The TRUTH About What’s *Really* Causing Your Fatigue & The “Root Cause” Protocol to Fix It, With Morley Robbins
Reading time: 7 minutes
What I Discuss with Morley Robbins:
- His transition from decades in hospital management to exploring the body’s “innate healer” after a frozen shoulder recovery…05:12
- How copper acts as the “chef” of your cellular energy system, turning oxygen into water, regulating iron, and protecting the body from oxidative stress…07:56
- How early oxygen wiped out most life on Earth, why copper became essential for safely managing oxygen, and how it enabled critical processes like energy production, melatonin synthesis, and cholesterol balance…11:29
- His view that aging comes down to iron buildup and oxidative “rusting” in the body, disrupting energy production—a simple but powerful idea supported by decades of research on free radicals and cellular stress…15:04
- Why fatigue blamed on “low iron” may actually stem from hidden iron overload and a silent loss of copper-rich enzymes like ceruloplasmin…22:12
- How chronic stress disrupts copper balance, drives iron into tissues, and tricks blood tests into showing “low iron,” creating fatigue and inflammation that stem not from deficiency, but from mineral imbalance…29:19
- Unnecessary modern iron fortification that adds harsh, non-heme iron to food, causing toxic buildup and mineral imbalance in the body…38:40
- How glyphosate, fortified foods, and popular supplements may be quietly depleting the very minerals bodies need for energy and why restoring one overlooked nutrient could change everything…45:26
- How even natural options like bee pollen can be affected by widespread glyphosate contamination, and why taking copper alone isn’t enough without the right cofactors and fats to make it truly bioavailable…53:47
- His “Full Monty Iron Panel,” a deeper way to measure mineral balance that uncovers stress, energy levels, and copper activity often missed by standard tests…57:26
- The daily rhythm of The Root Cause Protocol, built on stopping certain supplements, reintroducing real food nutrients, and restoring mineral balance through whole-food forms of vitamins and copper-supporting minerals…1:02:51
- Why most fatigue and chronic illness stem from cellular energy loss caused by too much iron, too little copper, and the body’s struggle to turn oxygen into true energy…1:09:37
Morley Robbins is the creator and founder of The Root Cause Protocol and the Magnesium Advocacy Group. Morley received his BA in Biology from Denison University in Ohio and holds an MBA from George Washington University in healthcare administration. Morley has trained in wellness coaching, nutritional counselling, and functional diagnostic nutrition.
He is also known as the “Magnesium Man” due to his extensive research into the understanding of magnesium’s role in the body. Morley’s research deciphers the intricate relationship between magnesium, iron, copper, and calcium as a way to free yourself from illness and disease. As a certified health coach with an expertise in Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA), Morley has performed thousands of RCP one-on-one consultations, helping people feel better by getting to the root cause of their symptoms.
The Root Cause Protocol that we discuss in this podcast was developed by Morley, who transformed a career in the mainstream medical industry into a quest to learn the fundamental components of a healthy metabolism. The RCP is the culmination of his many years of research and is revolutionary in its approach to health by looking at the whole organism and how all the elements work together, rather than limiting the focus to isolated nutrients or conditions.
The RCP claims to work by restoring balance to the key minerals—magnesium, copper, and iron—that must work together to optimize energy and increase vitality.
Now, the RCP is in Morley‘s new book, Cure Your Fatigue, which helps you—and your doctor—understand the real reasons behind low energy and chronic fatigue. Your mitochondria make energy through a series of enzyme reactions that work together to produce ATP, the cellular currency of energy. These reactions depend on minerals that are easily depleted by stress and modern living. In the book, Morley breaks down these concepts in simple terms, showing you how to restore mineral balance and apply the Root Cause Protocol to boost your energy and finally put fatigue behind you.
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Resources from this episode:
- Guest Name:
- Books:
- Articles:
- Studies:
- Iron in nutrition. VII. Copper as a supplement to iron for hemoglobin building in the rat. 1928
- Copper as a supplement to iron for hemoglobin building in the rat (Hart et al., 1928)
- Cholesterol metabolism in copper deficient rats
- Iron accumulation during cellular senescence
- Free Radical Theory of Aging: An Update – Increasing the Functional Life Span
- Quantifiable urine glyphosate levels detected in 99% of the French population, with higher values in men, in younger people, and in farmers
- Glyphosate – Manganese Interactions and Impacts on Crop Production: The Controversy
- A mitochondrial paradigm of metabolic and degenerative diseases, aging, and cancer: a dawn for evolutionary medicine
- Studies on copper metabolism. XXIX. A critical analysis of serum copper and ceruloplasmin concentrations in normal subjects, patients with Wilson's disease and relatives of patients with Wilson's disease
- Other Resources:
Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on.
Ben Greenfield [00:00:02]: This episode of the Boundless Life podcast.
Morley Robbins [00:00:05]: This is a very powerful triad in our body that keeps all the pathogens at bay, keeps the iron in regulation. We are endowed naturally with these mechanisms, but they're not taught in mainstream medical education.
Ben Greenfield [00:00:21]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled parallel levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.
Ben Greenfield [00:00:42]: In this episode with Morley Robbins, which was super eye opening, we talk about the massive myth behind anemia and what really causes it. The surge of copper deficiency and what you can do about it. Morley's Root Cause Protocol. And for anybody who struggles with fatigue, chronic fatigue, tiredness, low energy, this one's a must. Listen. Shownotes [email protected] root cause. Let's dive in. I've known about today's podcast guest for quite some time.
Ben Greenfield [00:01:14]: Never had him on the show. Morley Robbins. He used to be, maybe still is known as the Magnesium man, but perhaps more popularly of late. He is the creator and the founder of, of something called the Root Cause Protocol and even wrote this brand new book that I just got my hands on and just finished reading called Cure youe Fatigue. Notice how the C, U and Cure, if you're watching the video, is the periodic table of the elements sign for copper, which is a big part of this whole Root Cause protocol and maybe how I got kind of interested in it in the first place. But Morley has a pretty cool backstory in terms of how he got into all this after getting his degree in biology. And he's in wellness coaching, he's in nutrition counseling, functional diagnostic nutrition, and has written this incredible book that I think might have some surprises in it for people who are accustomed to the standard ho hum health and nutrition advice out there. So all the show notes, including a link to Morley's book and website, I'll [email protected] root cause BenGreenfieldLife.com root cause Morley, welcome.
Ben Greenfield [00:02:30]: It's been a long time coming.
Morley Robbins [00:02:32]: Absolutely.
Morley Robbins [00:02:32]: Well, thank you for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to our discussion.
Ben Greenfield [00:02:35]: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, from what I understand, you know, I stalked you a little bit. You used to be like a hospital executive.
Morley Robbins [00:02:44]: Yeah, absolutely.
Morley Robbins [00:02:46]: Yeah.
Ben Greenfield [00:02:46]: Okay, so how'd you go from that to this?
Morley Robbins [00:02:50]: Well, I grew up in a very sickly family. Everyone has a backstory.
Morley Robbins [00:02:54]: And my mom was an alcoholic, my dad was with schizophrenia, and my Sister became a nurse. So I was supposed to become the doctor until I got to college and found out, wow, this is a lot of work.
Morley Robbins [00:03:11]: I still applied to schools, but there.
Morley Robbins [00:03:14]: Was very little chance I was going to get in given the competitive nature of it.
Morley Robbins [00:03:18]: But if you can't become a doctor.
Morley Robbins [00:03:20]: You go into hospital management because it's just a natural progression. And so I chose to do that. And I worked for hospitals for about 12 years and then worked in consulting firms for 20 years solving bigger and more complicated problems within the hospital field. And it was a phenomenal 32 year career. And then I developed what's called frozen shoulder. I couldn't pick my hand up above my waist.
Ben Greenfield [00:03:51]: Yeah, I've had a little bit of that from tennis. But it went away pretty quickly.
Morley Robbins [00:03:56]: No, this didn't go away. I was miserable. And I went to a health food store that I had frequented for many years in the Chicago area and they told me to go see Dr.
Morley Robbins [00:04:06]: Lives.
Morley Robbins [00:04:07]: And I put up my hands, I said, I don't do witchcraft, because I knew that meant chiropractor. And they sold me some supplements. They didn't do anything. I came back a couple months later.
Ben Greenfield [00:04:19]: Not that we want to throw all chiropractic medicine under the bus, but that does happen sometimes.
Morley Robbins [00:04:24]: Well, no, but the long story short.
Morley Robbins [00:04:25]: Is Dr. Liz is now my wife. And so she healed my shoulder by correcting the pterygoid muscle in my jaw from the inside, I might add. It was a very painful experience. But as she pressed, my arm went up, it was as close to a miracle as I'd ever been. And what really got me into this work bed was she used a phrase I'd never heard in 32 years of working in hospitals. She talked about the innate healer, the healer within. And I looked at her, I didn't say anything.
Morley Robbins [00:04:58]: And I thought to myself, if there's an innate healer, I want to find out who that is.
Morley Robbins [00:05:04]: Why do we have millions of doctors around the world if there's a healer within?
Morley Robbins [00:05:08]: And that's really what the book is about. I think that bioavailable copper and the way we present it in the Root cause protocol is in fact the mechanism to activate the NH healer.
Ben Greenfield [00:05:20]: All right, well, I cannot wait to dive in. Here you have on page 32 of the book, you talk about the keys to having more energy. You distill it pretty simply into a three step process that I know has a lot of implications and rabbit holes we'll probably get into. But what, what are the keys? These. This, this three step process to having more energy.
Morley Robbins [00:05:41]: Well, the, the real key is, is recognizing that we need to be able to activate oxygen and turn it into water. And that mechanism, that enzymatic process, is what releases to go over to Complex 5 to become Magnesium ATP. And so the key is that that Complex 4, which is where the conversion of oxygen into water, it's actually a stove. Think of your kitchen. You've got a stove. And does the stove know what burner to use? Does the stove know what temperature the, the oven should be? No. Every stove needs a chef. Well, copper, copper is the chef in cytochrome C oxidase.
Morley Robbins [00:06:35]: So the heme proteins, heme A and heme A three, basically become a stove to hold the oxygen. But it's oxygen that is slicing and dicing it so it turns into water. And that is the critical step. And then it moves over to Complex 5, which is a nano rotor, as you probably know, spinning at 30,000 RPM, 500 RPM. And the beauty of our body is we have allegedly 40 quadrillion of these mitochondria supporting our day to day activity, which is I think absolutely amazing to think about.
Ben Greenfield [00:07:16]: And so you're saying copper is kind of an integral part of this mitochondrial production of energy, production of ATP. Would you say copper is like the most important part?
Morley Robbins [00:07:27]: I think, you know, there's, depending upon your sourcing, you might hear about 82 minerals versus 92 minerals. But the way a lot of people talk about them is it's like they're all of equal importance. I don't think that's the case. I think there's a hierarchy and I think copper is in fact at the top just because of the unique properties it has by converting oxygen into water, but also its ability to regulate iron and oxygen at the same time. And all of the health problems that we have, Ben, stem from iron induced oxidative stress. And so it's the copper that keeps those two elements at bay and allows us to have the fullest expression of our physiology.
Ben Greenfield [00:08:15]: So iron induced oxidative stress, like an internal rusting of the body, because copper is protective against that type of oxidation. It would basically be the key and in your theory, for fixing the fatigue that a lot of people deal with, like balancing and modulating copper levels.
Morley Robbins [00:08:33]: Yeah. And again, keep in mind, this is not my opinion. This is a compendium of thousands of articles that I read that there are research scientists and clinicians who've come to this conclusion. I've just gone out of my way to make sure People really understand how essential this function is in our body.
Ben Greenfield [00:08:52]: Yeah. Okay, let's explore this whole rusting thing. You talk like early in the book about what you describe as the great oxygenation event, which the way I see it might be kind of like the best way to explain how this rusting kind of started in the first. So what was the great oxygenation event?
Morley Robbins [00:09:10]: Well, it's interesting, oxygen was not always on the planet. And it's fascinating that several billion years ago, according to the astrobiologists, again, I'm just going to take it at face value that they know what they're talking about. But cyanobacteria began to interact with the sun in the process called photosynthesis. Very, very important part of our life process here on planet Earth. And so oxygen is given off in that process. The oxygen was going into the primordial sea, which was primarily iron and sulfur. And as the oxygen began to build up in the seabed, then it started to go into the atmosphere. And again, according to the folks who studied it the most, when there was 1/10 of 1% oxygen in the the atmosphere, we now have 21%.
Morley Robbins [00:10:03]: But when there was 1/10 of 1%, it wiped out 99% of life on the planet because of the. Everything was anaerobic. And the importance of copper. Again, this is me just sharing what the scientists have written about. But what copper brought to the equation was three critical chemicals that I think are of utmost importance. We've talked about one of them, the cytochrome C oxidase, which is complex for the mitochondria. Its classification would be, it's a multi copper oxidase. And there's several different forms of that enzyme class on the planet.
Morley Robbins [00:10:50]: And that's the class of enzymes that can turn oxygen into water. Very important process on a planet with oxygen. The second critical element that was brought about by copper was. You've heard of melatonin, but it's not just a sleep aid. It's actually the master antioxidant inside our mitochondria. It's a really critical part of our physiology. And it's only possible because of bioavailable copper.
Ben Greenfield [00:11:21]: By the way, when you say melatonin is only possible because of bioavailable copper, what's that mean?
Morley Robbins [00:11:26]: Just the mechanism of producing it, the mechanism of its action. And then the third element that I think is always a surprise for folks is to find out that cholesterol was one of the first elements that formed on the planet. And its unique properties, as I'm sure we'll discuss is that it has the ability to, to be a sink for oxygen because it takes 11 molecules of oxygen to make one molecule of cholesterol. And it was in 1973 that a famous cardiologist and copper expert named Leslie Clavy. It's a guy. But in 1973, he was able to demonstrate that lack of copper is what was causing a rise of cholesterol in society.
Ben Greenfield [00:12:15]: Oh, because. Because if you had less copper, you would need more cholesterol to fight oxidation.
Morley Robbins [00:12:21]: Exactly. You got it. All right now, now you understand cardiology better than most doctors on the planet.
Ben Greenfield [00:12:27]: Okay, so I have a super weird question. I don't know if you've ever gotten thrown this on a podcast, but. Okay, so. And this is going to be a little esoteric for a second because my religious background is Christianity. And so obviously, like a lot of Christians, I have more of like a new Earth creationist view of the planet and also the belief in a great flood event. Do you think, And I realize this, this would require like, you know, considering that the Earth is newer than the billions of years that is often proposed by, by modern science. Do you think there is some, that there's some credence to the idea that some great flood event could have affected atmospheric gaseous conditions and been a potential alternative explanation to the change in oxygen levels that would result in increasing oxidation and even from like a biblical standpoint, the shortened lifespan that we see in humans in a post flood environment.
Morley Robbins [00:13:34]: I absolutely think there are many ways to explain what's going on. And I think that the research that I've done the last 16 years has only made me more curious and more open to are there other explanations for what might have happened? But I think that the bottom line is our physiology, our mammalian physiology is designed to work with oxygen, iron, and we've got to be able to work with them cleanly so that they don't create static electricity or create rust as we're describing it. And so, yeah, I'm certainly open to that. And like, when I'm talking to the Amish in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Indiana, as I have on numerous occasions, they very affectionately refer to me as an evolutionist. And I, and I respect that. That's okay. But, but what they can't refute is my physiology. They know that, that within their community they are rusting out big time.
Morley Robbins [00:14:37]: And, and I think that's. It's a systemic issue around the globe that I think we have to deal with.
Ben Greenfield [00:14:43]: Yeah. And I think a lot of people think rusting out. And they would imagine like collagen degradation and wrinkles and signs of early aging. But the way that you explain it, if there is increased oxidation, you can see decreased production of ATP in like a 14 year old kid with glowing skin. And that could result in fatigue simply because there's not enough energy currency being produced, absent of some kind of external sign of rusting, so to speak.
Morley Robbins [00:15:09]: Completely. And I take a very simplistic view about aging. Aging is just iron accumulation. It is not complicated. And as the iron accumulates in our tissue, it causes this rusting process. And I think the aging community and the longevity community are very slowly coming to that realization. But it was first proposed by Denham harmon back in 1956. I mean, he was an industrial engineer, PhD engineer that was fascinated by the rusting process that that industry had to deal with.
Morley Robbins [00:15:48]: And he decided he wanted to see if it applied to humans. So he became a doctor. Well, he didn't just become a doctor. He went to Stanford to become a physician. And he proposed the free radical theory of aging. And then that was when he was 40 years old. And then when he was 90 years old, he updated his findings in 2006. And basically his theory, his whole concept of free radical theories are the most adopted theories for aging on the planet.
Morley Robbins [00:16:20]: It's just, it's a very simple process.
Ben Greenfield [00:16:22]: So explain this to me. If, if the buildup of iron would, based on the physiology you've described, contribute to fatigue, why, when someone goes to like a doctor and presents with signs of fatigue, that anemia is one of the things that's proposed as a cause. Like, like, which would be low iron levels, you know, for people familiar with the diagnosis, like, that are largely thought of as low iron levels. So, like, why, why is it that anemia is thought to be the cause of fatigue and is it a problem that people are then taking iron?
Morley Robbins [00:16:59]: I've just done two online courses about this very topic. One is just a more basic version, but one's a deeper dive. One's 90 minutes, one's three hours long. But to answer your question directly, a lot of confusion about anemia. And the real issue is we're using a blood test and we're extrapolating to the tissue. So low iron on a blood test does not perfectly represent the tissue level of iron. And Bruce Ames, famous physiologist at Berkeley for many years, at the peak of his career, he was the most quoted scientist on planet Earth. But in 2004 and 2005, he was able to prove that there's 10 times more iron in the tissue than shows up in the blood.
Morley Robbins [00:17:53]: And so the confusion that we have on the planet is that if you want to adopt the position of the World Health Organization, they'll tell you that a third of the world's population has anemia, some form of iron deficiency anemia or anemia of chronic inflammation or one of the other subsets of anemia. But they'll tell you that a third of the population is struggling with iron. Well, here's what we have to believe. First of all, iron is the most dominant element on planet Earth. Number one, 36% of the Earth's composition is iron. And I'd like to think that humans are the most evolved species. My opinion shifted a little bit in 2020, but let's still go with the assumption that people are still the most evolved species. And so in order to accept anemia, it means that the most evolved species has lost the ability to metabolize the number one element on the planet, and it doesn't pass the sniff test.
Morley Robbins [00:18:56]: And the part that's missing in this conversation is the copper protein called ceruloplasmin.
Ben Greenfield [00:19:04]: Ceruloplasmin.
Morley Robbins [00:19:06]: Ceruloplasmin, okay. It's one of the largest proteins in the human body. 1046amino acids. When it was first discovered, there were eight atoms of copper inside it. And over the last 60 years, almost 70 years, we're down to six coppers. Some scientists suggest it might only be five.
Ben Greenfield [00:19:30]: Are you saying that we have lost those three to four copper ions in ceruloplasmin, or when it was originally discovered, it was improperly quantified?
Morley Robbins [00:19:44]: No, I'm just saying that from 1948 to 1975, Ceruloplasma always had eight coppers in it. Then in 1975 to 2000, it had dropped to seven. And then in 2000 to the current day is down to six. And I've read in three articles now, well, it might only be five. So picture driving a V8 and having a cylinder go out every few miles. That's what's happening to humanity.
Ben Greenfield [00:20:13]: Okay, so you are saying that basically the average level of copper in ceruloplasmin as measured in human beings over, over the past several decades has decreased.
Morley Robbins [00:20:23]: It's in the literature. It's documented.
Ben Greenfield [00:20:25]: Okay, got it. So. So. So it's not as though we've, we've found out better ways to somehow visualize or measure ceruloplasmin, and we've realized, well, those copper that we thought in it is lower. It's that levels are actually decreasing.
Morley Robbins [00:20:38]: And I've, I've talked to a handful of, of copper researchers and said, okay, what, what the hey? And no one can tell me that no one has it. They don't know what's, what's behind it. I'm like, okay. It's just we live in a very entertaining environment, as you well know. And so what's important for people to understand is how central this protein is to our well being. And so the model for big pharma is one gene, one protein, one function. That's what really drives the big pharma business model.
Ben Greenfield [00:21:14]: One gene codes to produce one protein, and that one protein has one function.
Morley Robbins [00:21:18]: Exactly. And so for ceruloplasmin, there is one gene, it's the ceruloplasmin gene, but it produces nine enzymes. There's nine different functions that ceruloplasmin can engage in. So it's basically a transformer. And what I find wildly entertaining is that in medical school, doctors don't learn any of this. They don't learn that there's 15 different substrates for ceruloplasmin.
Ben Greenfield [00:21:49]: And what's a substrate?
Morley Robbins [00:21:51]: Again, it's an element that the protein can work with.
Ben Greenfield [00:21:54]: Okay.
Morley Robbins [00:21:55]: And so it can work with iron and oxygen and work with copper, and can work with catecholamines, and it can work with amines and polyamines. And it's just like, we need to be mindful of this. This is a very powerful part of our physiology that is kind of pushed off to the side in conventional medicine. And in fact, if you really want to get into the nuance of it, there's a team of Russian scientists headed up by Basil Vasilyev. Ceruloplasmin actually works with lactoferrin and myeloperoxidase. This is a very powerful triad in our body that it basically keeps all the pathogens at bay, keeps the iron in regulation. And so we are endowed naturally with these mechanisms, but they're not taught in mainstream medical education. And so it's just we are constantly being exposed to workarounds because no one knows about the central importance of bioavailable copper.
Ben Greenfield [00:23:02]: Okay, so back to the anemia piece which got us on this ceruloplasmin kick in the first place. What you're saying is if I go to the doctor, they test my blood levels of iron. That doesn't necessarily mean I don't have high tissue levels of oxidizing iron. And that the reason I would have Low blood levels, but high tissue levels would be a result of some type of ceruloplasmin deficiency or some way that's not working properly.
Morley Robbins [00:23:29]: That's one factor. It's more likely that what I've learned more recently, Ben, is that if we have any kind of chronic stress. Do you know anyone who has chronic stress?
Ben Greenfield [00:23:40]: Yeah, a few people.
Morley Robbins [00:23:42]: Just a few people. Right. Like most of the planet, in the presence of chronic stress, the two stress models that are used in science are chronic social defeat stress and repeated restraint stress. Well, that's what 2020 was.
Ben Greenfield [00:24:00]: I don't know what either of those are. Chronic social defeat stress and restraint stress.
Morley Robbins [00:24:05]: Just go back five years and see what was life like when we were first confronted with the insanity of 2020? We felt socially defeated and we felt constrained about what we were allowed to do. But what they've discovered is that that social state, that stressful state, triggers a response in the immune system, and we produce higher levels of what's called Interleukin 6. It's a very important part of our innate immune system. And interleukin 6 causes a rise in a iron hormone called hepcidin. Ceruloplasm would be the positive regulator, iron metabolism, and hepcidin is the negative regulator of iron metabolism. There's a big difference between positive regulation and negative regulation. To use a sports analogy, a quarterback is a positive regulator. A middle linebacker on the defense is a negative regulator.
Morley Robbins [00:25:06]: They shut down plays. And so it's important to know that these mechanisms exist. But if hepcidin is rising under stress, it's going to cause what's called iron sequestration. The body is designed to pull that iron out of the bloodstream into what are called recycling macrophages. Very, very important part of our physiology, because the body knows that if the iron is available, the pathogens will use it, and then you're going to have a more significant infection. So stress is going to be a major contributor. But just any kind of pathogenic stress, any kind of exposure to pathogens is going to cause this sequestration of iron. And it's going to look.
Morley Robbins [00:25:55]: The iron is going to look low on the blood test, when in fact, it's not revealing what's happening at a tissue level. And the part that's usually missing in most people's awareness is that we have a very sophisticated turnover of iron in our body. Every day, every second, every second of every day, we have to replace two and a half million red blood cells. Got to take two and A half million offline. Got to bring two and a half million online. And that is the synchronized work of the spleen working with the bone marrow. Spleen's breaking them down, bone marrow is bringing them back online. And there's a tremendous flux of iron that needs to take place.
Morley Robbins [00:26:46]: And every 24 hours we need to make 200 billion red blood cells. And that requires 25 milligrams of iron. It's not very much, but it's significant. But the important part for your listeners and followers is that 24 of those 25 milligrams comes from this recycling system. Only one milligram is supposed to come from our mouth. And what's happened in modern society is they flip the narrative and they want people eating upwards of 20, 30, 40, 50 milligrams of iron because we have a very iron fortified diet. And the body can't assimilate all that iron, so it gets put into storage, into tissue, and that begins to throw off the elegance of the iron physiology.
Ben Greenfield [00:27:40]: Okay, I want to ask you about iron fortification in a second. But coming back to hepcidin.
Morley Robbins [00:27:45]: Yeah.
Ben Greenfield [00:27:46]: Just so I understand this correctly. So we're in a state of stress, and it could be social stress, environmental stress, pathogenic stress, et cetera. Hepcidin would upregulate and thus more iron would get sequestered in the tissues. The blood levels, if we were to be tested, would be low. And the more iron sequestered in the tissues would allow for us to do something like fight off infection better.
Morley Robbins [00:28:14]: That's a great question, Ben. It depends on how strong your immune system is. That's a wonderful insight, because we can have pathogens both intracellularly and extracellularly. So what this conserved response is is dealing with the extracellular pathogens. So let's get the iron out of the blood, which is extracellular, and get it into the recycling macrophages. Then you have the possibility of parasites and other pathogens building up in the intracellular medium in the actual macrophages. And so ideally, we've gotta be able to handle both the extracellular and intracellular flux of iron. And the important thing for you and your listeners to understand is that anytime you need to move iron in the human body, copper's gotta be nearby.
Morley Robbins [00:29:09]: Copper's gonna be the mechanism to open the doorways to allow the flux to take place.
Ben Greenfield [00:29:15]: Okay, so you're saying like a copper dysregulate or copper imbalance would result in dysregulation between action of hepcidin and ceruloplasmin and thus we wouldn't be moving iron efficiently between intracellular and extracellular environments.
Morley Robbins [00:29:30]: That's exactly right.
Ben Greenfield [00:29:31]: Chronic stress is what could cause that to happen.
Morley Robbins [00:29:34]: It's been proven to cause it. Absolutely proven to cause it. And now what we're facing is not just the chronic stress, but we're facing the shortage of copper and other minerals in our diet. I mean, we live on a very compromised environment.
Ben Greenfield [00:29:51]: Well, I'm sure a lot of people are going to wonder what I'm wondering, which is where we replace the copper. But before we get to that, you said, when you talked about iron, you said we get a lot of iron, but you specifically said iron fortification. And I want to know more about that because I consume red meat. I have, you know, some iron rich sources of vegetables. I don't personally supplement with iron. But is there a difference in the type of deleterious oxidation and iron accumulation that would occur from say iron fortification and iron supplementation versus, let's say a person who's having like a grass fed grass finished like ribeye steak and maybe some liver a few times a week?
Morley Robbins [00:30:31]: Right. So the important thing to understand is there's heme, which is animal iron, heme and non heme. Heme is considered organic. Non heme is inorganic. They don't want us eating the meat. You know that. I know that. It's pretty.
Morley Robbins [00:30:48]: I mean, they're going out of their way to try to make it fearful to eat animal meat. But the accessibility of iron in that situation is far easier to work with than the non heme iron. And when you get into the research around it, it's absolutely fascinating because 95% of how we access iron would be through this organic flux. But what they want us to believe is that 95% of it is coming from fortification. And so a lot of confusion around that. And the key is that everything really changed in 1941 when England and Canada and the US started to add iron filings to the food system, to the wheat flours where they first started it.
Ben Greenfield [00:31:39]: Now you said that in a very odd way. People hear iron fortification and that sounds good. Adding iron filings sounds disturbing, I guess. What are iron filings?
Morley Robbins [00:31:50]: Iron filings are the most inorganic form of iron you can possibly have. And this is profiled in the book the Most Toxic Metal by Jim Moon. He was a PhD iron toxicologist who passed away in 2016. So people don't realize what the food system has done. And what's also important to know is that so we have this watershed event in 41. In 1969, the FDA sought to increase the iron level in food fortification by 350%.
Ben Greenfield [00:32:31]: Wow.
Morley Robbins [00:32:32]: An increase of three and a half times. And that led to 20 some scientists from around the world, iron toxicologists coming to Washington D.C. with one question. What are you trying to do? Kill people? And so in a magnanimous gesture, the FDA backed off and only increased it 50%. What's important to know is that there are nine different forms of iron being added to the US food system and all nine have been classified as carcinogens.
Ben Greenfield [00:33:06]: And are all nine of those non heme forms of iron?
Morley Robbins [00:33:09]: Yes.
Ben Greenfield [00:33:10]: Okay. And I'm assuming non heme and the bioavailability of that or the way that that's utilized being different would mean there would be a higher risk of it building up in the tissue or creating some type of an iron imbalance versus heme iron, which would be better metabolized or something like that.
Morley Robbins [00:33:28]: Right, exactly. And so that they're actually, and I don't want to get too detailed because I'm going to lose your listeners.
Ben Greenfield [00:33:38]: They're smart cookies.
Morley Robbins [00:33:40]: Okay. Well, they're separate doorway. They're separate doorways. They're separate doorways for heme and non heme. They're separate exit doorways for heme and non heme. And it's important for people to realize that the research is obsessing about the non heme side and they're just ignoring the heme side, which I think is a mistake, in my humble opinion. But the part that people are not aware of is there's zero copper fortification in our food system, there's zero magnesium fortification in our food system, there's zero retinol fortification in our food system. And so we are exposed to constant additions of iron and calcium and vitamin D.
Morley Robbins [00:34:26]: But no one's talking about their parallel nutrients that are critical because they have a yin yang relationship.
Ben Greenfield [00:34:33]: Yeah. And we know what copper is. A lot of people know what magnesium is. Retinol, I believe that's a form of vitamin A, if I'm not mistaken.
Morley Robbins [00:34:41]: Animal based A. Yeah.
Ben Greenfield [00:34:43]: And what's the link between the cholesterol piece that you talked about earlier and retinol when it comes to this equation?
Morley Robbins [00:34:51]: Just that September 1955, Eisenhower has a heart attack and Ancel Keys seizes on that moment and he gets people to believe that, oh, it's cholesterol that's causing the heart attack. And so we put everyone on a low fat diet. So when you go low fat, you're going to not ingest retinol along with the cholesterol. And so what people didn't know, I mean, I didn't know this until I started to really get into the research. In order to make copper bioavailable, you must have retinol in your diet. And retinol is an essential part of the mechanism to. There are two critical copper pumps in our body. One's called ATP7A, it's called the Menkes gene.
Morley Robbins [00:35:43]: The other is ATP7B, the Wilson's gene. Well, those two genes produce proteins that can only be activated by 13 cis retinoic acid, which is a hormone derivative of retinol. So if you don't have retinol in your diet, you can't get to the 13 cis retinoic acid, you can't activate the pumps, you can't load copper into the copper enzymes that are critical for the physiology of our body.
Ben Greenfield [00:36:15]: Okay, so this is back to the cholesterol sink piece. You know, as you describe cholesterol as being protective against oxidation, it would be low cholesterol equals low retinol equals copper dysregulation equals oxidation by iron.
Morley Robbins [00:36:30]: There you go. We should drop the mic right now.
Ben Greenfield [00:36:34]: Almost. We're not done yet. Okay, so I'm assuming part of this is like, don't be fat phobic. Consume good dietary sources of fat. I'm assuming part of this is take adequate levels of magnesium. I'm assuming a big part of this is like, avoid foods fortified in iron, which would mean cutting out a lot of processed and ultra processed foods is a good idea generally.
Morley Robbins [00:36:57]: Exactly.
Ben Greenfield [00:36:58]: Don't take an iron supplement.
Morley Robbins [00:36:59]: Right.
Ben Greenfield [00:37:00]: And then the copper piece, that might be a little bit lesser known to a lot of people, like, where do you actually get copper?
Morley Robbins [00:37:10]: I will answer that question. But let's make sure people are aware of the medical meme that runs medicine around the world. And that is you're anemic and you're copper toxic. Those are two dominant thought processes that are constantly being pumped out in the airwaves.
Ben Greenfield [00:37:29]: Yeah, well, I hear anemic a lot. I don't hear copper toxic as much.
Morley Robbins [00:37:33]: Oh, it's very pervasive. And so they want us to be afraid of the very element that regulates iron. And they want us to believe that we can take as much iron and not be worried about it. A good rule of thumb for how much iron you have in your body is to take your age and multiply it times 365. This is not my formula. This is the formula that the iron Biologists like Robert Crichton and Douglas Kell and people of that stature, these are the megastars. And in that world of iron researcher, that's what they use. So I'm going to be 73 in a couple weeks.
Morley Robbins [00:38:13]: So I've got about 27,000 milligrams of iron in my body. Well, men are designed to run on five, so I've got a multiple of iron. And so the iron footprint is what we've got to mitigate and we've got to begin to introduce the copper at the same time to bring the physiology back into balance. So then to come to your question, historically the food sources of copper would have been organ meats.
Ben Greenfield [00:38:44]: Okay.
Morley Robbins [00:38:45]: And shellfish.
Ben Greenfield [00:38:47]: Okay.
Morley Robbins [00:38:48]: Nuts and seeds.
Ben Greenfield [00:38:50]: Like all nuts and seeds or like are there specific ones? Higher.
Morley Robbins [00:38:53]: Cashews are particularly high.
Ben Greenfield [00:38:55]: Great. That's it. You didn't even know. This is a key ingredient in a new ketone based energy bar I just developed. So there we go. You just did free advertising for me. Okay, Cashews, that's fine.
Morley Robbins [00:39:06]: And then we've got leafy greens like mustard greens, collard greens, beet greens. Historically, again we're talking historically, were very rich in copper. Unfortunately, we live in a post glyphosate world. Roundup is worldwide now. Roundup is in the air. It's not just on commercial farms. Proof of that came in 2022 when a study was done in France. Now mind you, the French were very opposed to the introduction of glyphosate in Europe.
Morley Robbins [00:39:46]: They were very resistant to that might.
Ben Greenfield [00:39:48]: Mess up the flavor of the Bordeaux or something like that.
Morley Robbins [00:39:51]: Exactly. But 99% of French citizens are peeing glyphosate in their urine. That was sort of a bellwether study that began, that sent a shockwave around the world. That glyphosate is in the air and in the rainwater. And so it isn't just even organic foods now are subject to this event.
Ben Greenfield [00:40:14]: So what's that have to do with copper?
Morley Robbins [00:40:17]: Well, it means we have compromised sources of copper.
Ben Greenfield [00:40:21]: Oh, so, so you're not, you're not saying like the glyphosate would somehow maybe it does, I don't know, impair copper balance. What you're saying is while all these copper rich foods, you're getting some of the other, whatever gut damaging effects of glyphosate or some of the neurological issues associated with glyphosate, if you're going out of your way to eat a bunch of non organic, dark leafy greens and you know Whatever meat from cattle that are eating, things that have been sprayed, et cetera.
Morley Robbins [00:40:47]: Well, actually, it does affect the availability of minerals in general. But let me introduce a thought before I get there. It's important for people to know that again, take the time machine back to 2020. A lot of people are doing what's called the COVID cocktail, and that was high doses of ascorbic acid, high doses of vitamin D and high doses of zinc.
Ben Greenfield [00:41:12]: I did that.
Morley Robbins [00:41:13]: Okay. Well, it's the perfect triad to kill the bioavailability of copper.
Ben Greenfield [00:41:19]: Oh, shit.
Morley Robbins [00:41:20]: And so it was in April of 2020 that I renamed what Covid stood for. So COV stands for coppers vanished and ID stands for irons dysregulated.
Ben Greenfield [00:41:34]: Oh, man.
Morley Robbins [00:41:35]: And so the research that would be important for you and your followers to know about was in 1928, two separate studies, March at the University of Wisconsin, May at the University of Kentucky, where they purposely withheld copper from the animal's diet. And the liver filled up with iron. They've known this since 1928. It's very well established biological fact that copper is instrumental for regulating iron in the animal's body. It's a very, very central function that, that a lot of scientists have known. It's just not taught in one place, medical school. And so back to your point about the impact that glyphosate has on minerals, there's a famous scientist named Don Huber. He's in retirement now, but he's at Purdue University and he studied glyphosate for the last 30 years of his career.
Morley Robbins [00:42:33]: And he studied the speed with which minerals are chelated from the soil being exposed to glyphosate. So you're familiar with earthquakes. An earthquake of 3 is, you know, dishes rattle, but no one dies. Earthquake of 12, no one survives that. So what Dr. Huber was able to document, and he's done several studies to this, that glyphosate is pulling calcium and magnesium out of the soil at a speed of 3. It's pulling iron and zinc out of the soil at a nine.
Ben Greenfield [00:43:16]: Yeah. You're going to tell me copper's a 12, right?
Morley Robbins [00:43:18]: Copper's a 12. So here's the significance of that. That means that copper is coming out a billion times faster than calcium and magnesium and a thousand times faster than iron and zinc. Now here's the problem. We've got Ben. When I was in college, my mom had a Mercedes 350SL and I drove that car in Florida twice the speed limit. I was going 140 miles an hour. It was a wall of green going past.
Morley Robbins [00:43:48]: By the grace of God, I didn't get caught. But that was twice as fast. When I was a little boy, a guy named Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and he was going 10 times the speed limit going 750 miles an hour. You and I don't know what a thousand times faster or a billion times faster is. And what we tend to do is. Well, I don't really understand that, so I can't be that important. No, this is very, very, very important. And what's happened, Ben, is we as a species have become Swiss cheese because we're missing minerals and our nutrients and we're eating Swiss cheese because the food is missing the nutrients.
Ben Greenfield [00:44:29]: Yeah, maybe French cheese.
Morley Robbins [00:44:31]: Okay. But the point is we have a compromised diet and we have a compromised physiology. And the whole purpose behind this book is just to wake people up to this reality that minerals are, are critical for our physiology, but especially copper and magnesium because we're seeking to make energy to respond to the stress that we're constantly under.
Ben Greenfield [00:44:57]: Okay, so obviously a major takeaway from that TED talk on herbicides and pesticides is if you're going to choose these copper rich sources that you talked about, select the source carefully. But then what about have two follow up questions related to that copper supplementation, like can you just buy and supplement copper? And then also I hear bee pollen is a really good source and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on bee pollen.
Morley Robbins [00:45:23]: We highly recommend bee pollen and like rice bran again. But it's with the acknowledgement that to some extent that particular source of nutrients, bee pollen, has been compromised. Everything's been compromised now.
Ben Greenfield [00:45:42]: Well, actually no. So I interviewed the people and this is not a commercial, they're not like sponsoring this box. But I interviewed Carly from Beekeepers Naturals and they actually, they source all of their bees now in Europe in totally non sprayed environments. You know, because the issue with organic in America is in many cases the bees are just traveling to a bunch of inorganic sprayed farms, but they have a source in Europe. So I know beekeepers naturals, according to them, like they have a clean version of a bee pollen.
Morley Robbins [00:46:10]: That's beautiful. That's exciting. I think it's important that people recognize that the study in 2022 would suggest that glyphosate is more prevalent than we want to believe. And certainly the research that Stephanie Seneff has done certainly has implicated a lot of chronic problems are stemming from. She'll refer to glyphosate in her writing, she doesn't get down to the copper level until you're face to face. It's a different story.
Ben Greenfield [00:46:40]: Okay, got it. Now what about copper supplementation? Like, do companies sell a good form of copper that you could take if you just don't have good dietary sources?
Morley Robbins [00:46:52]: One of my contributions to society was to make a copper supplement in 2021.
Ben Greenfield [00:46:57]: I didn't just throw you a softball, by the way.
Morley Robbins [00:46:59]: No, no, no. The whole key though is I want people to realize that the name of the supplement we came up with or that I inspired is called Recuperate. That's great. But the point is that is a bioavailable form of copper. Just taking a copper supplement isn't enough. You've got to be able to have the nutrients that copper is looking for.
Ben Greenfield [00:47:24]: Oh, you mean like this would be called like co factors in the supplement industry?
Morley Robbins [00:47:29]: Absolutely. And so copper is a fat soluble mineral. It loves to be in the medium of fat. And in order to metabolize fat, you have to have copper in your physiology. That's the yin yang of copper is there's a copper fat axis and there's an iron sugar axis. So they've been dumping us full of sugar, knowing that it's going to build up iron in our body. What's been missing has been the copper and the fat for decades.
Ben Greenfield [00:48:02]: Interesting. By the way, the iron sugar axis, I'm going to hypothesize that has something to do with sugar shifting you into a more anaerobic state and increasing the amount of iron saturation in the tissue.
Morley Robbins [00:48:13]: Absolutely.
Ben Greenfield [00:48:15]: Interesting. Okay, so the last thing about copper that I'm wondering is, can I get some kind of a blood test or, or some type of evaluation that tells me, like, gives me an accurate picture of my copper values and I guess I should throw in there because people are going to wonder, ditto for iron, if blood is giving you an inaccurate representation.
Morley Robbins [00:48:36]: What I cobble together is what's called the Full Monty iron panel. There's nothing. What's unusual about it was to introduce copper markers and zinc and vitamin A and vitamin D into a fairly standard iron panel. And you can order it, any individual can order it from a website called requestatest.com and I've trained about a thousand people now in the root cause protocol. And so there are people out there that can help me introduce it. But what I would propose is that if you decide you want to do that, I have no control over the cost. It's 275. But if you decide to do It I would love to interpret the results.
Morley Robbins [00:49:23]: We can either do it offline or online, depending on how you want to approach it. But I think you'd find it fascinating to see what your body is revealing. And it's the interaction and interpolation of those markers where I can begin to get a sense of what level of oxidative stress could be taking place inside your body. And I imagine given your commitment and focus, it's going to be a different level than what I typically see with a lot of people that I work with.
Ben Greenfield [00:49:50]: Yeah, maybe. Is that a blood test?
Morley Robbins [00:49:52]: Yep.
Ben Greenfield [00:49:53]: Okay, what about the. You hear a lot of practitioners now using hair like a mineral analysis. What do you think about that?
Morley Robbins [00:50:00]: No, I've worked with hair tests for.
Ben Greenfield [00:50:03]: 16 years because I'm assuming the blood test that you just talked about, if you say it's all iron, it's not going to tell me copper or it does.
Morley Robbins [00:50:09]: No, no, no. The blood test is going to help you. There are multiple media for discerning what's happening at a nutrient level in the body. You can use blood, you can use urine, you can use feces, and you can use hair. Those are the typical sources. The hair is very, very easy medium to work with. Here's the beauty is its simplicity. But there is a downside to it.
Morley Robbins [00:50:39]: And again, I've worked with a hair test for 16 years now. The beauty of the hair test is it will tell you right away if you're dealing with stress because you're going to get back a saber toothed tiger report of different levels of minerals throughout the hair sample. But where I think the hair test really shines is there's a way to measure whether the body is in fact able to make energy in the face of that stress. There's an adrenal ratio and there's a thyroid ratio. Adrenal ratio is the ratio of sodium to magnesium and the thyroid ratio is calcium to potassium. And those are very helpful to get a sense of what's the energy producing capacity of this individual.
Ben Greenfield [00:51:24]: So it's not just levels, it's the ratio.
Morley Robbins [00:51:27]: Yep. Ratios are very, very important in mineral analysis. And here's the part that a lot of people don't know about with the hair test. They do measure the metals, especially the zinc, copper, iron and molybdenum are the four principal metals that they're going to look at. Excuse me, manganese. But they also do measure molybdenum. But the first thing they do with a hair sample is they burn it. It's the very first thing they do, I've been to the labs, I've watched them do it.
Morley Robbins [00:51:57]: And so what that does is it oxidizes the valence of that metal. Well, zinc is unique and only has one valence. It's plus two. Copper has at least three, iron has at least four, and manganese has six. And so everything gets frozen to a plus two valence, and we don't get a complete understanding of what's happening inside the body. The other thing that you can't do with a hair test pen is you cannot measure ceruloplasmin in a hair sample. It does not show up in a hair test.
Ben Greenfield [00:52:33]: Does that blood, ceruloplasmin?
Morley Robbins [00:52:35]: Yeah, only in the blood. Gotta do it in the blood.
Ben Greenfield [00:52:38]: Is that part of the iron panel that you run? Do you have ceruloplasmin on that?
Morley Robbins [00:52:42]: Absolutely.
Ben Greenfield [00:52:42]: Okay.
Morley Robbins [00:52:43]: And again, back to the ratio. It was some hematologists from Harvard back in 1960. It's a very entertaining series of studies. They did nine different studies of ceruloplasm. They chose to do the research at Bell Laboratories in upstate New York, not in Cambridge, Mass. I've never understood why they did that. But what they introduced the world to was the ratio of copper to ceruloplasmin is very, very important. And the great scientists of the 1930s have studied these metals very carefully.
Morley Robbins [00:53:25]: And they were very clear that zinc and magnesium and copper and iron should all be at 100 in the serum. So the copper, the zinc, and the iron should all be around 100. And these are based on numerous studies by numerous scientists back in the day. And then the ideal for ceruloplasmin should be 30, and the ratio should be 3.33. And when there's a deviation from that, that's when you begin to get into the nuance of what's going on in the person's world.
Ben Greenfield [00:54:02]: Okay, and I assume your test results give those ratios?
Morley Robbins [00:54:05]: Yeah, absolutely.
Ben Greenfield [00:54:06]: Okay. All right. So you have a really intriguing page in the book. And by the way, just so you guys know, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com rootcause I'll put some helpful shownotes to you and links for the things Morley and I are talking about. But we are just so, you know, we're like an hour in, and we've covered, like, maybe 20% of the book. So if you want the full meal deal, read the book. But I really like this chapter or this page where you go through, like, what a suggested daily schedule would look like for the root cause protocol. And I'm assuming you might even do this in your own life.
Ben Greenfield [00:54:43]: So walk me through, like, the supplements that you're taking to balance things out and, and why you're choosing specific items. We don't have to take a deep dive, but just like the general overview of what a day in the life of the root cause protocol looks like to balance out, you know, the copper issues, the iron issues, this rule of plasma, and everything we've talked about so far.
Morley Robbins [00:55:03]: So the whole basis of the, of the protocol is that it's built around stops and starts. And there's about a dozen different nutrients that we tell people to stop taking. Like stop taking iron, stop taking calcium, stop taking zinc, stop taking supplemental D. And those are very controversial, but we can back up the reason why we take that stance. But then what you're referring to is the daily schedule that we've developed over the years just to give people a guide for how to introduce these critical nutrients into your routine. So you begin to get the full benefit of having bioavailable copper and having balance in your minerals. And what we're really doing in the initial stages, we break it down into phases. We have phase one, two, three, and then we have what's called phase X.
Morley Robbins [00:55:57]: So that people doing what you're doing right now, this very regular steady movement, it's very, very helpful, get out in the sun, things like that. But the goal of phase one is to really begin to address the prevalence of mineral imbalance in most people's body, because people have not been aware that minerals are the spark plugs of life. And they are. And so we're bringing the adrenal glands back online. We have an adrenal cocktail that we developed that introduces sodium and potassium and magnesium along with vitamin E, excuse me, vitamin C, just to nourish the critical glands that rest on top of our kidneys and get them back in the game of dealing with the stress. But then we're also introducing like the copper is the last component of that phase one. But we're trying to get people focused.
Morley Robbins [00:56:59]: On.
Morley Robbins [00:57:01]: Meal food wherever possible, food based supplements wherever possible, and do it in a phased format so that they're not overwhelmed by the process of transitioning from the conventional worldview to, you know, you made reference in some of the wording that you use that I had created the protocol. Well, actually, I like to think of it as Mother Nature created the protocol. I just happened to dust it off.
Ben Greenfield [00:57:29]: Yeah, I get it, I get it. You did say Whole Foods. I'm Reading right now. Whole food vitamin C, whole food, vitamin E. You said whole food supplements. What's a whole food supplement versus an average everyday supplement?
Morley Robbins [00:57:44]: Yeah. So with vitamin C, we've been trained to believe that ascorbic acid is vitamin C. And so vitamin C, the whole vitamin C complex, is like your car, where it has an engine, a steering wheel, four wheels and a cover. That's the design of a whole food vitamin C complex. Ascorbic acid is just the COVID of the car and no moving parts. So it's very different, complex than what we've been led to believe. The vitamin E, typically, what they'll sell you is alpha tocopherol, when in fact there are four tocopherols and. And four tocotrains.
Morley Robbins [00:58:25]: And very often there's selenium at the core.
Ben Greenfield [00:58:27]: Oh, okay. Yeah. So this would be like. I did an interview with Dr. Barry Tan, and he described, like, the difference between synthetic vitamin E and, like, taking a natto plant extract, which is the four tocoproles and the four tocotrienols.
Morley Robbins [00:58:39]: Exactly, exactly. And so Mother Nature designed those vitamins that way for a reason. The interplay of those parts and what's important for people to know is everyone that knows about ascorbic acid would assume that it was Albert Svengorgi who got the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid. Well, that's not at all what happened. But the important point is that he got the Nobel Prize in December of 1937. He wrote an article, a letter to the editor, nature journal, in July 4, 1936. And I have the letter in my files. And he made a very clear statement.
Morley Robbins [00:59:24]: He said, ascorbic acid does not cure scurvy. He was not working with ascorbic acid. He was working with hyaluronic acid. And he was working with Hungarian peppers, which have the whole complex. And so the world has been led astray by this deception around ascorbic acid versus the whole food.
Ben Greenfield [00:59:45]: Vitamin C, okay, so if you're taking vitamin C or vitamin E, look for the whole foods version, of course, have magnesium on there. Rice bran. That's rice bran. And bee pollen. Those are probably listed as forms of copper. Huh. And liver also.
Morley Robbins [00:59:58]: Well, actually, they're rich sources of B vitamins.
Ben Greenfield [01:00:01]: Oh, and copper or just B vitamins?
Morley Robbins [01:00:04]: Well, I would argue that the copper is probably woven in there. I had a conversation with Dr. Clavy many years ago, and I. I said, my theory is that all of the B vitamins require copper, so they can regulate iron. And he said, well, Morley, that's a great theory, he said. I can't speak for all of the B vitamins, he said, but, well, I will tell you for a fact, is that folate B9 is copper dependent. And when you understand the role of folate in our physiology, that's a very profound piece of information that totally changes our understanding of vitamin A and vitamin D metabolism in the body.
Ben Greenfield [01:00:46]: Yeah. And looking at this, it seems like it's something someone could pretty easily stack onto their current diet. Take magnesium, cod liver oil. A lot of people have access to that. Some kind of trace mineral, bee pollen, beef liver. I know a lot of people don't like it, but you can take capsules. Even though I like to cook it, I love beef liver steaks, rice bran, diatomaceous earth a couple times a day. This adrenal cocktail that you mix in fresh greased orange juice or water.
Ben Greenfield [01:01:17]: It seems like you wouldn't have to. This isn't a doom scroll for people to overhaul everything. It's like, stop taking a certain number of things, start adding these in. And then. The last thing I was going to ask you that I was wondering about related to iron. What about like giving blood to jumpstart the process? Do you have an opinion on. On phlebotomy like that?
Morley Robbins [01:01:38]: Yeah, we. We regularly recommend that.
Ben Greenfield [01:01:40]: Okay.
Morley Robbins [01:01:41]: What we really are proposing is that we need to lower the iron footprint in our body and we need to raise the copper footprint in our body. And you and I have a very different profile than our great grandparents. I can assure you that they were eating different food than what we eat. I mean, I think you have a tremendous discipline and rigor about yours, but the average person doesn't have. They're not eating the types of foods that their ancestors ate. And so the ability to release the iron from the body to lower the oxidative stress. And so the whole concept of cure your fatigue was based on the work of Douglas Wallace, who's a famous geneticist at Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania. He wrote a very important article in 2005 where he was challenging his clinical colleagues and his scientific peers.
Morley Robbins [01:02:36]: He said, you all don't seem to understand how energy is made in the body and how if the oxygen doesn't become water, you have an opportunity cost. You can't recover that oxygen. You've got to neutralize that oxygen or that oxidant. And so if we don't turn the oxygen into water, we suboptimize our production of energy. And there we have what he called cellular energy deficiency. Well, fatigue is a little Easier to say. And it turns out that there are 20,000 symptoms that are profiled in the Merck manual. And guess what? They all start with cellular energy deficiency.
Morley Robbins [01:03:20]: That's the focal point of every condition.
Ben Greenfield [01:03:23]: Wow. Wow. And I mean, this is new stuff for a lot of people who have heard like take an iron supplement, pop a bunch of vitamin D. But in reading over your book, I finished the book two weeks ago. I've definitely got some things to experiment with and I'm sure some people are going to want to do this test to see where they're at. And some people are going to have questions, comments, feedback. I'll sit down after this and help make the show notes nice and juicy for you. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com rootcause the book's not super hard to read.
Ben Greenfield [01:04:00]: I think if you really want to take the deep dive, you get through this in a week or less. I think it's worth looking into morally. This is fascinating stuff and I want to thank you for coming on the show and for doing the work that you do well.
Morley Robbins [01:04:13]: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share it. And what I think is important in this particular edition of the book is we've taken a deeper dive around the copper. We've introduced a whole chapter on women's health, which a lot of people don't realize all revolve around this copper iron crisis. But the footnotes that are there are ones that you could hand this book to a doctor and say, if you want to understand copper, here's the book to do it.
Ben Greenfield [01:04:41]: Yeah, very well researched. 290 references. So worth checking out, you guys. Here's what it looks like. Cure your fatigue. It's now available on Amazon. Pretty new second edition. BenGreenfieldLife.com Root Cause is where I will put the show notes.
Ben Greenfield [01:04:56]: Morley, thanks so much, man. This is good stuff.
Morley Robbins [01:04:58]: Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much for your time.
Ben Greenfield [01:05:01]: All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Morley Robin Robbins signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an incredible week to discover.
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Do you have questions, thoughts, or feedback for Morely Robbins or me? Leave your comments below, and one of us will reply!
I’ve listened to a lot of Morley Robbins and some other copper advocates. Then I supplemented with copper (glycinate, sulfate) and beef liver. Now I think it is unnecessary, I rarely supplement, the liver is enough.
Some of what he says is devoid of substance, in my view. Especially when he talks about “natural vitamin C”. And I also think that one should not attribute his good health to his protocol — only in part. Some people have good jeans — er, genes — and are healthy for no specific reason, their positive attitude, the environment. He himself took a lot of unhealthy food for a long time. I too.
I would like to… find a rationale for not avoiding iron like the plague, because I live in a place where giving blood is not convenient. I would like to tell myself that the not insignificant amount of heme iron from liver intake (the other meat products intake is bone broth, mostly), balanced by zinc, is not only not harmful but maybe a plus in my diet. I recall podcasts where the host said that iron is actually good, even if it is an old idea and promoted by the established quack medicine. It gives energy (and energy is the linchpin of health — mitochondrial health, respiration), participates in many things in the body (and yes, Robbins explains that we have more than the necessary amount and the real issue is how to metabolize it). I can’t see myself drawing blood. Mercola does it, for this reason, and I think Paul Saladino too. So, I am probably not taking matters sufficiently seriously.
I used to listen to Matt Blackburn (his style is: take on purpose a different viex on this or that fro mthe alternative health, so as to be seen as a really independent thinker, alternative of the “mainstream alternativ”, it’s almost caricatural but not uninteresting). He did many interviews with Morley Robbins. He felt great after his first blood donation but not so great the second time and explained that, for him, he didn”t feel the need to go on giving blood. When I did, I never felt more tired or more energetic.
Regarding the question about Vitamin A overdose, Morley makes a good case debunking the case for vitamin A overdose and explaining how beneficial retinol is — the animal form, not the precursor. It is in my view an underestimated cheap very healthy vitamin, not even the “alternative” health industries have much to gain from it.
I’ve listened to a lot of Morley Robbins and some other copper advocates. Then I supplemented with copper (glycinate, sulfate) and beef liver and diminished my intake of zinc (a few times a week, not every day). Now I think it is unnecessary, I rarely supplement, the liver is enough.
Some of what he says is devoid of substance, in my view. Especially when he talks about “natural vitamin C”. And I also think that one should not attribute his good health to his protocol — only in part. Some people have good jeans — er, genes — and are healthy for no specific reason, their positive attitude, the environment. He himself took a lot of unhealthy food for a long time. I too.
I would like to… find a rationale for not avoiding iron like the plague, because I live in a place where giving blood is not convenient. I would like to tell myself that the not insignificant amount of heme iron from liver intake (the other meat products intake is bone broth, mostly), balanced by zinc, is not only not harmful but maybe a plus in my diet. I recall podcasts where the host said that iron is actually good, even if it is an old idea and promoted by the established quack medicine. It gives energy (and energy is the linchpin of health — mitochondrial health, respiration), participates in many things in the body (and yes, Robbins explains that we have more than the necessary amount and the real issue is how to metabolize it). I can’t see myself drawing blood. Mercola does it, for this reason, and I think Paul Saladino too. So, I am probably not taking matters sufficiently seriously.
I used to listen to Matt Blackburn (his style is: take on purpose a different viex on this or that fro mthe alternative health, so as to be seen as a really independent thinker, alternative of the “mainstream alternativ”, it’s almost caricatural but not uninteresting). He did many interviews with Morley Robbins. He felt great after his first blood donation but not so great the second time and explained that, for him, he didn”t feel the need to go on giving blood. When I did, I never felt more tired or more energetic.
Regarding the question about Vitamin A overdose, Morley makes a good case debunking the case for vitamin A overdose and explaining how beneficial retinol is — the animal form, not the precursor. It is in my view an underestimated cheap very healthy vitamin, not even the “alternative” health industries have much to gain from it.
Not everyone can tolerate copper as it can accumulate in the body causing toxicity from diet, contaminated water and copper cookware. A genetic disorder known as Wilson’s disease prevents the body from properly eliminating copper leading to damaging organs like the liver and brain. Even wearing copper jewellery to treat arthritis can cause problems.
Interviewed Morely myself, amazing podcast and an amazing intellect.
To throw the cat among the pigeons, what are your views (Ben/ Morely) on Dr Garrett Smith’s work (Nutrition Detective)? That much of the chronic disease we face is driven by Hypervitaminosis A and copper toxicity.