Episode 2: Copper Toxicity, Mental Health and Hormones

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Hi, Dr.
Ali here.
Today we're gonna be talkingabout copper toxicity and its
relationship to mental healthand hormones.
So the typical copper toxicwoman that I see that comes to
work with me.
Usually is dealing with somelevel of anxiety.
She has insomnia.

(00:27):
She's wired, especially thattired, but wired, feeling
adrenaline surge, feeling heartpalpitations, also histamine
symptoms.
Estrogen dominant symptomsbecause histamine and estrogen
go hand in hand and copper goeswith estrogen and histamine as
well, And generally just feelinga bit inattentive.

(00:51):
So copper toxicity can take ourdopamine, which is what's needed
for focus and reward basedbehavior, which tends to be
lower in people with A DHD, andit converts dopamine.
To norepinephrine, otherwiseknown as adrenaline.
So adrenaline surges, lack offocus, anxiety, histamine

(01:13):
symptoms, estrogen dominance,all of that kind of goes
alongside copper toxicity.
So I'm gonna specifically talkabout copper toxicity today.
in terms of what I see inclinical practice, and I'm gonna
touch on some of the stuff thatis out there on copper toxicity
on the internet that is not.
Correct.

(01:33):
a lot of people are running intoit and running into problems
with it.
And I'm also gonna talk aboutwhat I do to address copper
toxicity.
Now a caveat here is that thingsdo not exist in a vacuum, right?
Copper is not the only issue.
99% of cases that I see, it'snever just one thing.
It's a combination of things andbiochemical imbalances are

(01:57):
intricate.
We have to look at a full bloodpanel before we can make,
decisions on exactly what it isthat, is needed beyond
biochemical imbalances.
We have lifestyle, we havecircadian rhythm, we have
trauma, we have gut health, allof these other things that are
playing a role.

(02:17):
So, I do want to say that evenif copper is an issue for you,
it doesn't mean you just addresscopper and all your symptoms go
away.
Now, a lot of your symptomsmight, improve with addressing
copper toxicity, but that's notwhere you wanna stop.
And oftentimes, for example, if.
Your gut health is poor.
That's going to contribute tocopper toxicity because if we

(02:39):
have a problem detoxing estrogendue to liver or gut issues, then
estrogen is going to increasecopper.
And this is because there's arelationship between estrogen
and copper.
So estrogen increases copper inpregnancy, via angiogenesis.
So angiogenesis is the processof recruitment of blood vessels

(03:00):
to grow tissue.
So estrogen is what's known asan anabolic hormone.
Anabolic hormones grow things,right?
Like when you think of anabolicsteroids, what people take when
they're doing bodybuilding, it'sto grow their muscles.
So estrogen is growing, and inorder to grow the tissue we need
a blood supply.
So that requires blood vesselsto be made new blood vessels to

(03:24):
be made.
And what lines the outside ofblood vessels is collagen.
One of the co-factors alongsidevitamin C, in collagen
production and the specific typeof collagen that is used to make
blood vessels is copper.
So when women are pregnant,their estrogen increases
obviously because they'regrowing a, a fetus, and their

(03:45):
copper also increases because ofthat blood vessel recruitment
process, otherwise known asangiogenesis.
And so the copper increases, theestrogen increases, and then.
Once they give birth postpartum,their copper levels should fall.
They should go back to baseline.
But in many women they don't.
Now they have a newer, higherbaseline of what copper looks

(04:08):
like.
So that starts to become aproblem because of the reasons
that I mentioned before.
So copper is an issue that Ioften see postpartum in women.
Let me get into the specifics ofsymptoms of copper toxicity.
I touched on them briefly, butjust to kind of really hone it
in anxiety or panic.

(04:29):
especially if there's a cyclicalnature to it, right?
If it's when estrogen tends tobe higher, but it could really
be any time.
insomnia.
Also, if there's a cyclicalpattern to it.
histamine flares as well.
PMS Rage Racing Thoughts.
Mental overstimulation.

(04:50):
A DHD.
You know whether or not you havea DHD, you can manage it, right?
And so you can be somebody whohas a DHD and have it really
well managed, or you could besomebody with a DHD who just is
having all kinds ofdysregulation.
So if you are somebody who has aDHD has been diagnosed with a

(05:10):
DH, ADHD, or you suspect youmight have, it doesn't mean that
you're doomed to a life ofstruggle.
You can actually do.
Things like this biochemical,balancing in order to reduce the
symptoms and improve yourquality of life and improve your
functioning.
So if you're, having lots ofissues with focus, or feeling

(05:32):
like adrenaline, heart pounding,that's something that you can
address.
And the other and final thingwould be never feeling the same
since postpartum for the reasonthat I just mentioned.
What most people are gettingwrong about copper toxicity is
they're not doing the righttesting.
So I'm seeing a lot of stuffonline where people are talking

(05:55):
about testing copper with anHTMA, which is a hair tissue
mineral analysis test.
A hair tissue mineral analysistest is not going to diagnose
copper toxicity.
HTMA can be a useful test, butit's not.
It's not telling us what's goingon right now in your blood.
It's giving us an average of thelast three months of what's

(06:16):
going on in the cells.
But if you have copper toxicity,I wanna know how that's
impacting you right now in thismoment.
And so the best way to test forthat is actually blood testing.
The blood tests that I run aresomething called a serum copper,
a ceruloplasmin, which is aprotein.

(06:38):
It is a copper binding proteinand a plasma zinc.
Because plasma zinc is indicatedin copper toxicity because we
need to know what your copper tozinc ratio is in order to know
how to correct it.
So the reason I'm looking atcopper.

(06:59):
And clop.
Plasmin is because from thosetwo values, I calculate what's
called a free copper percentageor a percent free copper.
If that percent free copper isover 25%, then I know that you
have a problem with elevatedfree copper, and if you have a

(07:20):
problem with elevated freecopper, then I know that you
have an oxidative stress.
Problem that copper is bouncingaround, creating inflammation
and oxidative stress in yourbrain, creating more adrenaline,
more norepinephrine.
So.
Getting copper regulated isn'tjust a matter of balancing

(07:41):
copper with zinc and detoxingcopper through the liver,
through the gut.
All of those things are great,but it's also an oxidative
stress problem, so we have toaddress it properly with
antioxidants, which I'll talkabout more so.
Serum copper, ceruloplasmin, andzinc.
And zinc will allow us todetermine what the safe level of

(08:02):
supplementation is because youcan easily overdo it on zinc.
And if you're somebody who haslow zinc and elevated copper,
elevated free copper percentage,you want to undergo regular
testing if you're going throughsome kind of a therapeutic
process to address.
Copper toxicity.
You don't just wanna wing itbecause it's an intricate

(08:23):
balance.
Another distinction to be madehere is that you can have a high
percent free copper.
Just by itself.
Or you can have a high percentfree copper alongside an
elevated total copper, and thetreatment is gonna look a bit
different for each of those.
With the total copper beingelevated, you're looking at

(08:46):
addressing mineral imbalances.
With the percent free copperbeing elevated, you're looking
at addressing mineralimbalances, and you're also
looking at addressing oxidativestress because it's that percent
free copper that is unbound tothe cillo plasmin that is
creating the oxidative stress.

(09:07):
So I wanna talk about thesemisguided protocols that, first
of all, people are basing theseoff of htma, which isn't even
the correct way to diagnosecopper.
Overload or copper toxicity.
and this kind of comes from thework of Ray Pete.
Now, people who are promotinghis work are, ooh, I would say

(09:28):
they're dangerous.
because when it leads tostarting to supplement with
vitamin A are starting to takebeef liver supplements, we run
into problems.
And why is this?
Because vitamin A, is afat-soluble vitamin.
So fat-soluble vitamins canincrease the amount of storage

(09:52):
in the liver, which can createmore toxicity in the liver, can
slow down detoxification fromthe point of bile flow.
So we don't wanna have excessiveamounts of vitamin A.
When you take a supplement likebeef liver, that is a highly,
highly concentrated amount ofvitamin A and copper.

(10:17):
To be honest, I've listened tothe explanation of their logic
around this, and it doesn't makeany sense no matter how many
times I listen to it.
And not only does it not makesense, it doesn't work.
I have women that come to me whohave worked at these health
coaches who are informed by thisRay Repeat person and this
Morley Robbins person andwhoever else that is, you know,

(10:39):
practicing in this way.
And, what I often see is thatthey are doing worse.
They're taking beef, liver, andtheir anxiety is worse.
They're getting the adrenalinesurges.
Why?
Because it's a very Highlyconcentrated source of copper.
So you're taking somebody who'scopper toxic and you're making
them more copper toxic.

(10:59):
You do not give copper tosomebody who is copper toxic.
I repeat, you do not give copperin any form to somebody who is
copper Toxic people will feelbetter initially because there's
this response that happens whenyou load the body with something

(11:20):
that is.
Highly concentrated in aparticular ingredient.
The body might put it into astorage form, but then once it
runs out of the storage, then itstarts to get into the
bloodstream, and then we startto see symptoms, we start to see
problems.
Another thing is like even justtaking beef, liver for anemia,
same problem, right?

(11:41):
You will feel better at firstbecause there is a copper
element with anemia, but.
Along the road, what tends tohappen is people become copper
toxic.
this is one way you can becomecopper toxic, even if you're
not, working with somebody who'stelling you you're copper toxic
and telling you to take beefliver, and, and you know, they
say other things as well, butthe beef liver is really the

(12:03):
main, problem that I have.
The other things that can createcopper toxicity, like I
mentioned, postpartum takingsupplements that are high in
copper, but also birth controlpills, so oral contraceptive
pills, copper IUDs.
They say that the absorption ofthe copper IUD is not systemic.

(12:24):
that doesn't really track withhow women will get psychiatric
symptoms when they're given acopper IUD and it's not all
women.
It depends of course, on themilieu of hormonal and
biochemical factors inside ofthat particular person because
bioindividuality is a thing.
Even hormone replacement.
So estrogen hormone replacement.

(12:45):
So anything that's increasingestrogen, anything that's
increasing copper, drug wise,supplement wise, all of that can
lead to copper toxicitysymptoms.
Okay, so let's talk about what Ido to actually address copper
toxicity.
So first things first, Imentioned that we need to test
what's going on with the percentfree copper.

(13:07):
So if you have an elevated.
Percent free copper, then youneed to look at what your zinc
is looking like.
If you're zinc deficient, thatprobably needs to be
supplemented.
I highly recommend notsupplementing with zinc until
you know what your plasma zinclevels are and you know what a
safe level is looking like inthe blood.
and that really requires you towork with somebody for the

(13:27):
nuance there to be safe about itwith the zinc supplementation.
It will also help because zincdeficiency is a cause of so many
other psychiatric things becausezinc is a co-factor for
serotonin and dopamine.
So we want zinc as well from amental health perspective.

(13:49):
So zinc, and then looking atantioxidant support because
remember, copper is oxidative.
so it depends on the person andwhat their situation is.
maybe NAC is appropriate, but iftheir gut microbiome is showing
high levels of hydrogen sulfide,gas producing bacteria, I'm
gonna be less likely to want togive them a sulfur based

(14:10):
compound like NAC.
Really depends on the person.
vitamin C can also be a niceantioxidant, a nice support in
this scenario.
glutathione as well as anoption.
Different options for differentpeople.
and then molybdenum is anothermineral that comes in play.
So molybdenum is one you have tobe careful with because it can

(14:31):
induce copper dumping prettyquickly.
we want to make sure that theperson is ready for that.
And again.
Work with somebody, to reallyfigure out what combination that
you need, and then finallyworking on your gut.
and your liver so that you canproperly detoxify estrogen.
Because remember, estrogen isgoing to increase copper.

(14:52):
Copper is going to increaseestrogen.
They have that relationship, andyou know, copper is necessary.
If we didn't have copper, wewouldn't be alive.
Like I mentioned, we need it to,support our red blood cells.
We need it to create collagen.
Copper does so many wonderfulthings in the body, but with
menstruating women or women whoare postmenopausal and are
supplementing with.

(15:13):
bioidentical hormones, we canoften see excess copper because
of the estrogen component.
So it's really about getting itin a nice balance.
It's not about getting rid ofit, it's just about balancing
things properly, which is wherethe nuance comes in.
The other thing I wanna mentionis there's so much conversation
around nervous systemregulation, right?
Like, do your breath work, doyour cold plunge, and this can

(15:37):
be a really big reason whysomebody has a chronically
dysregulated nervous system,right?
If your body is constantlyconverting your dopamine to
norepinephrine, you're going tofeel.
Like a basket case all the time,you're gonna feel stressed.
This is another really importantreason for addressing copper
toxicity.
When I work with women who havebiochemical imbalances, I look

(16:00):
at everything.
I don't just look at thebiochemical imbalances, So while
you might have copper toxicity,you might also have methylation
issues, you might also havesomething going on with your
gut.
You might have dysbiosis, forexample, you might have liver
stagnation So all of this comesinto play and when we look at

(16:21):
everything together, that iswhen we start to see the magic
of how bio individualized.
Naturopathic medicine works.
If you wanna know whether copperis playing a role in your mental
health or hormone symptoms, I'moffering a limited number of
testing and consultationpackages.
You are welcome to book aconsultation call with me.

(16:45):
The first thing you'll want todo is go to my website and fill
out an application to work withme one-on-one.
And once I receive thatapplication, I will contact you
and we can find a time on mycalendar to discuss.
That's all for now, thank youfor listening.