 Zinc to copper ratio is something I've spoken about in the past, mentioning many times, claiming that a ratio of anywhere from 8 to 15 parts zinc to 1 part copper is an acceptable range. What needs to be made clear is that this is from a consumption perspective, not necessarily the ratio that is measured in your body as blood work and various tests are not always indicative of body mineral status. Your body pushes zinc into cells and copper out of the liver into the bloodstream so serum lab work is not reliable. You will have many people trying to link improper copper to zinc ratio to certain diseases and it's kind of irrelevant as we can assume the majority of people are deficient in both copper and zinc as well as deficient in other vitamins, minerals and fatty acids our bodies need. You can't link one marker to a disease with so many other dietary and lifestyle factors. On a standard American diet, you aren't getting enough zinc or copper. Copper tends to be a bit higher than zinc because people consume more plant foods and this imbalance can lead to iron overload which is present in almost all liver diseases, alcoholic cirrhosis, fatty liver, hepatitis C, when you go carnivore then you put yourself in a position where you're getting enough zinc but copper goes even lower. And what's crazy is you have these people claiming that standard American dieters are copper-toxic yet the real problem is they are heavily deficient in zinc and only slightly deficient in copper and zinc and copper have overlapping functions they almost look identical. They're both involved in immune status, enzymatic reactions, protein synthesis including the forming of those enzymes, tissue formation and healing, wound healing, gene expression, DNA synthesis which means they play a role in growth and development and are really some of the most important minerals that we consume. When you have a deficiency in either zinc or copper the two things that stand out the most are a lack of immune function, you get sick that's why people are saying with the Toyota Corolla you can take zinc and tissue forming and healing you'll notice maybe you have pale skin, you burn a lot in the sun, bald zinc and copper deficiencies manifest themselves in similar ways and then there's other symptoms and side effects that you can look up yourself. So the main reason that copper is important is due to its role in comprising ceruloplasma. Ceruloplasma works with iron regulating proteins to convert iron into different forms throughout the body so that it can be utilized by cells or stored. Ceruloplasma specifically requires vitamin A, vitamin C, copper and magnesium to be activated and that leads us down a path of pretty much every vitamin and mineral but the two most important ones are zinc and magnesium. Zinc plays a role in vitamin A metabolism and since zinc is a component of retinal binding protein which is a protein used to transport vitamin A in the blood you cannot transport vitamin A without zinc. Zinc is also used to convert vitamin A into its active form retinoic acid which means in order to activate vitamin A you need zinc as well. In the context of a standard American diet everyone has enough vitamin A most people do need to supplement zinc though. On a carnivore diet increasing the intake of either isn't necessary and zinc can actually block copper absorption but whenever we talk about a health issue magnesium tends to come up because it's the most important mineral in our bodies of course it plays a role in zinc and copper metabolism and I would say that 99% plus of the population is deficient in magnesium. It's a cofactor in over 300 enzymatic reactions so whenever something has to happen in your body it tends to require magnesium, includes creating cellular energy, the Krebs cycle, glycolysis, it creates and repairs DNA as well as proteins. Magnesium regulates the concentrations of other minerals and cells, regulates muscle function, it's essential for various neuronal functions including producing neurotransmitters, it's a cofactor in our endocrine system through the thyroid and adrenal glands, plays a role as a calcium antagonist so it can reduce blood pressure and regulate your heartbeat. Magnesium stimulates bone and teeth building, activates vitamin D, the list goes on and on and on and on. So many processes in our body require magnesium and ceruloplasmin is just one of them. Now I followed a carnivore diet for 6 years until I started having severe repercussions of copper deficiency in the form of iron overload. Low ceruloplasmin results in unbound copper, it gets stored in various tissues in your body. The liver, eyes, brain and kidney, liver damage, brain damage, oxidative stress, insomnia, that's what I was experiencing. I think I was incredibly close to liver failure, I never felt worse in my life and that's because my zinc was so incredibly high and I didn't have enough copper which is required to regulate iron. Human metabolism requires all nutrients and balanced ratios to function properly. That's why I get scared when I see more and more people supplementing zinc now. DMA supplements were really big a few years ago and everyone's always been spouting the benefits of taking zinc without being educated on the importance of copper and only recently when I started talking about copper on YouTube have other people done the same. Yeah, you might feel better supplementing that zinc because you're quickly addressing a possible deficiency but if you continue that supplementing your body will go out of balance and specific symptoms of zinc overdose are nausea and uneasiness. Foods that contain zinc generally contain copper and there are foods out there that have ideal ratios such as oysters which have incredible amounts of both zinc and copper and you usually can't fix a severe deficiency using natural foods but in a mild case where you know someone hasn't been following a carnivore diet for six years it is possible. With food, land animal products are zinc based, beef, pork, chicken, dairy or as planned foods tend to be copper based potatoes, mushrooms, organ meats like liver are high in copper but since they're also correspondingly high in iron the iron cancels out the copper as copper is needed to mobilize iron in the body so when you consume large amounts of iron and copper they zero each other out. Things are fairly balanced, leaning more towards copper and fish can go either way. Some fish are higher in zinc, some are higher in copper, salmon for instance being copper focused. Now could you eat salmon and mushrooms for a year or two to fix years of being on the carnivore diet? Possibly but are you digesting the food? There's a difference between paper value and actual bioavailability and even if you consume say you know five to six milligrams of copper from mushrooms your body might only be absorbing 10% of it which is why I almost always recommend a supplement temporarily you know because you can bang out that imbalance within a month or two of a reasonable dose supplement. Zinc I would never supplement however and usually the idea is to follow a meat based diet that is naturally abundant in zinc supplement copper as well as magnesium and possibly other vitamins and focus on certain foods to target hypothetical nutrient deficiencies such as omega-3. So what's our hypothetical solution? A lot of the information that I've conveyed to you guys today that I've developed over the past few months is from Morley Robbins ideas and his root cause protocol. So what he suggests is you start with a baseline no supplements because things like calcium, iron, zinc, ascorbic acid, multivitamins, certain culations of minerals like magnesium citrate can all cause issues. Processed foods high fructose corn syrup, sugar, omega-6, seed oils, various chemicals, pollutants in both the food and water supply can also cause issues. What you want to focus on is whole food vitamin C, magnesium glycanate, copper glycanate and B vitamins. High quality organic animal and plant foods focus on grass-fed beef, wild caught shellfish, some raised eggs, raw grass-fed dairy with the best produce you can get your hands on ideally from a local farm if not then organic from a supermarket. If you guys want to get ideas about the amounts of vitamins and minerals I supplement I did a video on my Patreon a few months back and keep in mind this could take months to a year or two to correct entirely. Lifelong and multi-year health problems don't fix themselves overnight. You guys can check out my book, Carnivore video course as well as other videos to develop more of an understanding of the various components of health we need to be healthy and just to reiterate some of this stuff is taken from Morley Robbins but what I basically did was fill in my current health information as well as capitalize on his current ideas because not everyone has every piece of the puzzle. What I'm trying to do with my YouTube channel is use my own knowledge and other people's knowledge to help you guys so thank you for joining me today if you could please like the video leave me a comment down below above all guys please share the video on social media if you do want to support me further you know how to do so down in the description thanks again for joining me today guys I'll see you for tomorrow's video