THE 3 MINERALS THAT ARE AT THE ROOT OF ALL ILLNESS

It starts with stress.

Something sets you off and you feel overwhelmed. This stressor may be real or imagined—a recent argument with your partner, being stuck in traffic, consuming certain foods, or exposure to environmental toxins. Regardless of the origin, it affects your body the same way. The physiological price you pay for this stress is magnesium loss that quickly leaves your body through your urine. Now, in theory, this is easy to recover from by simply calming down and ingesting more magnesium in your diet or through supplementation. 

However, this stressful event is not just a one-time phenomenon. You often experience stressful events throughout the day, each and every day, and this would be considered chronic stress, which causes damaging “oxidative stress”.

When your body is chronically stressed, you not only lose the vital mineral magnesium, but you become flooded with a feeling of fear. You fear that you won’t recover from this or that or whatever is stressing you out. You have activated your nervous system’s survival mode, and your fight-or-flight hormones are enlisted to help you fight the tiger or run from it. Enter Cortisol and Adrenaline. These are the main stress hormones that are tasked with keeping you alive. Cortisol and Adrenaline have a direct interaction with other critical minerals in your body, most notably: Copper and Iron. Cortisol and Adrenaline throw the all-important ratio of Copper and Iron off. This is the turning point in the story of your dis-ease.

Think of Copper and Iron as the main characters in this story.

How they play out their roles and interact with the supporting character, Oxygen, is so critical that it literally determines whether you are sick or well.

You see, Copper and Iron are a unit. They’re in a relationship, and their ratio to one another determines how healthy your body is. Think of Copper as the General, and Iron as the Foot Soldier. General Copper commands multitudes of Iron soldiers. Their ratio is 1:50—one Copper General to fifty Iron Soldiers. But this is not the ratio is the average human body. It’s basically reversed. Most of us have no General and an excess of Soldiers. Without an intelligent and commanding leader, the trigger-happy soldiers get rowdy when Oxygen enters the scene, and this explosive combination causes chaotic explosions and warfare in your body.  

Modern humans are extremely Copper-deficient and Iron-toxic due to a multitude of reasons.

Suffice it to say, contrary to what your doctor may have told you, you are not anemic.

The standard blood test you are given to find out the values of your iron levels is erroneous and completely misleading. It’s not reflecting the functional level of iron in your body, only the storage levels of iron, so you are told it’s low. However, our food, supplements, prescription drugs, and vaccines are laden with iron. We’re inundated with iron, so how can it be low? It’s not. These tests are not looking at the more important iron measurements, and certainly not taking into consideration your bioavailable copper status. Bioavailable copper is required to shepherd iron into our blood, where it belongs. Instead, Iron is getting stuck in our tissues and organs because it needs Copper to regulate and mobilize it into the blood to perform its duties. Without Copper, iron is useless at best and toxic, at worst.

Let’s get back to our supporting character, Oxygen. It turns out humans are anaerobic (don’t need oxygen), but we’re being run by aerobic (need oxygen) Mitochondria. The Mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of our cells. When we breathe in oxygen it’s not actually for us, per se, but rather for our multitudes of mitochondria in our cells that will then use the oxygen to convert it to water and energy. This is how we make water (and energy) in our bodies! Iron and Copper are the only elements in our bodies that interact with Oxygen. Oxygen is the pair’s “third wheel”. What you may not know is that Oxygen is actually inflammatory, by nature. It zaps life from organisms. Think of a sliced apple that turns brown almost immediately after being exposed to the air. Oxygen must be paired with Copper to be beneficial to you. Technically, when you have enough bioavailable Copper and inhale Oxygen, your body converts it to water. This is ideal and how it should be. However, when you don’t have enough bioavailable Copper, you, by definition, have too much inflammatory Iron. When Iron and Oxygen interact, just like a car with no protective coating, they create rust. This is what’s happening in chronic health conditions. We have little to no bioavailable Copper, so when we breathe, we are creating rust and inflammation in the body because Oxygen only has Iron to pair up with. This is what all your chronic symptoms are due to. Whether it’s your chronic aches and pains, your migraines, insomnia, fatigue, gut issues, weight gain, brain fog, and even the more serious diagnoses, it all stems from and is maintained by this copper-iron dysregulation. The lack of bioavailable copper is causing iron and oxygen to create inflammation in your body. Your body cannot function properly, as a result.

So, what’s the remedy for this drama playing out in your body? You need more bioavailable copper. You want your body to make water, not rust.

In order to have enough bioavailable copper, here’s what’s needed:

Retinol (which is the form of vitamin A that comes from animal—not plant-based vitamin A, which is betacarotene (sorry vegans!). The best concentrated sources of retinol are grass-fed butter and cream, grass-fed beef liver, wild cod liver oil, pasture-raised eggs, and fatty fish.