 As much as my goal is to improve the health of as many people as possible through these educational videos, I do not get paid from YouTube and it's awfully easy for other influencers to copy my research and ideas due to my channel being shadow banned and suppressed. So before we get started, if you guys could please sign up to the newsletter on frank-defano.com, share my channel on whatever social media you have, you can help me out. And I've spoken about copper a lot in the past, mainly for fixing histamine intolerance on a carnivore diet as copper becomes very deficient. It's the main mineral required for the Dow enzyme which processes various types of histamine. Problem is, and this applies with any nutrient for the most part, if you have liver toxicity or imbalances, it might be detrimental to supplement at first even if a deficiency is present. For instance, if your liver is overloaded with iron, you want to get that iron, the other toxins out before putting any other metals in or really anything positive in. Copper is deficient on most diets. Carnivore, although there is bioavailable copper in meat, has imbalanced minerals so you're not getting enough copper. Vegan on paper might seem like some plant based foods, you're getting enough but you're probably not absorbing it and utilizing it and as usual, the standard American diet is deficient in many nutrients including copper. When looking at food sources, it's pretty easy to see why that is and people don't eat or you meet shellfish and copper in general is really sparse in the average foods people eat. Nuts and seeds are decent sources but those are snack foods, you're not consuming an incredibly high volume and consuming a large amount of those wouldn't be healthy. That combined with the low quality of foods and anti-nutrients inhibiting copper absorption, it's definitely a concern. We touched a bit on soil quality last week, if you want a more in depth explanation about why these foods are so deficient in copper. As with the last few months, in red are foods I wouldn't eat for various reasons and blue might be okay passable. Liver although it's one of the best sources of copper is way too high in iron and vitamin A and it's not going to be a good source of copper for that reason. Sweet breads, very high in copper as well although I'm not too sure what the iron content of sweet breads is, they might be a decent choice. Oysters, really all seafood especially shellfish is way too polluted, the amount of toxins in those foods will far exceed their nutrient density benefits. Cocoa aka chocolate might be okay for some people, it's kind of high in caffeine, oxalase, you know an organic dark chocolate might be passable. Cashews, not the best nut but there are a variety pretty much every single nut, Brazil nuts, walnuts, macadamia nuts have a decent amount of copper in them and those are much more acceptable than cashews. Squid, although it's a good source of copper again too polluted maybe there are some coastal tribes living in very unpolluted like deserted areas that still have access to seafood but it's not our modern access unfortunately. Chitake mushrooms, probably one of the only foods I've kept in my diet consistently over the past year or so, I think they're an excellent source, they can just be expensive especially if organic and hard to get your hands on, oats, rye really any type of whole grain flour is going to have a decent amount of copper in it, salmon as with the other seafood too polluted, caviar might be okay but you're not going to consume a crazy amount of that, that's going to be more for omega 3 as opposed to minerals and stuff like even bread, sourdough bread, potatoes have pretty good amounts of copper so if you're eating a lot of those on a consistent basis you might be getting enough especially if you've watched my past your day of eatings, my copper intake is definitely not deficient but you know maybe it could be a little higher you know if you're having Chitake mushrooms every day, chocolate a few times a week, throwing some sweet breads in there. Interestingly copper is the leading deficiency in agricultural animals so it's commonly supplemented in their feed also commonly used as a topical antibacterial when animals have infections that means the food we're eating whether it is meat or plants is deficient in copper too so who knows how much higher these foods would be if they were grown in ideal you know soil mineral composition. Copper's most well-known function is the utilization of dietary iron preventing anemia and it's vital for connective tissue health preventing oxidative damage energy metabolism reproduction and hormone synthesis you know so imagine you come from a carnivore diet that was deficient in copper and you start eating carbohydrates again if you have a severe copper deficiency the energy metabolism of those carbohydrates isn't going to be that great. Most of the copper in the body is bound to ceruloplasmin which is a protein secreted by the liver and whether a person is able to utilize their dietary copper to reduce ceruloplasmin or if it gets stored in the liver is heavily dependent on their overall metabolic health especially vitamin C status and intake. Copper like iron is a heavy metal so toxicity can occur very quickly if the person is not metabolically healthy. Heavy metals in excess close massive amounts of oxidative damage in the body on the other hand copper is needed to activate glutathione the master antioxidant so it's kind of like a double-edged sword and you could start taking copper two three weeks feel really really good but that fourth week it's killing you. Interesting studies on copper toxicity infants fed milk stored in copper containers developed liver damage known as indian childhood cirrhosis copper primarily being stored in the liver and brain so you know those two organ systems will be affected drastically when there is too much copper. Moving on to mineral interactions which is helpful in troubleshooting dietary imbalances copper is synergistic with iron zinc molybdenum meaning they influence each other if you have one and the other excess it'll go back and forth sulfur is antagonistic to copper which means sulfur reduces copper and copper directly reduces phosphorus one common problem might be someone supplementing too much zinc resulting in a copper deficiency or an infant with iron fortified formula destroying their liver having low copper levels and it could also be like a vegan diet being low in phosphorus and high in copper causing a phosphorus deficiency even more dramatically carnivore diet very high in iron zinc deficient in molybdenum so it's easy to see why copper and molybdenum levels are lowered in the hair mineral analysis after someone's been following an all meat diet but you might not actually be absorbing all the copper you're consuming because every nutrient needs cofactors you know food like eggs which has both sulfur and copper might not actually be giving you enough copper and there are a lot of interactions between copper iron vitamin C vitamin A and when the person is typically deficient in both vitamin C and copper it can be pretty hard to bounce back feeling good so if there is too much copper in the lifestyle and diet copper toxicity aka poisoning which would only really occur if you were supplementing unreasonably or if you had like copper pipes or consuming something that was stored in a copper vessel very frequently headaches fever passing out feeling sick throwing up vomiting blood diarrhea black bowel movements symptoms of copper deficiency which actually do occur with standard American diets anemia low body temperature bone fractures osteoporosis low white blood cell count heart palpitations loss of skin pigmentation thyroid problems and a lot of women suffer from this because when they have anemia they think they need more iron but they might actually need copper those signs of excess copper poisoning are basically identical to liver damage symptoms when you don't have enough copper you're going to have impaired energy production of normal glucose and cholesterol metabolism increased oxidative damage increased tissue iron stores altered function of blood and immune cells of normal heart rhythm as well as changes in neurological and immune function same with other minerals too much can be bad as well high levels of copper being found in Wilson's disease on the other hand of the spectrum Manki's disease and infants is from low copper where the children doesn't usually live past four years of age since you need copper to absorb and utilize iron one common problem on a standard American diet is those excess iron stores in the liver and to be very specific your liver stores various nutrients if there's too much of it the liver will try to hold on to it to keep it out of the more important tissues like your brain we spoke about this a lot a few years ago in kind of a video series I did on iron overload and zinc copper balance hemochromatosis is the medical terminology used when the blood ferritin levels are incredibly high meaning the body is storing iron in the liver instead of using it or removing it properly the treatment for hemochromatosis is blood donations but everyone for the most part has excess iron stores in their liver which certainly stresses liver function correcting the diet adding in whole food sources of copper supplements if needed as well as other nutrients can fix this over time but in order to feel better faster donating blood or having phlebotomies where they can remove the blood more frequently will greatly accelerate the removal of iron stores from the liver now you can't just try to start supplementing copper and taking vitamin C and try to push that iron out without donating the blood they have to be done synergistically it's unlikely a person should start supplementing copper immediately maybe a few weeks into a corrected diet at a very small dose unless you can do those blood donations the phlebotomies higher doses of copper might be necessary if a person isn't digesting their food like if you eat mushrooms and they come out the same as they came in pretty good indicator you're not absorbing the copper from the mushrooms coming from a carnivore diet if your hair mineral analysis is really low that would be a unique circumstance where you might actually want to be on that higher dose of copper for three four weeks that could benefit you greatly I get a ton of emails still about hey Frank do you sell super fresh meat I have a really bad histamine intolerance and you know I used to have the same thing right before I quit the carnivore diet but the solution to that isn't eating fresh meat because eventually the histamine intolerance is going to be so bad you can't digest any protein regardless of how fresh it is so copper is definitely one component of that but making a complete dietary change is is overarching so thank you guys for joining me today I am donning the new Wi-Fi shield and clothing that is silver fabric to protect you from all types of radiation which is far more important than diet really you know if you're not reducing the radiation in your environment you know the time you invest in other things isn't nearly as valued so you guys can go to organ supplements calm where we do have a copper supplement you can check out Frank dash to follow calm for all of my other businesses but outside of that thanks again for joining me guys if you could please drop a like on the video leave a comment down below subscribe so that YouTube can unsubscribe you next week and be sure to check that notification bell so people don't notify you of my videos and yeah Columbia sounding pretty good I don't think any of them have passports so I can't really bring them to me so I'm gonna have to bring myself to Columbia so what I have to do this nonsense anymore