For everything from anemia, to headaches,
to allergies, to having healthy bones, and
just feeling great all the time,
copper is an incredibly important
nutrient. And this is how to know if
you're getting enough.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
And this is Chris Masterjohn Lite,
where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about how
to manage your copper status, make sure
that you get enough, not too much,
and fix any problems and make sure that whatever
your solutions are, they're working.
So copper, when you do not have enough,
you can get anemia that looks just like
iron deficiency anemia but isn't, or that
looks just like B12 and folate
deficiency anemia but isn't. In fact, you
can get malabsorption of iron from
copper deficiency that actually causes
iron deficiency, and the problem might
not be that you don't have enough iron
in your diet, it might be that you're not
getting enough copper in your diet to
absorb the iron, so you could have anemia
from that as well as the many other
problems of iron deficiency itself. You
can have low white blood cells,
especially neutrophils. You can have high
cholesterol, you could get osteoporosis
because copper is needed to support your
bones. You could get histamine
intolerance or a greater burden of
allergies than you would otherwise have.
You could have poor pigmentation of your
skin and hair, and neurotransmitter
imbalances, like low adrenaline or high
serotonin, that might leave you feeling
like you're not your best. So what do you
do about this? Well, the first thing is
look at your diet and see whether the
dietary pattern that you have is
supporting getting enough copper.
The absolute best sources of copper are
liver, oysters, shiitake mushrooms, pure
chocolate, not the stuff watered down
with sugar and milk, and spirulina.
A tier below that of very good sources of
copper are most shellfish besides oysters,
remember oysters are the best,
whole grains, legumes, and potatoes.
Diets that are low in these foods are
likely to contribute to a copper
deficiency, but soil variation is very
large, and all these foods, if they're
grown in low-copper soil, could be much
less likely to give you enough copper.
And if you're consuming—if you're not
consuming enough of those foods and you
are consuming foods from
copper-deficient soils, then that makes you very
predisposed to copper deficiency.
Zinc supplementation, especially over
45 milligrams a day and with a
zinc-to-copper ratio greater than 15-to-1,
can be a cause of copper deficiency.
Impaired methylation can be a cause of
copper deficiency, and I'll link in the
description of this episode to my
methylation resources. Other sources of
copper deficiency that are not dietary
in nature include the use of antacids,
proton pump inhibitors, gastric bypass
surgery, and any digestive problems that
are focused on the upper part of the GI
tract, like the stomach
and the upper part of the small intestine.
And although there's limited evidence for
this, it seems to be the case that high
doses of vitamin C can impair copper
absorption. On the other hand, there is
copper toxicity. In general, from diet
I do not believe copper toxicity is a
concern. If you are supplementing with
copper over 10 milligrams, that could
pose a potential risk of copper toxicity.
I think it's best to keep copper
supplements under 10 milligrams,
preferably under 3 milligrams a day, and
it's always best to get your copper from
food, and when you do, you're benefitting
by the fact that the copper is mixed
with other minerals, especially zinc,
which protects against copper toxicity.
So it's extremely unlikely to get copper
toxicity from food. There are high copper
levels in certain water systems, but when
they get to the point where they can
cause copper toxicity, usually drinking that
water is going to make you nauseated, and
it's usually leaving blue colors all over the
place. If it's really bad, you can see the
blue even coming out in your clothing.
And so usually you have a warning sign,
and certainly using a water filter will
generally protect you against too much
copper coming from your water supply.
The most important test of copper status
is serum copper. This can be
supplemented with serum ceruloplasmin.
They tend to go together, and so you're
usually not getting additional information
by combining them. And serum copper
tends to be more sensitive to deficiency, so you
always want to at least get serum copper,
but it can be helpful to corroborate it
with serum ceruloplasmin. But always get
serum copper. Give that the priority.
In general, low serum copper and
low serum ceruloplasmin
indicate a copper deficiency most
of the time. From what I've seen, I think
you want to tend to be in the middle of
the range because I have seen
indications of copper deficiency when
people are in the lower 20 or 30 percent of the range.
It's important to note a
couple of limitations to these tests.
First of all, estrogen increases serum
ceruloplasmin and tends to increase
serum copper as well, and that means that
there's going to be some fluctuation of
copper levels with the menstrual cycle.
And copper levels are generally twice as
high during pregnancy as they are for
women who are not pregnant.
And using hormone replacement therapy,
estrogen in HRT can raise
copper levels by 30 to 90 percent.
And unfortunately, there really isn't any
clear research to develop a separate
reference range for women experiencing
high estrogen under these conditions, so
what we can say is that if your copper
levels are running a little high and you
can explain it with estrogen,
you can probably dismiss it because it's
normal. It's probably all the more true
in women than in men that you want to be
at least towards the middle of the range
for copper because if you're at the low
end of the range, and that might be
close to deficiency, that's all the more
true if you would expect your estrogen
levels to be bringing the
copper up higher. There are two genetic
disorders of copper metabolism: Menkes
disease and Wilson's disease.
Both of these can look like copper
deficiency because the serum copper
levels and ceruloplasmin levels can be
low, but you can have copper overload in
certain specific tissues, and which
tissues those are is different for
Menkes disease and Wilson's disease.
But measuring urine copper can be very
useful in identifying these diseases
because usually the urine copper is
elevated in those diseases
despite the low serum levels.
So, those are the rare caveats
to serum copper being the most
useful test, but urine copper
can often distinguish those diseases
from the typical picture. If you identify
a copper deficiency, the best thing to do
is to solve it at the root of the
problem. In some cases, that might be due
to an absorption problem, and it might be
due to excessive supplementation of zinc
or high doses of vitamin C. If so, you
want to work on removing
those problems. If the problem is a
dietary one because you're not consuming
enough copper-rich foods, then the
overwhelmingly best thing to do is to
work the copper-rich foods into your
diet. Again, those are liver, oysters, shiitake
mushrooms, chocolate, and spirulina as
the very top foods. And the other good
sources include most non-oyster
shellfish, whole grains, legumes, and
potatoes. So eat more of those foods.
This is especially important because
although there's not a ton of evidence
around it, the copper that you get from
foods is a different form than what you
get in supplements. Usually the—to be
technical about it, the oxidation state
is different. And it appears to be the
case that the food copper is the ideal
form that is utilized much more
effectively, and that means that you're
always going to get a better deal from
getting copper in foods than you are
from supplements. With that said, there
are case reports out there making it
very clear that 7 milligrams of
copper from a supplement over the course
of a few months is highly effective at
curing the anemia or the low white blood
cells that occur in copper deficiency.
And so certainly, if you cannot get your
copper levels up with food, supplements
are an effective means of fixing the
deficiency. True copper toxicity is very
unlikely outside of extreme
over-supplementation, or consuming highly
polluted waters, or the genetic diseases
that, Menkes and Wilson's disease that can
lead to copper toxicity in certain tissues.
In the case of true copper
toxicity, working with a health care
practitioner through chelation therapy
is the necessary course of action. In
most cases, if you have a reason to
suspect a mild overload of copper from
overuse of supplements in the past,
I think the best thing to do is to use
zinc supplementation to get your zinc
levels up along the lines of how I
described doing so for toxic heavy
metals, and I'll link to that episode in
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com.
This has been Chris Masterjohn Lite.
And I will see you in the next episode.