everest. It turns out that uric acid is what's behind all metabolic syndrome that involves cancer, heart disease, fatty liver disease, PCOS. You name the metabolic condition and uric acid is in the thick of it. When people hear uric acid, they think gout, and they think, "Well, I don't have gout." Well, gout is the top one inch of Mount Everest. The other 19,000ft is metabolic syndrome. We've got to move away from this narrowcasting that runs conventional medicine if this and that. I think the dynamic about how did vitamin D save so and so, I think it's because it suppressed the creation of excess uric acid and there's some very compelling research to back that up. But again, we're still early in the hunt.

The other thing for people to know is that both vitamin A and vitamin D have tremendous sway over the immune system. A great article for the gear heads out there is by Mawson 2012, and it's a study of vitamins A and D with influenza a very relevant study for people. What you'll find is that vitamin D suppresses the immune system, vitamin A downregulates the immune system. There's a big difference between suppression and downregulation. Suppression would be if one of your kids starts to act out, you grab them by the hand and you take them to their room, you lock the door and you don't let them out for a couple of hours. That's called suppressing bad behavior. Downregulating and I have done this. You put your forehead on their forehead and you say, I know you're upset. Let's go in the other room and let's talk about it. It has a magical effect on calming them down. And that's exactly how primates communicate. I don't know whether people knew that, it's forehead to forehead to get that physical contact, but the thing is, what I think is important for people to do is learn to question the narrative.

Mark Twain said it best, "If you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to switch sides." And what should make everyone really nervous is that both allopathic and alternative practitioners agree on vitamin D. But never talk about retinol. And that should make everyone really nervous because when you get into the real bowels of human physiology, you're going to learn how important retinoic acids are and how important nuclear receptors are, and how important just retinol in and of itself, which is a critical component of the mitochondria inside the electron transport chain.

And if you're not familiar with Hammerling's 2016 study on vitamin A, then you're going to be really excited to find out how electrons ride down the tail of retinol between complex three and complex four. It's mind-blowing. The other thing that people don't know about is that it's a well-known fact that a lack of retinol causes cancer. That's an established fact. What most people don't know is when was that first published, 1925, Montrose T. Burrows got his MD degree at Hopkins in 1909 and was working at the Rockefeller Institute. So, everyone should be sitting up and taking notice right now.

Four articles in 1926 about retinol deficiency causing cancer. Johannes Fibiger, who won the Nobel Prize in 1926, wrote a very important article in 1927 about this very same topic. It turns out that lack of retinol is what causes the Warburg effect. There's a lot of information out there that people may not be familiar with. And one of my very dear friends is a pastor named Joey Foster and he was taught by his mentor the importance of missing information equals missing truth.

So, that's a big deal. If you don't know this fact or that fact, it really changes your understanding of the overall gestalt. Let me give you an example, Melanie because this is something that I learned just yesterday morning. We have 100 trillion cells in our body, give or take a few billion, but 100 trillion cells, which means we have 100 trillion nuclei, right. Because every cell is going to have-- "Well, I should actually revise that." The 25% of those cells are red blood cells and they do not have a nucleus. 750 billion of those cells has a nucleus. Now put on your thinking cap, what would you guess is the metal that has the highest concentration in the nucleus of the cell?

Melanie Avalon: The metal, is it going to be copper?

Morley Robbins: Yep. Ding, ding, ding. Very good. You now know more than 99.9% of all doctors on the planet. And think about it, the nucleus of the cell is dominated by copper. The other piece that people probably don't know about is they may know what ferritin is, the storage protein. Well, that storage protein is not just found in the blood. As I said earlier, it should not be in the blood, but it's found in the blood. But it's found in the cells and it's found in the mitochondria, but it's also found in the nucleus.

Well, there're two forms of ferritin in the body. Think of it as vanilla and chocolate. Vanilla is called light chain, ferritin light chain. It's a very dysfunctional form of iron storage. The fully functional form, the chocolate form, is called ferritin heavy chain. Well, ferritin heavy chain requires copper because it requires the ferroxidase enzyme function.

Now, when ferroxidase is not functioning in the nucleus, you think it goes to plan B, which is a light chain. And the movement of iron in the light chain ferritin creates a lot of static, a lot of sparks. It's like a square peg in a round hole. There we have the origin of gene defects. And it's absolutely amazing that we're living in this world now where we're being told that we are genetically broken, but they forgot to tell us that copper runs histone metabolism, that copper runs transcription, that copper regulates iron storage in the nucleus and probably 100 things we don't know and we're supposed to believe that we are genetically modified. Once you learn that copper dominates the nucleus, then you need to start to question the narrative because no one's talking about this, are they?

Melanie Avalon: No. And for listeners, I had Dr. Perlmutter on the show for his book, Drop Acid. If people want to learn more about uric acid, we talked all about that, so I'll put a link to that.

Morley Robbins: Well, let me just say real quickly, I've identified 12 mechanisms that are copper directed that stop the need for Dr. Johnson and Dr. Perlmutter to write their books.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, what do you mean?

Morley Robbins: What they are talking about is polyol pathway. I'm sure Dr. Perlmutter talked about the polyol pathway. The first enzyme is called aldose reductase and aldose reductase turns glucose into sorbitol. Okay, sorbitol is not your friend. Sorbitol chelates copper. What Big Pharma is really good about is making what are called aldose reductase inhibitors, right, stop that enzyme. Well, guess what Mother Nature's aldose reductase inhibitor is copper. Always has been. What I learned as I was researching this subject matter, and I don't want to get lost on the tangent, but I just want people to realize, as you noted, there is a parallel universe, and there is the narrative, and there is nature.

What triggers the polyol pathway isn't just fructose in our diet. I think one of the most important contributions to science is Rich Johnson's book, Nature Wants Us to Be Fat. He identifies the fact that there's an endogenous production of fructose, which is, I think, a major big deal. But the other driver of the polyol pathway is what's called hyperglycemia, high sugars in the diet, high sugars in the blood. And there's a term called glucose intolerance, the inability to clear sugars from the blood.

A very important copper researcher, his name is Leslie Klevay. He's still alive, he's probably approaching 90 years of age now, but he was an MD PhD. He just published a major article last October on chronic copper deficiency. Leslie Klevay, K-L-E-V-A-Y. But in 1986, he wrote a very important article about hyperglycemia and copper deficiency. See, most people listening to this show have been trained like circus bears to believe that insulin is what clears sugar out of the bloodstream. Well, insulin is the backup plan. It turns out it's copper that clears the sugars. The people who are most glucose intolerant are people who have what's called Menkes disease, and Menkes disease is a genetic disorder where the body's not able to load copper into enzymes and there's a true metabolic deficiency of copper and those children usually die by the time they're five years of age. The issue is that it was 1980 when they identified the fact that Menkes' children are the most glucose-intolerant people on the planet. Then we find out, "Okay, so what triggers the polyol pathway?" Hyperglycemia, the inability to remove that copper. What turns out, if you have copper, you don't have hyperglycemia, and then you don't trigger the polyol pathway. Neither Dr. Johnson or Dr. Perlmutter, talk about that in their book. They don't talk about the fact that the enzyme xanthine oxidase, which is what creates uric acid, is stopped by superoxide dismutase and that's a copper-dependent enzyme.

They don't talk about the fact that there is a reversal pathway to try to regain energy production within the polyol pathway. It's copper dependent. Again, as I've said, I've identified 12 different mechanisms to stop that dynamic with creating hyperuricemia, high uric acid, but you need to know about copper to do that. That's the piece of the puzzle that's missing across the board in the world of nutrition, alternative healing, and traditional healing, conventional healing.

Melanie Avalon: I'm pretty good friends with Rick Johnson. I was actually just emailing him yesterday. He's coming back on for some work he's doing with Perlmutter about fructose and Alzheimer's, actually.

Morley Robbins: I think they're both very gifted physicians and authors of their own right, but they're not, and I say this with affection, their degree is MD? What it stands for is mineral denialist. And, they've never been taught about minerals. The tragedy is so many doctors have an incomplete education and they don't know to question it. It never occurred to them that maybe they didn't get a complete education because they had so much they had to learn, right. But what they've not done, once they got their training, they never questioned the narrative. And that's where humanity finds itself between a rock and a hard place now is no one has questioned the narrative. For whatever reason, I have a broken gene there and I've been questioning the narrative my whole life.

Melanie Avalon: I will definitely email Rick Johnson this copper information. He's so kind and so nice and he loves reading stuff. I'm going to send this to him and see what he says.

Morley Robbins: Well, I'm actually working on an email for him and maybe what I can do is send it to you.

Melanie Avalon: Like, I can introduce you guys personally if you would like-- if you haven't--

Morley Robbins: No, I've not had a chance that con--

Melanie Avalon: Oh, he's wonderful. I love him.

Morley Robbins: See, I would love to have that conversation because he comes across as a very curious, sincere researcher. He's amazing, but there's a curtain, and he's not pulled the curtain back. Well, how do we spell curtain? Cu-rtain. And so, we just have to pull the curtain back and I think he'll be genuinely excited to learn what's really going on inside the body.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, he will. It comes across he's like the type, he's like the researcher scientist who you email, and you feel like you're just talking to an excited kid. Like, he's so great.

Morley Robbins: Oh, totally. I can believe that. That would be a lot of fun to have that opportunity.

Melanie Avalon: I'll connect you guys after this. Okay. Coming back to the picture and all of that, so I do have some questions about that. I was actually wondering, though, just because it is so fascinating, and I think it paints a really good picture of the role of copper and what it actually can do, can you talk about the great oxygen event? [Morley laughs] This blew my mind.

Morley Robbins: Yeah, it did, mine. Just so people have a sense of where this came from, I had a distinct honor. One of my colleagues paid for a day of consulting with Michael Greenberg, who's a major player in the world of natural healing as a consultant. He told me at the beginning of our conversation, he says, you know Morley, people are always asking me, "Hey, Michael, what's new? What's new?" He said it got me to realize that I need to ask what's enduring? And I thought about that conversation. I said, "You know for some reason because I was inspired by his observation," I said, "I wonder if oxygen has always been on planet Earth." And lo and behold it hasn't. I was like, "Wow, that's amazing."

So, again, people have varying opinions about how long the Earth has been here, but we'll play with the timeline of the astrobiologists and it goes back billions and billions of years ago, so they say. "But what we learn is that about 3.2 billion years ago, cyanobacteria in the primordial sea started to engage with the sun." This big orb of light. And as they did that, they were engaging in what's called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a fascinating process, we don't need to get into it, but I can tell you it's copper dependent. There're two systems photosystem I, photosystem II, turns out II precedes I.

But there's a bridge between photosystem II to get to photosystem I and that requires copper. As the photosystem was engaged, it was splitting water to make hydrogen and oxygen. When there was 1/10% of 1% oxygen in the atmosphere, because the oxygen would first start to go into the water, and then it went out into the atmosphere. When it was 1/10% of 1%, it wiped out 99% of life on the planet because it was all anaerobic without oxygen.

Now, we live in an environment where the air we breathe has about 21% oxygen and has been rising steadily for a long time. But what's important for people to understand is that there are three chemicals that evolved as a result of that oxygen in the air, and all three are copper dependent. There's a whole class of enzymes called multicopper oxidases. An oxidase means it's using oxygen. It's taking advantage of the energy of the oxygen molecule. What these multicopper oxidases do is turn oxygen, O2 into two molecules of water, 2 H2O in one fell swoop and it's absolutely amazing the oxygen molecules being split, four hydrogen protons are being added, four electrons are being added, and voila, in the blink of an eye, we've got water, two molecules of water. To give you a sense of why this is important is there's a thousand different types of multicopper oxidases in our gut?

Oh, well, that might be important to know. So, multicopper oxidases, another chemical that was created is called melatonin. It's not just a sleep hormone, it's the master antioxidant of the mitochondria. What evolved over a long period of time was the development of our mitochondria. They're called purple bacteria. There was a point where, if you will, the precursor to the human cells captured the purple bacteria and took it as a source of energy. It's a fascinating period of time, but the point is, the melatonin is absolutely essential to keep homeostasis inside the mitochondria, it's copper dependent.

And then the third chemical that appeared that everyone's heard of is called cholesterol. What most people don't know is that it takes eleven molecules of oxygen to make one molecule of cholesterol. So, cholesterol is essentially an oxygen sink. When you think back to the beginning of the great oxygen event, where there's all this oxygen, it would be really advisable to have a chemical that could absorb that oxygen so it doesn't cause rusting. Because this oxygen interacting with iron is going to cause rust.

This chemical called cholesterol has been around since the beginning of time. It's not a disease. It's a misunderstanding of how copper deficiency causes cholesterol to rise. And why does that happen? Because copper has a unique ability to run and regulate iron and oxygen at the same time. The reason why copper is so important and it does go back to the beginning of time, is that copper creates energy. Copper clears exhaust, copper catalyzes enzymes, especially the oxidase enzymes and copper and this is important for the COVID era. Copper combats enemies, every pathogen on the planet caves in the presence of copper

There were only about five to seven articles during that 2020 to 2022 time period that talked about that. I identified 52 articles that clearly indicated that copper runs and regulates the immune system. And we have to be very careful about our source of information and our gullibility factor. To what extent do we believe the narrative? I'm hoping that people are increasingly questioning and doubtful about the narrative because it has misled us for a long time. And the catchphrase that I use is "We have been misled and we have been misfed and we're in a world of hurt as a global population because of it."

Melanie Avalon: Wow, okay. This is so much information. On the cholesterol front, does that mean people with higher cholesterol have lower oxidative stress?

Morley Robbins: Well, maybe and that's a great question, Melanie. I think we don't have enough information. We don't know what their copper status is, we don't know what their iron status is, we don't know what their vitamin A and D status is, but the most important thing around cholesterol is to what extent is the LDL, the low-density lipoprotein? To what extent is that being oxidized by excess iron in the bloodstream? That was the bad guy all along. It was never cholesterol. It was the iron that causes rust. So, what stops that rust is copper. The master antioxidant protein is called ceruloplasmin. It's a very important protein, has 1066 amino acids, has 20 copper binding sites on its gene. That's a big deal, 20 copper binding sites? Are you kidding? It's just taken at face value. It's a big deal. The model that runs Big Pharma is one gene, one protein, one function. And we've been trained to believe that's how it works. But ceruloplasmin is one gene, one protein, 20 functions. That's a very different model, very threatening to the conventional worldview. What's missing in our vocabulary is the word ceruloplasmin and the dozens of enzyme functions that it's capable of expressing. What the listeners might find fascinating is that one of the most important enzyme functions of ceruloplasmin is called ferroxidase.

And what that enzyme does is it turns iron that's +2 into iron that is +3. It's oxidizing. It's taking away an electron, but it's enabling that iron in the ferric form to be either loaded onto transparent, so it can engage in the recycling program or it can be loaded into ferritin so it can be stored for safe access for later. Well, that enzyme function would be instrumental for practitioners to know what level of metabolic dysfunction are we having in this body. And that enzyme function is expressly prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration.

Melanie Avalon: Prohibited to measure?

Morley Robbins: Yeah.

Melanie Avalon: But you'd literally cannot measure it. Why?

Morley Robbins: You're asking the wrong guy. You can measure it in India, you can measure it in Iceland. We're left, see the thing is, when you're measuring these enzymes, there're two ways to measure them. You can measure their level, which would be akin to height, and you can measure their activity level, which is akin to their intelligence, their IQ. So, Melanie, how tall are you?

Melanie Avalon: 5'4.5".

Morley Robbins: And a half, okay, does that in any way indicate how intelligent you are?

Melanie Avalon: No.

Morley Robbins: No. I'm 6ft. Does that mean I'm more intelligent? No, I'm just taller, that's all. We have to be really careful about looking at research studies that talk about the levels of these enzymes, but we don't know the activity level. It took me two years to figure out the game that they were playing in the terminology in the research.

Melanie Avalon: Going back to the anemia situation and the iron so, like, when I was anemic, I was severely anemic.

Morley Robbins: What was the marker that you were keying in on?

Melanie Avalon: My hemoglobin was like 4 and so I literally felt like I was dying and I walked into the hospital.

Morley Robbins: No. For the listener, for a nonpregnant woman what's considered healthy hemoglobin would be 12.5 to 13.5. When it starts to get below 12, folks get nervous. When it gets below 10, they get really nervous. But it's important for the listeners to understand that between 5 and 10, the heart increases its pumping action to make up for the lack of hemoglobin. I'm not advocating that people get down to 5. I'm just saying that there's an adaptive response in the physiology to adjust for that. When you get below 5, then we're in a different ball field. Then that begs the question, do you have siblings?

Melanie Avalon: Yes.

Morley Robbins: Where are you in the pecking order?

Melanie Avalon: Oldest.

Morley Robbins: You're the oldest. Okay. You got the best that Mom had to offer. You got the best download of minerals. A mom gives up 10% of her mineral mass with each child. So, is your mom still living?

Melanie Avalon: Mm-hmm.

Morley Robbins: Does she have any health issues now?

Melanie Avalon: Yes, autoimmune-related issues.

Morley Robbins: Okay. When she was carrying you, was she dealing with any notable stress?

Melanie Avalon: Probably.

Morley Robbins: Okay. I'm not trying to pry.

Melanie Avalon: She just seems stressed in general, so, probably.

Morley Robbins: Okay, so here's a safe bet. In the modern era, most young women your age are the fourth or fifth generation to be copper deficient. This started about a century ago, when they started using NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium because they had munitions left over from the First World War. Wink, wink. And they had to get rid of it. Wink, wink. It turns out that NPK blocks copper uptake in the root system of plants. That's been going on for a century and that's a big deal.

There're all sorts of chemicals that have been added to farming and now we're dealing with glyphosate. Turns out that glyphosate is a mineral chelator, but its impact is measured on a logarithmic scale, like pH and earthquakes. So, we know that an earthquake of seven is dramatically different than an earthquake of four. It's a thousand times different. Glyphosate chelates magnesium at a 2, zinc at a 6, and copper at an 11. So, what does that mean? It means that it chelates copper a billion times faster than it chelates magnesium. It means that it chelates copper 100,000 times faster than it chelates zinc. That's the mainstay chemical that's used in farming today. If people are still eating GMO products, they probably need to rethink that. What the glyphosate is doing is it's preventing the uptake of copper in the soil so it can't get into the plant or the animals that people like to eat. There's a devastating loss of copper on the planet. How long ago were you faced with this low hemoglobin? How many years ago?

Melanie Avalon: Well, it happened twice, so not that bad. It's so funny. I walked into the hospital and they did blood test and then they were like, "How are you walking?" [laughs] They put me onto a bed, I thought I was dying but that was 2018. They gave me blood transfusions, not iron infusions. Did I get copper with it then? Because is there copper in the blood?

Morley Robbins: There is copper in the blood. See, what I'm really hoping to do before I kick the bucket is come up with a safe and accepted form of copper infusion because it's definitely doable. But the thing is, blood is better than iron. That's a blessing. What kind of stress were you under back in 2018?

Melanie Avalon: That was like the most stressful time of my life. Being in the hospital and then it was just a lot of complications as well.

Morley Robbins: Well, let's talk about the stress. I don't need to know about it, but when we're under chronic stress, the body produces adrenaline and it produces cortisol. Adrenaline is a supercharger for oxygen and it really messes up iron metabolism. It's forcing oxygen into the mitochondria. Cortisol increases the production of a key protein called metallothionein four-to-five-fold increase. What you don't know about metallothionein is it binds up copper a thousand times stronger than it binds up zinc. So, when you're in a period of intense stress for an extended period of time, basically what your body is doing is it's coming to the conclusion you can't seem to handle your stress. I'll start to take you offline, and that's essentially what you were going through in 2018. You are under so much stress and I'm not aware of the fact just don't need to know the factors, but you need to know that your body was responding to a very stressful environment, and the body is really designed to protect us, but there's a point where it just says, "I guess I can't do anything." And it starts to take you offline. That's probably what it felt like, too.

Melanie Avalon: Definitely. We were talking about how long infusion although mine was just transfusion, but how long they might last.

Morley Robbins: Blood transfusion would be different than an iron infusion.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, I got the blood transfusion in the hospital and then I did get iron infusions after that as well, like that worked. My hemoglobin went up. It takes a while, but it went up from 4 to normal range, and then I got anemic again in a year and a half, like 2020 maybe or 2019. The hemoglobin was still higher, but the ferritin and the serum iron were very low. I got iron infusions again and I haven't had issues since then.

Morley Robbins: Well, the part that you didn't know about is in this research it was first identified in the 1930s and then a very prominent group out at University of Utah Medical Center. They did 32 scientific experiments with copper and iron. But I think it was 47 or 48 and they were studying iron infusions. What they reaffirmed that had been identified in 30s was that iron coming in the infusion goes straight to the liver and the spleen. It does not go into what's called the reticuloendothelial system. It's a recycling system for iron. It has a massive metabolic hit on the liver and the spleen. What would be fascinating, I have a blood panel called the Full Monty Iron Panel, and it would be fun to do that for you and then be able to explain what I'm seeing, not just for you, but also for your listeners. I think they would find that fascinating.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, no, I definitely think so, and I just pulled it up on my phone. I've been regularly tracking my everything now since 2019. Not since that really severe situation, since the second time, because the second time I got the infusions, my serum iron was 14. My ferritin was let me see.

Morley Robbins: Was it below 20?

Melanie Avalon: Oh, yes, definitely. Ferritin was 6 and the hemoglobin was 10.4.

Morley Robbins: Okay. again, all three markers are low, some lower than others and all that tells us is that you're a copper desert. Again, it's important for people to think about that hemoglobin is 70% of the iron in the body. So, 70% of your iron is not ideal, but it's not catastrophic. The ferritin and the serum iron are lower, but they're also much lower markers for iron sats. My guess is that your stress level changed, maybe your diet changed, and there are other factors that we can talk about, but I think it's important for people to realize that kind of the stance I take is I firmly believe that there is no such thing as iron deficiency anemia on planet earth for two reasons. One, what it means is that the number one element on planet earth is iron, 36% of the earth's composition is iron. Prior to COVID, I would have argued that humans were the most evolved species on the planet.

What that means is that the number one species on the planet cannot metabolize the number one element on the planet. That doesn't make any sense at all. We've got to step back and say, what else could there be? That's when I really began to dig into ceruloplasmin to discover that every facet of iron metabolism is copper-dependent and that the lower serum ferritin is, the more copper deficient the person is. It's the exact opposite of what you think it is.

Melanie Avalon: So, would there not be the possibility of a case? Because when I went in with the hemoglobin of 4, I mean, it seems hard to believe that I wasn't iron deficient. I mean, isn't there the possibility that maybe, like, my hepcidin was up and I wasn't absorbing?

Morley Robbins: Do you know why hepcidin rises?

Melanie Avalon: Inflammation, parasite? I don't know.

Morley Robbins: It rises in a copper-deficient body. It's a very powerful protein, hepcidin is 25 amino acids. Ceruloplasmin is 1066, 40 times more complicated, has eight copper atoms inside it. We're being trained like circus bears to believe that a 25 amino acid peptide is overthinking and overregulating a protein called ceruloplasmin in our body. That's the level of insanity we're up against in the world today.

Melanie Avalon: Wouldn't that I have been both copper deficient and iron deficient? Like, wouldn't it still technically be iron deficiency anemia?

Morley Robbins: Well, I think that's an intriguing question and it's certainly a possibility, Melanie. What we don't know is what was your diet like. What was the focus of your diet then? What were the real-- [crosstalk]

Melanie Avalon: Lots of meat and lots of fish.

Morley Robbins: Okay, well, it depends. If it's fish as opposed to meat, that's going to a little bit be different. But there is heme in fish as well as we know that. But the thing is, I think we need to really drill in and find out what were the dynamics around the stress. What I encourage my clients to do and what we teach in the training that I do is really pull the curtain back on the stress and find out what's really driving the unrest and work with practitioners to release the fear that's always associated with stress. That's a really critical cornerstone of The RCP is getting into the weeds of what's causing you stress because that stress is burning up minerals. That's the most important thing for people to know is that when we're under stress, the magnesium burn rate goes up.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, I was just about to say. I was going to say, speaking of stress and burning, we haven't even mentioned magnesium yet.

Morley Robbins: No, but I think it's important for people to know that we do burn magnesium under stress. But why, why? Because if there isn't copper to regulate iron, the iron interacts with the oxygen, creates oxidative stress, which then burns up magnesium as a byproduct of its function. That's how all these minerals connect with each other.

Melanie Avalon: Quick question, because people debate, I mean, this is a very different approach to ferritin and what's interesting about it is people will often, especially in this world that I'm in, will be like, "Oh, your doctor's not testing ferritin." And that's like the magic thing. And then it's like you got to get your ferritin up. What ferritin level do you like to see then? Because I'm normally always on the, "lower side," like in the teens and 20s.

Morley Robbins: The first thing we need to understand is that again, I mentioned it a little while ago, ferritin is a spectrum protein. It's got 24 subunits in ferritin and it can go from 24 subunits are all heavy chains meaning they have ferroxidase expression. You would find that in the heart and the kidney, and in the brain, and in the nucleus, and it's a big deal. What that means is that there's copper attached to that form of ferritin. At the other extreme, Melanie, is a protein that the heavy chain has 24 heavy and zero light. At the other end of the extreme is 24 light and zero heavy. That's the form of ferritin that's in the liver and in the spleen.

Melanie Avalon: Is there a third type? I had in my notes a third type.

Morley Robbins: Well, there's what's called mitochondrial ferritin and that's heavy chain. Now we discover that there's nuclear ferritin and that is also a heavy chain. But here's where it gets exciting. What's happening in the liver is that the ferritin needs to go into what's called the lysosome and that's the stomach of the cell to be broken down to release the iron that's in there. There can be as much as 4500 atoms of iron in one ferritin protein. That's a lot of iron. If the liver is not able to complete the breakdown of the ferritin, what happens is the iron within the ferritin gets dumped in the tissue and the body secretes that ferritin into the bloodstream. That's the work of Douglas Kell, who's a famous iron biologist at University of Manchester. He wrote a very important article in 2009 called Iron Behaving Badly.

And that article had 2400 footnotes. It's not like, "Oh, he's just making this stuff up." He's a meticulous scientist. For people who are interested in another version of iron biology, look at the work of Douglas Kell. 2009, 2014, 2019, 2021, and 2022 where he's got some amazing articles, but the important thing is, it's the bookends of ferritin that will kill you. And high ferritin is iron building up in the liver. And I think low ferritin is iron building up in the spleen. I've only found one article that even alludes to that. But the level that I look for, to answer your question, is between 20 and 50, but I like to see it around 20. When it starts to go up over 150 for a woman and over 300 for a man. We have a serious problem of iron recycling when it gets below 20 for either a man or a woman, I suspect parasites. And I think that may have been contributing to your situation back in 2018.

Melanie Avalon: That's what I thought it was, intuitively.

Morley Robbins: No, but the thing that it's important to know is there's a famous Australian farmer named Pat Coleby, C-O-L-E-B-Y. She's written four very important books. Natural Goat Care, Cattle Care, Sheep Care, and Horse Care. But she makes a point in all four books talking about the fact that any animal that is copper deficient will have parasites. Any animal that has parasites is copper deficient. The part that people need to really think through is parasites do not just reside in the digestive tract, they're in our tissue all over our body, depending upon copper status. It's a very different way of thinking about the dynamic between parasites and copper. But it goes back to the great oxygen event that you were asking about earlier.

Melanie Avalon: Because copper is directly anti-parasitic or because it activates the body's mechanisms to deal with parasites.

Morley Robbins: Both again, thank you. That's the right double answer. It is the primordial original antimicrobe. Doesn't matter what form it is, copper will kill it. The immune system that we rely on needs two things. It needs energy and it needs intelligence. And guess what? Copper provides both. The way I describe it is copper is a mineral midget, but it is a metabolic giant inside our body.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Yeah, because I remember when I was getting the iron further adding to the stress, I was mentally torn about it because, well, I thought I really needed it. But then I was like, Iron is so inflammatory. I'm literally just, like, throwing massive amounts of iron into my body right now.

Morley Robbins: Right. No. I've had two clients who were-- of a time when this issue surfaces, is in pregnancy, and I had two clients literally within months of each Other, 39 weeks pregnant each of them and they both received iron infusions. Both women almost died. And both babies almost died. This is a very serious issue that deserves a lot more scrutiny and discussion. I'm happy to have that dialogue with any and all who want to really get into the weeds of the research. Because most of the positions of practitioners is based on their training. What I advise practitioners to do is don't confuse your training with the truth because the training is incomplete and we need to have a more robust understanding about what is the research really telling us that wasn't taught in practitioner training.

Melanie Avalon: With the two situations that I was in the first time around, I was in the hospital, like, kind of is appropriate because we're talking about in the beginning, like, signing over your rights. I didn't really know what they were doing to me and I don't know how much of a dialogue I could have had about them about the type they were doing and all of that. But the second time, I was in a much better place and so I was able to do a lot of research on the different iron infusion options and the warnings. I was like reading all the studies and trying to see which one was most effective with the least inflammatory potential.

Morley Robbins: There's a famous comment. He was a former Director General of the UN. He said, "All too often people ask a question in response to the wrong information." When the doctor asserts your anemic, the question that's asked is, well, how do I increase my iron? That's not the question. First of all, the declaration, I think, is subject to further testing. What I would encourage practitioners to do above everything is let's work with copper and see how the person responds to copper. I won't do it now, but I could take you through research starting in 1928 and bring you all the way up to the present day where many different groups of scientists have proven that if copper is low, iron markers are going to be low.

Let's exhaust the efforts to make copper bioavailable, working with a proper diet, working with retinol, and things like that. Before we start to play with the most prooxidant element on the planet called iron. Your instincts were spot on, Melanie, and there's a part of you that to this day is fearful about what you did. That's why the emotional freedom technique is so powerful, is you can go back now and discharge that fear and begin to really engage in a more robust level of healing.

Melanie Avalon: Put another resource out there for listeners. I've had Nick Ortner on the show too for the tapping solution.

Morley Robbins: Great. Nice. Great Program. Absolutely.

Melanie Avalon: I love tapping. If people want to learn more about that, so many questions still from here.

Morley Robbins: Now, we might need another show or two you know.

Melanie Avalon: I know.

Morley Robbins: But please don't make us wait nine more months.

Melanie Avalon: So sorry. Well, actually this is the question. The timeline on that with the copper and I don't want to keep talking about my situation specifically, but so even in my situation where it was that low, would you have started with copper first or would you have done maybe both copper and iron?

Morley Robbins: Well, first thing would be a more complete blood test.

Melanie Avalon: What is more complete?

Morley Robbins: Well, the test I use is called the Full Monty Iron Panel. It has the iron markers that you would expect. It's got the hemoglobin, the serum ferritin, the serum iron. Transferrin, percent saturation and things like that. But what it also has is "What's the level of magnesium in the red blood cell? What's the level of zinc? What's the level of copper in the serum? What's the level of ceruloplasmin in the serum?" Again, we're measuring height, not intelligence. What we've learned is that the ratio of copper to ceruloplasmin gives us an approximation of how smart it is.

And then I measure vitamins A and D to get a sense of where those fat-soluble nutrients are relative to each other. And with those, it's actually 12 markers. I can glean a lot of information about the metabolic stress that's taking place inside the body. It would be very helpful for people to see how those markers begin to reveal the hidden side.

But to your point about would you do both? I always lead with copper and there's only one client, she's actually a student. Her hemoglobin got down to your level. She was actually at 2.7, was the lowest she got, and she got a blood transfusion. That's what led to her recovery. I think it was a series of maybe two or three blood transfusions and then she was fine. She was able to maintain her recovery based on the principles of The Root Cause Protocol.

Melanie Avalon: Measuring copper, is it also a situation where there's an active and storage form or that serum copper is it just that one marker?

Morley Robbins: No, that's a great question. It's measuring the level of copper in the blood, in the serum of the blood, the seawater, because we don't know what the enzyme activity is, we don't know the intelligence of that copper. A term that a lot of people are familiar with is called copper toxicity. But what they don't know is the origin of that phrase. It was research done by Carl Pfeiffer, who was an MD, PhD back in the 60s, wrote a very important book called Mental and Elemental Nutrients. But what people need to know is that he was also a principal in the MKUltra program that was run by the CIA. In the research that he did he was talking about copper becoming unbound from ceruloplasmin. And that does happen, it happens in the state of hyperglycemia, it happens in the state of excess ascorbic acid, it happens in the state of excess iron, excess zinc.

There are many factors, citric acid, hormone replacement therapy, many factors will cause ceruloplasmin to release its copper. So, copper becomes unbound from ceruloplasmin. But what's important for people to know is that it is immediately bound up by either transcuprein, albumin, or the amino acid histidine. The prevalence of unbound copper is a misnomer. My source for that information is a world-renowned copper expert, Svetlana Lutsenko at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. She said the prevalence of truly unbound copper in the tissue it's 0.1 followed by 21 zeros, negative 0.1-- I should say it's one preceded by 21 zeros, let's put it that way. The thing is this idea of unbound copper then became its copper toxic. The part that people need to understand is that for every atom of copper, there're 50 atoms of iron. And they have very similar properties. They both can react with oxygen. Iron is a waiter carrying it. Again, 70% is hemoglobin carrying oxygen to the tissue, but copper is the chef inside the mitochondria, slicing and dicing the oxygen so it can be made into water that multicopper oxidase function and that when water is made, then energy can be released.

But the thing we've got to understand is that if you suddenly found yourself in a room with 50 ninja warriors, Melanie, who do you think is going to win that fight? I don't know that you're going to win that fight. And what medicine does is it blames you and ignores the 50 ninja warriors. It's just the games that they play. We have to step back from a lot of the narrative about anemia and copper toxicity and say, "Could there be more to the story?" I've written 81 posts on iron toxicity. I've got probably 200 YouTube videos, podcasts, interviews, conversations like this, and people can begin to hear another story. They can read my book, and they need to understand that what will address a lot of their symptoms is a product that I've developed called Recuperate.

It was really born out of the insanity of 2020 to 2022. It's available on a website called fiqsupplements.com. Let me give you an N of 1, it's an anecdotal case study, but I think it's a significant one. It's a client of mine who's 87 years old and his first name is Paul. When I met with Paul in September, his copper levels looked good. They were in the low 100s, but his ceruloplasmin was low. I said, Paul, I think you would really benefit if you took one of my products, it's called Recuperate that shows you my unending wit. So, he said, great, I'll do that. I don't hear from him until I get his blood work in January. And suddenly his copper is at 207. His ceruloplasmin is better, but his copper is at 207.

I said, you know Paul, I couldn't help but notice that your copper is a little elevated. He said yeah. He said, "You know you told me two things during our conversation." I said, "What was that?" He said, "You told me I was in charge and you told me to take one Recuperate. Well, I decided to take six." So, that means he was getting 12 mg of copper bisglycinate and that's considered a little on the high side. I said, that's great, Paul, what have you noticed since you did that? He looks me in the eye through the camera, he said, "Well, Morley, my energy, my sleep, my muscles, and my memory are all better, and that's just with eight weeks of supplementation." Again, I think we as a society don't realize the magnitude of deprivation of copper that's come our way by way of the farming system and the food processing system.

People don't realize that the amount of sugar that we ingest is 250 times our ancestors. Sugar is going to bind up the copper and it's going to have an immediate affinity for iron. People don't understand what's happened to the food processing system and that one of the most coveted chemical that's used are called tyrosinase inhibitors. Well, tyrosinase is what's found at the center of the real vitamin C complex, which has copper at its core. The food industry is focusing on shelf life, not human life. They're more worried about spoilage of the product, not spoilage inside the individual eating the product.

And so, there's just so many landmines out there. What the book is designed to do is give people a working knowledge of where are those pitfalls and what's a simple way to begin to change your diet, change your supplement routine. Simple stops and starts to make sure that people know how the body really runs and can correct itself once it's making energy naturally. Once the body knows how to make energy get out of the way, it really knows how to run the immune system. It knows how to clear the metals, it knows how to address the pathogens, but it's got to have energy to do that.

Melanie Avalon: Iron being fortified in foods is probably an issue added to foods.

Morley Robbins: Huge issue. For those who want to do a deep dive, would encourage you to get Jym Moon, PhD in 2008. The book is called Iron: The Most Toxic Metal. What he introduces is that iron is the only element on planet Earth that can initiate, promote and progress cancer. And the part that people don't know is that there's nine different forms of iron that are being added to the US food system. All nine forms of iron, all nine forms are carcinogenic. It's important for people to-- I've read that book five times now and I get a new piece of information each time I read it. It's important for people to know that there is a treasure trove of information, but it's not regularly talked about on mainstream circles.

Melanie Avalon: Can I ask you a really quick super random question?

Morley Robbins: Sure, absolutely.

Melanie Avalon: Speaking of forms of iron, you were saying earlier about how ferritin is stored differently in the spleen versus the liver. One of the things I started doing to try and raise my iron status was taking desiccated liver or desiccated spleen, because spleen is often said to have, like, seven times the amount of iron as liver. Does eating the ferritin in a different form have a different effect on the iron when you have it?

Morley Robbins: That's a wonderful question, Melanie. I don't know that I've ever read that it does. The key would be the source of those organ meats. What was the animal eating? Were they eating grass that was raised in soil that actually has minerals in it, a proper ratio of minerals? Were they eating fortified food as most animals do? To what extent were the animals being fed in true organic and chemical-free diet? That would change the chemistry and mineral composition of both the spleen and the liver. Historically, beef cattle eating grass in soil that's properly mineralized would have twice as much copper in their liver as they have iron.

Well, in the modern era, it's been flipped. That's the challenge we've got, is that our ancestors relied on these organ meats as a source for minerals and nutrients. But the liver and the spleen and the heart and the kidney are very copper rich. They don't just have iron. And that's been lost to the ages. People love to have their barbecue not knowing what that really means. Barbecue stands for barbe B-A-R-B-E which is French for nose, and Q-U-E which is French for tail, nose to tail. Our ancestors ate everything in between the nose and the tail. Well, we don't do that. We eat ribs that are slathered with sugar-encrusted barbecue sauce. It's not the same thing as our ancestors eating the organs and all the bone broths that were made from the bones and things like that.

Melanie Avalon: Listeners, all of the information well, I don't want to say all, but so much of this information is in Morley's book, Cu-RE Your Fatigue, and he also has his entire protocol to address everything and it's very detailed. He mentioned earlier in passing, like, the stops and starts. If people want a plan of action and want to learn more, get the book now. I'll also put a link to that Recuperate supplement, which sounds amazing, and all of the things yeah, maybe we'll have to have you back because there's still so much more. I want to talk more about magnesium and all of that.

Morley Robbins: I appreciate the opportunity to do that because as I mentioned before, we actually started to record. Typically, when I have this type of conversation, it takes probably three or four bites at the apple to really have all the pieces of the puzzle start to make sense because this is a very different set of information that most people have never heard. Again, just to find out that copper runs the nucleus, I think is arresting. To find out that we can't transcribe properly without copper, that's a real histone metabolism. That's a really important part of our nuclear function and it needs copper. What often happens if people are familiar with the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, there's a famous scene when George Bailey is boasting about his brother getting the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he's talking to the bank examiner, and the bank examiner looks at the headlines and says, "Yeah, I hear they do that sort of thing. Can we get back to the audit?"

And it's like, that's what most practitioners do. When I start telling them where copper does this, copper does that, they're like, "I didn't learn that, so it must not be important." No, "Actually, it is really important and that's why you need to stop what you're doing and rethink." Maybe there's another way to solve your clients and patients' problems.

Melanie Avalon: It's so interesting. Just to go back to the very beginning of our conversation, I do wonder if it could have been a different way, like, if this part of the research had been focused on instead if things would have gone differently.

Morley Robbins: Well, you know that it would have. Maybe in one of our discussions, I can kind of pull the curtain back on some of the most provocative research that was done in the 20s to reveal that could have gone another way, but it was specifically, if you will, suppressed because it would kill the narrative. This is not research being done by Bob Jones. This is research being done by Otto Warburg and Hans Krebs, who are preeminent biochemists and physicians during the 20s, 30s, 40, 50s, and 60s. So, it's another world of information, and it's just seeking to process it and make sense of the world as it exists today.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, this is crazy. Just a really quick question. What are the most copper-rich foods? Is it organ meats?

Morley Robbins: Organ meats? Oysters? Again, we have to be careful. Historically, nuts and seeds. But if the plants that they're being produced in don't have copper in the soil, ding, ding, ding. So, nuts, seeds, oysters, organ meats, especially the liver, the kidney. I mean, I grew up eating a lot of liver and kidney as a kid. The part that we haven't even touched on, and I don't know whether you have an interest in pregnancy issues, but the placenta, it's called the forgotten organ. It's a copper organ. It's regulating the movement of copper and iron between mother and fetus. There're three different copper proteins that express in that organ that is unprecedented in the human body. If mom doesn't have a good supply of copper, it's going to affect copper-iron regulation in the fetus. It's a really important piece of physiology that not a lot of people know about.

Melanie Avalon: Wow, so many things.

Morley Robbins: I really appreciate the chance to have this conversation because I know you have a very loyal following. I think what I would predict is there's going to be this tsunami of questions that comes your way and we'll have a chance to hopefully have a Q&A session. If there's any way, I can get hooked up with Dr. Johnson, I would be honored to begin to sort out wheat from chaff as it relates to the whole issue.

Melanie Avalon: Yes, well, I would love to connect you with Rick Johnson. I think you guys will really hit it off and he's going to love hearing about and exploring all of this issue that I think listeners can now understand at the beginning why I was saying this was such a huge paradigm shift and might blow people's minds because nobody is talking about this. I am just so grateful for the work that you are doing with not only doing the research and serving as a flashlight to show this to people, but you're also providing implementable action plans with your book, your supplements, all the things. You're providing action and a lot of agency to people to take charge of their own health. So. thank you so much. The last question that I ask every single guest on this show and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So, what is something that you're grateful for?

Morley Robbins: I'm really grateful that Dr. Liz, I used a phrase in our very first encounter talking about innate intelligence. And when she used that phrase, I looked at her, I didn't say anything at the time, but I thought to myself, if there is an innate healer, if there is an innate intelligence, why do we need millions of doctors around the world? And that phrase inspired me to start to research "What is innate intelligence, what's it based on." And what I'm very grateful-- I'm grateful to her for starting my quest and for supporting my quest with her willingness to hear me out day by day, but also the opportunity to have these types of conversations so that I can reach another audience so that I can reach more people.

For whatever reason, the universe has decided to take one of the least qualified people to study mineral metabolism and turn them into an expert and give them a platform to share this information for those that are willing to hear it. Not everybody wants to hear what I have to say. Not everyone can hear what I have to say. But it's usually about 2% are ready for truth and they light up like fireflies when they start to hear this kind of information. So, I'm very grateful for the initial spark and for the ongoing ability to do this research, but the ongoing ability to share this research with audiences like yours.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much, Morley. This has been absolutely amazing. Yes, we'll have to get it. I think we actually have you scheduled, but I think it won't be enough time for this to air and for people to submit questions, so we'll figure all of that out. But thank you so much. This has been so amazing, and, oh, I would love to learn more about that iron test. Maybe we can do that and then talk about that too in Part 2.

Morley Robbins: I'll send you a link with that iron test and then you find a time to do it, and we can have a sidebar conversation about it. We can also do a public discussion of it. And depends on how you want to do it, but I think you'll be mesmerized by what you learn in that simple blood test.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Yeah, I would love to talk about it when we record so people can learn from it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Morley Robbins: And I give you high praise for your adroit ability to get this conversation. I don't know what you were doing on your end, but I really appreciate that were able to have this exchange, I really do.

Melanie Avalon: Likewise. Thank you so much. I will talk to you very soon. Thank you.

Morley Robbins: Thanks so much, Melanie. Bye-bye.

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