Thyroid Nodules, Iron Toxicity & The Copper Connection w/ Morley Robbins

You're listening to Save Your Thyroid with Jennifer Hulcom, the podcast where we believe that true patient advocacy begins with questioning the standard of care with hard science and published data. If you've been in the thyroid community for any length of time, you know there are plenty of opinions on how to heal. But my guest today, Morley Robbins, deals in facts. Morley is the creator of the Root Cause Protocol and the author of Cure Your Fatigue. While many know him as a challenger of the medical status quo, I see him primarily as a dedicated historian of medical literature. He has spent nearly two decades reading thousands of peer-reviewed studies to piece together a puzzle that modern medicine has largely fragmented: the complex interplay between minerals and mitochondria. As someone who personally desires to understand the mechanism before I accept the solution, I deeply appreciate Morley's commitment to bringing receipts. Today, we're going to look at the published research to answer a fundamental question: Is your thyroid actually broken, or is it simply starving for the minerals it needs to function? Let's get into it. Morley, it's an absolute honor to welcome you to the show.

>> Well, Jen, thank you so much for the opportunity and [clears throat] I I absolutely am enamored with your phrase, "dedicated historian of medical literature." I I think I'm going to make arrangements to have that put on my tombstone.

>> Oh my goodness. But no, it's it's been an amazing journey. I would never have predicted it. And every day is just an amazing point of discovery. And as we get into these conversations, I I'll share what I'm learning. I'm absolutely amazed at what's out there. And you've certainly have heard the expression, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.

>> Exactly. That it's just the discovery process is phenomenal and I'm just blessed to be able to be a part of it and be able to share with people. So very grateful. Well, you have been in my recent discovery process that I personally am constantly doing research and learning and listening to podcasts. And so, I want to kind of introduce you to my viewers by going to a concept in your book that's on page 117. Guys, if you haven't heard of this book, here it is: Cure Your Fatigue. And Morley, I told you in our phone call yesterday, I've marked and highlighted all throughout.

>> I've read it. That's good. That's impressive.

>> It's an excellent read. Highly recommend it. And my buy a pack of highlighters. But on page 117, you talk about something that I thought was really um relevant for the start of our conversation and how I discovered you because you talk about how difficult it is to unlearn things and those things that we've accepted as fact because new information can often feel like a threat to our beliefs. And so my confession to you and to the audience is that when I first heard you, it was on a podcast you did with Jesse Chapus, which I'll link in the description. Excellent podcast. That's what happened to me. I was listening to you make these statements about vitamins that I had been taking and minerals and iron, and they all contradicted things that I believed or knew to be true. And so honestly, I was a little offended. I wanted to turn it off. I was like, I don't want to listen to this. This is not, you know, he's not right. And and I resisted it initially, but I also was very curious. And the curiosity was nagging at me. So I came back and I listened again and I wanted to understand where you were coming from. And then once I learned more that it was not your ideas that you were presenting, but that this was published data, I thought, I need to go a little bit further down the rabbit hole. Um, so I listened to several podcasts. I listened, I binge-watched content that you had appeared on. Morley's been a prolific podcast interviewee. Uh, and so that curiosity led me to buy your book and it has now shifted my entire paradigm on this idea of what it is that you're talking about in your material. So I felt like it was really important to bring you on and share that with the viewers. So many patients in my community are so focused on wanting to preserve their health. Patients that have thyroid nodules want to avoid surgery. They don't want to lose a gland that is vital to their health and they want to figure out how can they fix their thyroid. And so the growing pains of unlearning was very uncomfortable. You yourself also dealt with a very uncomfortable experience that you share in a lot of podcasts with your frozen shoulder. So can you take us back to the moment where you were a hospital executive and then a consultant, and pulling your suitcase behind you with this painful frozen frozen shoulder? How did you go from trusting the medical system to finding what you call the body's innate healer?

>> It's a great question. I've answered it a lot of different ways, many times. I think it's important for the listeners to know that I'm a product of a very sickly family. My mom was an alcoholic with heart disease, constant chain smoker. She went through probably two packs of cigarettes a day. My dad was a manic depressive with schizophrenia. And that's a fun household to grow up in. My sister became a nurse. So, I was supposed to become a doctor. And that was the game plan until I got to college and discovered, wow, there's a lot of work involved. And that didn't, that was not my style back then. I'm a very different person today than I was in my 20s. And so, for the listeners trying to figure out how old is that guy? He's 73 just a couple months ago. And uh and I have more energy now than I did when I was 50. So, I was like, I'm doing 20 something, right?

>> Yeah. And so, if you don't go to medical school, you go to business school. So, I went to business school, got my MBA, and and you learn to boss the doctors around, and that's what I did. I was pretty good at it. And I don't know that I ever trusted the system. I mean, I just, I spent a lot of time growing up in hospitals because there were a lot of sick relatives. It wasn't just my mom and dad. And I was kind of fascinated by it. More than trusting it. I was fascinated by it. And I really at a deep level wanted to understand, why is everyone so sick? I was really fascinated by that. And as you as you note, I spent 12 years as a hospital executive. And then I decided I was going to be a consultant. For those who are wondering about that order, it's a lot easier to be a consultant when you're young and be an executive when you're older. But I chose to do it the opposite.

>> So for 20 years, I'm pulling a suitcase behind my back as I'm going from city to city, solving problems of hospitals, trying to help them grow, get bigger. And along the way, I developed what's called frozen shoulder. And I couldn't pick my hand up above my waist. And it was very painful. I mean, I I'd never experienced that kind of pain. And you can't sleep. So, I'm losing sleep. I'm I'm just in writhing pain. So, I went to a health food store that I'd gone to for 20 years. I lived north of Chicago for 25 years. Um, said, "What have you got for frozen shoulder?" And they said, "Oh, you need to go see Dr. Liz."

>> I said, "I don't do witchcraft." Because I was I was in the allopathic system. And so, they sold me some supplements. And they did no good, as as you know. And I came back a couple months later. The owner was there that day and I went up to Lyn. I said, "Come on, you must have something stronger." And she looked me in the eye and she said, "Morley, we love you. Go see Dr. Liz." I couldn't believe it. So, I went to see Dr. Liz. And just to bring the story to full circle, Dr. Liz is my wife now. And uh it was a very powerful encounter. And she healed my shoulder. There's a terragoid muscle in your jaw that when it gets tense, it locks up the shoulder. I didn't know that. And so she healed my shoulder by going into my mouth and putting pressure on that muscle, which was at the beginning more painful than the frozen shoulder. And then as she pressed more, as she met the tension in my in my muscle, my arm came up. It was like a miracle. I was like, "Wow." Because I I hadn't been able to do that for months. And so we were having a a chat about it. And she used a phrase I'd never heard in 32 years of working in a hospital. She talked about the innate healer. And I just looked at her. And I said, "I want to find out who that is." I mean, I was just so inspired by that phrase because I was thinking, well, there's millions of doctors around the world. Why do we have all these doctors if we have an innate healer, a healer within? And so I've set out to to research it. You know, 15, well, 12 years, 13 years later, um, I published the first edition of that book and just it talks about the three-ring circus that runs life on the planet: Copper, Iron, and Oxygen. And copper and iron are the only metals that work with oxygen. That's a significant fact. And if they don't work well together, you're going to get what's called oxidative stress, which is um, that's the basis of all disease. Because when you have oxidative stress, you have what Douglas Wallace, who's a famous geneticist at Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania, you have what's called cellular energy deficiency. Because if you can't convert oxygen into water to release the energy molecules, then you're going to have fatigue. He called it cellular energy deficiency. And there's a Bible that's used in allopathic medicine called the Merck Manual. There's 20,000 conditions profiled in the Merck Manual. Guess what? They all begin with oxidative stress. And so they don't know that. And the way I think I was able to see it was that when I was in college, I worked in the mailroom. And if if you've ever been to a post office, which I'm sure you have, you see hundreds of mailboxes and they all have a different combination or they require a different key to open them up. And that's the mindset of medicine is this condition requires this key to open it up so I can treat it. That condition completely different. Well, that's not how it works on the other side of the mailbox. That's where I work. I worked on the work side and I had access to everyone's mailbox. And that's how minerals work in the body. They don't work. You have diabetes. Well, I'll spin the minerals this way. So,

>> yeah.

>> And so, it's just changing people's point of view, getting them to have a different perspective, a different understanding of the problem. That's really what we strive to do within the Root Cause Protocol is just completely redefine the dynamic so that there's a a real deep level of understanding that transcends the condition and then they can begin to do the protocol and begin to heal themselves because I came up with the protocol really to democratize healing. You know, our our great-grandparents did not have an ologist for every part of their body. They had good food. They worked hard, but they also had faith in their body and they had longevity. And we we see pictures of our ancestors and we think, "Oh, they were decrepit old people." Well, I would I would take my decrepit grandfather and and I I'd pit him against anybody right now. He was he was a very vital guy. And what's really funny, just just to bring this home, when I was 20 years old, I was in college. He was he was 92. And we were weeding the hill that was on the side of his property. It was a hot July afternoon. And I'm complaining about how hot it is and how thirsty I am. And he's just like a machine pulling weeds. He's just looking at me like, "Oh man, there's no hope." But what's what's really fun is to be his age when I was born. And I and I have the vitality that he had. And it's just, it's really exciting to to know that you can in fact reverse your physiology. And I think I've been able to demonstrate that not just through my own situation, but for a lot of people out there. So it's been a fun fun process.

>> The mailbox analogy. Wow. I haven't heard you say that before in all the podcasts I've heard you on. I like that. That is a very interesting perspective and I think it makes so much sense because I think innately we all understand that even though we're all different people and we have different genetics and we have different propensities and all all of that, we're all human beings and we all have

>> That's right.

>> very similar needs in terms of nutrition, in terms of light, sleep, all of these basic needs that we need met. And it's so confusing now to know what is it that we should do? That is the one question that I'm constantly asked by my patients in the community. What can I do for my thyroid that is in my control? You know, what procedure, not what doctor should I see? They ask that too, but they want to know what is it that I can do right now to help myself. I have felt for almost, it'll be seven years that I've been doing this in May and recording this in February, and I have never felt comfortable really giving them any one particular line of advice. I've always said, you know, I've tried this and I've done that and I've never really gotten anywhere. But I will say that I feel the most confident that I ever have that this is something that will help everyone, anyone that I ever have about anything. Let's say when we started this, particularly the the protocol.

>> We started out as the magnesium advocacy group and then it evolved into the the Root Cause Protocol.

>> And when we started to really roll out the protocol, the stops and the starts, which I'm sure at some point we'll talk about, what surprised us the most, hands down, was the number of people who said, "I don't need as much thyroid medication. I don't need any thyroid medication." And that that really piqued my curiosity that I said, "Well, then maybe the thyroid where it doesn't run the body the way they they trained us to think." And I really began to question. So a lot of people want to know, how did you come upon all this knowledge? Well, I wasn't looking at mailboxes. I rejected the mailboxes. I basically at one point had a list of 32 areas where conventional medicine was wrong. You know, classic cholesterol causes heart disease. That was one of 32. So then I wanted to find out where is the truth? The the limitation that we place on ourselves in modern society is what's new. Uh, I had the BL, a really amazing experience talking with a um consultant to the natural food industry, big big name, spent a whole day with him. And he said, "You know, Morley, I'm constantly asked, Michael, what's new? What's new?" And he said, "What I've learned to ask now is, what's enduring?" And when he asked that question, that really inspired me to go into the research to find out what is enduring. And that's when I learned that oxygen wasn't always on the planet. Copper wasn't always on the planet. And it's like, it's very disorienting to think, wow, there's been this evolution that's taken place. And the important thing is that copper is what saved life on the planet because when oxygen became a part of the atmosphere, it wiped out all of the anaerobic life. That's all that was here. There was no aerobic because there was no oxygen. And so copper is what enabled us to work with oxygen. And so the reason why we're here, the reason why we're having this switched-on conversation with really cool technology is that higher order thinking required more energy. Well, how do we make energy? We've got to oxidize our fuel, our carbs, and our fats and our proteins. And you know, if you're going to if you're going to metabolize a unit of of carbohydrate, you're going to get 32 ATP. But if you're going to metabolize a unit of fat, you're going to get 140 ATP. It's a completely different engine that runs on that. And I remember in um Primal Body, Primal Mind, Nora Ghouse wrote, "If you asked an anthropologist, what did early man and early woman eat?" An anthropologist who's telling the truth would say, "They ate the fattest meat they could find." And that's what you talk about, the DNA of our our body. It was designed to run on that kind of fuel. And we've evolved into a very different species. And just to to close it out, I think it's very entertaining that humans are the only species on the planet that ask each other, "What should we eat?" All the other animals know what to eat. It's we're lost in this, "Oh, what's in what's in vogue today? What should I be thinking about today?" So, it's been a it's been a fascinating journey, but I think what really stood out was as we rolled out the protocol, people didn't have energy issues like they used to have when they were taking their thyroid meds. So, it's been a very phenomenal shift in our understanding.

>> You know, I'll just add this one side point to that before we move on. I've only been really, really implementing the things that I've learned from you over probably the last three, four months at the maximum, and not everything, just, you know, in increasing things little by little. Over that period of time, I take less thyroid medicine than I did before that. And and I I really only needed to to start taking thyroid medicine about, I think it's been about two years ago now when I started really going into perimenopause, my T3 function was low, so I started taking a very, very low dose, and that dose has gotten lower and less frequent. And so that's exciting to hear that. So

>> no, I think again, the body does respond to stimulus.

>> And the the T3 function was going down not because the thyroid wasn't working right, because the liver wasn't working right. Because 90% of the conversion of T4 to T3

>> is with the triiodothyronine enzyme.

>> And what disrupts that enzyme? Iron building in the liver because there's not enough copper in the diet.

>> That's a primal seesaw that people need to understand is that copper is the general and iron is the foot soldier. And the meme that runs the planet as it relates to medicine and healing is, "You're anemic and you're copper toxic."

>> Right?

>> Well, the truth is just absent. We are we are drowning in iron because we don't have copper in our soil, in our food, and in our tissue because we don't have that. We are we are struggling mightily with iron accumulation all over our body. And where does it accumulate first? In the liver. It starts in the liver. They've known this since 1928. It's no surprise there. March at the University of Wisconsin, May at the University of Kentucky. But a long time, so almost 100 years now, we've known that this copper-iron thing is important. And if copper's down, iron's up. And then when the liver fills up with iron, then the heart's going to start to fill. And then it's going to go to the endocrine glands, and then it's going to go to the brain. It's like a like a schedule on a train. Well, we got this stop, and then we got that stop. They know exactly how this happens. And so what what blows out? Our adrenals blow out, our thyroid blows out, our gonads blow out. And people don't realize that what's really happening is just a misunderstanding about how the body works.

>> Well, we're going to talk about copper, this very, very important nutrient that pretty much everyone, I think you would say today, is deficient in. And I had no idea until I started listening to you and reading your book how important copper was because, as you said, we're all told that we're copper toxic. And so, you know, I have premature graying. I'm 43 years old. I've been gray like this since I was in my mid-30s. And the first thing someone said to me was, "Oh, well, maybe you have a copper deficiency." And when I started researching it, "Oh, no, no, you don't want to supplement with copper because you'll be copper toxic." And nothing could be further from the truth unless you're someone who has that genetic disease, uh, called Wilson's disease. So before we get into this this really interesting deep dive on copper, I want to just give a quick disclaimer for the viewers because we are going to get into the science, but the information that we're going to share in this episode is for educational purposes only. It's not medical advice. Morley's interpretation of the literature often differs from the standard guidelines, as you have just heard. So please don't stop taking any medications without consulting with your doctor. That being said, you need to know this information. It's vitally important and share it with your doctor. I did just earlier this week, and it was a wonderful conversation. So let's get into the discussion on copper. So a large portion, Morley, of my listeners are extremely health-conscious, as I mentioned a moment ago. Many of them eat a very good diet. They're they're seeking to move things out of their diet, out of their lifestyle that are bad for them or bad for their thyroid. So, in spite of this healthy, healthy diet, why are we still mineral depleted?

>> Wonderful question. You know, I was a biology major in college. I was not an award-winning biology major, but I was a science major. We never talked about minerals. I don't ever remember any class that that touched on minerals or mineral metabolism or how is energy really made inside the body? How is how's blood made? How's bone made? How? Hey, how are babies made? So th those are four really important things, right? And they're not taught in medical school. How do I know that? Because they all require copper. You can't make blood, blood, bone, energy, or babies without copper. They've known since the '30s around. It was actually 1932 was one of the first articles talked about the deficiency of copper in the soil. It was affecting the ruminant animals. It was affecting them in the Netherlands, Australia, Florida, many parts of the world were discovering. And what's what's fascinating about that is that's just a few years after they realize that if you take copper out of the animal, it's going to fill up with iron. Oh, well, we got a a soil problem around the world. What what's important for people to realize is that what really drives the planet is a desire for money and power. It's like, okay, we don't have to get conspiratorial about it. It's not a very complicated model. And so there's no money in healthy humans. It's a very simple model. You know, after the First World War, there were a lot of munitions left over, which is then became from being a munition to being a fertilizer. And a wonderful book by a biochemist, his name was Andre Voisin. He was French, grew up in Normandy. And in 1957, he wrote a wonderful book called Soil, Grass, Cancer.

>> If you want to buy that book, it costs $1,800. That's how valuable his information is. If you want to know the website, I'll send you the link where you can order it for free. But to the unsuspecting, they would pay $1,800 for it.

>> But but what he [clears throat] makes very clear is that NPK was used as a fertilizer, but it has a specific property. It blocks copper uptake in the root system of plants.

>> And what is NPK exactly?

>> Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

>> Okay. And what what they discovered back in the late 1800s is when you take produce and you burn it and then you study its ash, what gets consumed the most is nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

>> Okay?

>> So they said, well, let's let's just focus on those three. There's there's over 90 minerals on the planet, but that's what they focused on. And so I use that as an example that unintended consequences where they're trying to solve one problem and then they created others. So there's there's been recognition in nutrition circles since since the '30s that copper is the number one nutrient deficiency on the farm. Oh, so for almost 100 years, we've known we've had a copper problem, which is going to affect the produce,

>> which is going to affect the animals, which is going to affect the humans. They study it, but they don't solve it. They just know it's a problem. Um, then we [clears throat] get to the the Second World War. I'm just trying to hit some big milestones.

>> Mhm. 1941, on the heels of this knowledge about copper, there was an increased prevalence of refining flour to make it better shelf life. They never worry about human life. They worry about shelf life. And so they're they're stripping all the nutrients out. When they realized what they had done, they'd taken all the B vitamins out. They'd taken the the other other minerals along with the iron. And they thought, "Oh, well, we can't have that." So in 1941, in the UK, in Canada, in the USA, they added back iron, not organic iron, iron filings. It's it's documented in a book called Iron, The Most Toxic Metal by Jim Moon. It's JYM Moon. It's a wonderful book. I've only read it four times and I've learned something new each time, but all this is documented. And then in 1969, the FDA sought to increase the amount of iron in our food 300%. So, triple it, which inspired over 20 scientists from around the world to come to DC for the hearings with one question: "What are you trying to do? Kill people?" And so, in a magnanimous gesture, the FDA backed off and just increased it 50%. We don't really know how much they were putting in originally, but they increased it 50%. And that's been a cornerstone of processed food processing for 80 years now. That's a long time. Mhm.

>> Then you you begin to get into modern farming, the chemicals that are used now. You know, people certainly have heard of of glyphosate

>> or Roundup.

>> That's the ninth most toxic chemical on the farm.

>> The ninth most. Like chills go up and down your spine just thinking about it.

>> But what glyphosate is really good at is it's a mineral chelator. Its patent, its original patent from the '50s was for chelating minerals out of industrial pipes.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> So it's it's useful to know the origin of some of these chemicals. And so then they realize maybe it has application in farming. And so then that's that's on the farming side. Then we get to food processing. Well, you know, again, the shedding of the wheat germ and all other mechanizations that they've gone through and then the chemicals that they've added to it. And and probably one of the most challenging chemicals that's been added is called tyrosinase inhibitors. And so again, we're back to shelf life because what does tyrosinase inhibitors inhibit? Well, the browning or the spoiling of the food. We can't have that. And so it turns out that when you mature a substance, it's going to turn darker. And what the and what the Japanese discovered in the '60s is that anyone with black hair, Asians, Africans, Spaniards, Native American Indians, you know, there are certain communities and certain uh members of the human community that have very intensely black hair. Well, they need six times more copper in their diet.

>> Wow.

>> Six times. If you meet someone who has like from India, the continent of India, they have a very rich tradition of having historically copper in their foods, but it's all being drummed out because of glyphosate because it has an affinity for that particular mineral.

>> And so there's I think there's just been this total disregard for minerals in farming and food processing, even though a really good farmer knows their plants don't grow without minerals. They know the mineral content of the soil is everything, but they've they seem to have developed amnesia when it gets to producing a product, whether it's produce or an animal, that has good mineral vitality and integrity. And then we get to the pharmaceutical system. One of my heroes is a a physician named Mildred Sebesta. She got her medical degree in the '60s and she was a a big pharma drug researcher. And when she started doing her research, she discovered that every drug she was working on was causing magnesium deficiency in the subjects that they were being given to. So she quit her job and then she spent 50 years, the rest of the last 50 years of her life devoted to teaching people about the importance of magnesium in the body. And so there are many, many reasons, but those are three coordinates of farming, food processing, and pharmaceuticals that have really challenged our physiology. And we don't know the the foundational role that minerals play. They are the spark plugs. They are what bring enzymes to life. They are in fact what allow us to have life. And they've been um pushed down and swept under the rug. And people worry about the cost of food and the taste of food, not the quality of the food. And so we have been engineered to ignore the most important part of the integrity of the food is is does it have nutrients? Does it have the the uh vitamin and mineral content that it was designed to have so that it can bring that intensity and integrity to our being? And we've we've lost that whole concept of of allowing the food that we eat to restore our physiology.

>> Yeah. And if you're not super intentional, super intentional, you're not going to get those minerals or vitamins from food alone. You're going to have to, I would say, there's probably no way to get it just from food that you would have to bring it back in in a supplemental form because the food, the vast majority of it that we're eating today is hollow, especially as you said, the processed foods.

>> Right.

>> You know, once I learned that about the iron filings, I went through and found all of the fortified, which wasn't many, but fortified grain items in my house and I was like, "Well, I won't buy that again. I won't feed that to my kids again." Um, and I actually, I spent all day last weekend on Saturday making food from scratch and trying to been trying to do that more, making food from scratch and freezing it so that I, you know, if I have a long day working and I'm not really interested in cooking at 6:00 PM that night, I can, you know, pull from the freezer that I made that I know is as healthy and nutrient-dense, or at least as as dense as it can be. So that is something we all really have to think more consciously about today. And you talk a lot in your book about the mitochondria, these little, little tiny things that so many of us probably can't even really conceptualize of because, you know, we're taught in high school, everybody can say it, "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."

>> That's right.

>> But we don't really understand what that even means. And you go out in your book, you say that that's not necessarily the case. So, let's talk a little bit about mitochondria, why they're so important, why copper is so important to the mitochondria, and how they affect our thyroid specifically in how it functions.

>> So, it it's useful to know that the mitochondria are also called purple bacteria. That's their that's their origin. And why are they purple? It's because of light, of course. But um, there's a when you get into the mitochondria, people probably have might have heard of what's called the electron transport chain. They might have heard the phrase oxidative phosphorylation. There's a certain point in the what's called the electron transport chain where there's an enzyme has a very fancy name called cytochrome c oxidase. And what that means is oxidation means it's working with oxygen. Well, that's the very mechanism. That's the very place where oxygen is turned into two molecules of water to release three ADP, which are the precursors to ATP. So the ADP go over to complex 5. And there's a little rotor there that's spinning 500 revolutions per second.

>> And this is all inside of the mitochondria that we're talking about.

>> All inside the mitochondria.

>> We have billions of mitochondria in our body. We have 40, 40 quadrillion mitochondria.

>> That's a little bit.

>> So that's that's 15 zeros. That's a lot.

>> And so um, the process of turning ADP into ATP requires copper. Wow. That's not taught anywhere.

>> And that's an important process because that's energy production. Right.

>> Exactly.

>> Okay.

>> It's what you're adding a third phosphate group. And what's between the second and the third phosphate group? The magnesium ion. And so what happens when we're under stress, the body needs energy. And so there are a whole series of enzymes. They're called kinase enzymes. And what they do is they cleave off the last phosphate. And when that happens, the magnesium goes right into our urine.

>> So we we talk about the magnesium burn rate when we're under stress. So the the more stress you have in your world,

>> the more magnesium loss you're going to have. But what's really important for people to understand is that when you have stress in your world, you're going to have oxidative stress in your body. And that's what we're really focused on. So the the the key is understand just the basics of how energy is made. It's turning oxygen into water to release the energy. It's a really cool thing. If you if you go back to your high school biology class, you had a textbook. You go to the page that had the picture of the cell and the picture would have two or three mitochondria in the cell. What people didn't know is that that picture was drawn by Walt Disney. Has nothing to do with reality. That the average cell has 500 mitochondria.

>> Muscle cells, a lot of people know about mast cell activation disorder. Well, mast cells have a thousand mitochondria. Each cell has a thousand mitochondria. Liver cells, 2,000 mitochondria. Kidney cells, 4,000. Heart cells, 10,000 mitochondria. The ovum egg in a woman's body is designed to have 600,000 mitochondria.

>> And under stress, it goes down to 100,000. Do you think possibly that might be behind PMS? I can't make enough energy for this egg that I'm producing.

>> And then there are brain regions where the neuron,

>> especially like in in the substantia nigra, two million mitochondria.

>> M.

>> The numbers again, they're flying over people's heads now.

>> Yeah.

>> Those are big numbers. I don't understand that because you got this picture of the the biology textbook in your head. And so the phrase that's always used, as you noted, is, "Oh, they're energy with their powerhouses or the energy factory or whatever." Actually,

>> when you really strip back what the mitochondria do, they are smithies.

>> And they're working with iron all day long, all night long. And and if you ever go to see a blacksmith on some grade school field trip to it, every blacksmith has a forge. They have a power source to get the the metal ready to be worked with. Well, that's pretty much what's happening. Or think of it in the context of a car factory. A car factory is making cars all day long. They have their own power source. The power isn't so much for the body as it is for what's what's being done and what's made. And what what's the mitochondria doing? It's recycling iron. It's recycling calcium. It's recycling amino acids. It's making neurotransmitters. It's doing so much stuff that we don't even have an awareness of. And it's been niched into this powerhouse role, which is really grossly undermining its its function in the body. And so the other part of it that I think is really important is the copper content of the the mitochondria.

>> So that when you look at a classical picture of a mitochondria, it's kind of this bean-shaped organelle and inside it is this really funky swimming pool. And in fact, when you you look at it under electron microscope, scientists do this all the time, the fluid inside the microscope, sky blue.

>> Oh. Oh, it's the same blue as that that complex cytochrome c oxidase that's producing the the water. And what's in that swimming pool is 50,000 atoms of copper. That's the the genius of Paul Cobine at the University of Auburn in 2004 and 2006 to codify that. And in 2005, Ludmila Bucha, famous Russian scientist, discovered that the copper is actually attached to a protein. What's the protein? It it's called ceruloplasmin, that people have never heard of. It's this it's it's what runs our body in my humble opinion, but it's found inside our mitochondria, but no one talks about that. And what what is ceruloplasmin? It's one of the largest proteins in our body. So to to give people order of magnitude, insulin has 45 amino acids. It's you actually technically should call it a peptide because it's less than 50 amino acids, but got 45 amino acids. Well, ceruloplasmin has 1046. So it's 40 times bigger and it has eight copper atoms inside it. There's no other protein in the body that has that size or that configuration with minerals. And so it's it's the master antioxidant inside our body. Very, very important job. Everyone's been trained to to think of glutathione as the master antioxidant. It's very important. But it's the master antioxidant in the cell. The master antioxidant inside the mitochondria is called melatonin. Super important. But the master antioxidant in in our body is ceruloplasmin. And as as Jennifer noted, the doctors know about it as it relates to Wilson's disease, but they don't know what it does. They don't, they don't have a, and I don't say that to be mean-spirited, just I've had hundreds of conversations with doctors and they just, they don't have any awareness of of its role. And so the the part that people don't understand about copper is it's has many properties, but it's a catalyst for creating energy and clearing exhaust. Very, very important. And so the way I I explain that to people is many people know of the work with the gift of Bruce Lee, famous martial artist. At a critical point in his life, he his back got broken and he couldn't continue with martial arts until he healed. But while he was healing, he created a whole new form of martial arts called Jeet Kune Do, which stands for offense, defense. And so in karate versus jiu-jitsu, they have completely different approaches to the fight. But in in his Jeet Kune Do, every movement was both offensive and defensive. Was very unique. And that's copper inside our body. It has this amazing intelligence to know what it needs to do both to create energy and clear exhaust. And one of the other jobs of ceruloplasmin is it, in addition to enzyme functions, and it has quite a few enzyme functions, it's a transport for copper. And who is it bringing copper to? Well, it's bringing copper to the mitochondria inside our tissue. That's been documented uh in repeated articles over a probably 80-year time period. But the thing that's significant is in the world of thyroid uh management, they think of the thyroid hormone as the gas pedal, as you called it.

>> It's not it's not it's not a spark plug. It's not a catalyst like that. T3, very important hormone in the body, as all hor

>> active version of thyroid hormone.

>> Active version. And you can't make it if your liver is full of iron, if you're not taking copper. And the thyroid hormone T3, the active form, hangs out in the mitochondria next to where complex 4. And and this is a a wonderful article by Jens Magnusson from 2012. And he's a a German endocrinologist. Ologist. They're very different in Europe than they are here in the States. The T3 [clears throat] hormone is an oxygen sensor. It's sniffing to see if the oxygen still is O2 and it hasn't been changed into superoxide, hasn't been changed into hydrogen peroxide, hasn't been changed into the hydroxyl radical. And all hormones are signaling molecules. If the T3 senses that there isn't enough oxygen, if it's not being burned properly, it sends a signal back to the liver. The signal says, "Make more ceruloplasmin. We need more copper in this complex because we're not burning the oxygen cleanly." And he he puts modern endocrinology on its ear with that insight. And suddenly it makes sense why people were getting better, why they continue to get better by doing the protocol and not worrying about their numbers. I mean, there's no other part of of medicine that's more numbers-driven than than the thyroid.

>> Everybody knows their, you know, their TSH.

>> But nobody knows about their regulatory hormone. Who knows about TRH, thyroid-regulating hormone, TRH? Have you ever met anyone who who knew what their thyroid-regulating hormone? No. And that's coming out of the hypothalamus, which is signaling to the pituitary, which is then signaling to the thyroid. But the important thing is that the thyroid regulating is copper-dependent. And if the if the hormone at the top doesn't have the copper, the hormone in the middle, TSH, is going to start screaming, like rises. And and as soon as you have an elevated TSH, you know the person's copper deficient.

>> It's it's so clear in the in the process then. Uh, a lot of, and I'm just make one more point and we'll get back to the the focus. A lot of people get confused by hypothyroidism versus hyperthyroidism.

>> Yes.

>> Well, hypo is lack of retinol because in the process of making the thy making T4, it's got to be transcribed. Well, in order for it to be transcribed, the thyroid receptor needs to marry up what's called a nuclear receptor called RXR. And so retinol gets broken down into hormones and nuclear receptors. And there's R A R s, there's R O R s, RXR s, RZ R s. There's more than 20 different receptors. Nobody knows about this. But the thyroid receptor, if it's not married to the RXR, it can't be transcribed. And so lack of retinol in the diet, it started with Eisenhower's heart attack in September of '55. Yeah. When they took cholesterol and retinol out of our diet, that's when thyroid issues really skyrocketed. And then the other side of it is hyperthyroidism. When the when the thyroid is just going a mile a second, it's copper depleted. It doesn't have any copper. All you got to do is give them a little bit of copper. Thyroid calms down, knows exactly what to do. So it's it's just lack of of really a full understanding of how the thyroid works and uh being curious enough to say, is there more to the story? And and what what could be some of the mechanisms that are blocking the proper signaling with the proper execution of the u of the of the message.

>> Well, clearly so many parts of the process that you just so elegantly described, several parts that are so intricate, all depend on this copper, and we don't have enough of it. So, of course, that's going to gum up the works and we're going to have problems. I just want to make a side note. You know, most people who have hypothyroidism, the first thing that they notice on labs isn't that their thyroid numbers are low, but that their cholesterol is going up. And that's something you talk about in your book about being related to oxygen. And I don't want to get too far into that, but I just think it's so interesting. All of this is connected.

>> It absolutely is. No. And

>> they put the focal point on the butterfly hormone,

>> the thyroid being the butterfly. They got everyone to believe that the thyroid runs the body, runs the metabolism. And it and it appears that way until you begin to go down to the level of minerals and how energy is actually made, and then the whole thing just begins to to fall apart.

>> And so the the a lot of confusion around that. And

>> I'm not saying that the thyroid isn't important. It's very, very important. Yeah.

>> But but the reason why the cholesterol is rising is if there isn't sufficient copper in the body, in the liver especially.

>> Mhm.

>> And this goes back to 1973 when a famous cardiologist, Leslie Klev, who'll be 93 in April, still still going strong, but he's a he's a copper expert, been researching copper for like over 50 years, almost 60 years now. But he made an assertion in 1973 that when the animal has copper deficiency, cholesterol will rise.

>> And it makes perfect sense because it takes 11 molecules of oxygen, 11 molecules of oxygen to make one molecule of cholesterol. So what is cholesterol? It's an oxygen sink in a body that's struggling with copper. And so the the connection between the the um the butterfly and the liver and then suddenly you've got cholesterol being made. And so it's if you don't

understand what the communication processes. It's going to be a lot of confusion around that in terms of how do we resolve it.

Hey, just a quick break to share something. I'm really excited about my brand new website saveyouadewithjen.com. You can head there to subscribe to my mailing list and stay in the loop about new podcast episodes, videos, and updates in the world of thyroid nodule care.

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And I'm now offering something new, one-on-one patient navigation services. If you're feeling overwhelmed or unsure about your treatment options, I'm here to help. As a patient who's been through this myself and [music] spent years learning from some of the world's leading experts in thyroid nodule treatment, I can help you make sense of your choices and feel more confident in your next [music] steps. You can learn more about patient navigation and everything else I'm working on at save your thyroid [music] with Jen.com.

Now, back to the conversation. But we definitely need more copper. I mean, without a doubt, we need to make sure we're getting enough copper. And so as we kind of close that loop and go into the next topic, we're going to talk about iron and how this is something that's kind of, as you've said multiple times, I've heard you say it's on a seesaw with copper. And so let's talk about the iron myth that we all are accumulating iron, not becoming anemic. Talk about the physiology and how that works.

So it's it's important for people to understand that iron can look low on a blood test but be elevated inside the tissue. And to the average person, blood and tissue are the same, but they're not. They're completely different media.

>> Because there is a process that we go through in our daily metabolism. We need to recycle iron. Very, very important.

>> So that we've been talking now for what almost an hour. Mhm.

>> Um, so that's 60 minutes and every second of every day, every second we have to turn over 2 and a half million red blood cells. In the course of 24 hours, we have to replace 200 billion red blood cells. Again, big numbers go right over our head. We don't understand that. But it's very, very important that the amount of iron we need to support that is 25 milligrams of iron. It seems seems reasonable. But the part that no one knows or they're not taught about is that 24 of those 25 milligrams come from a recycling system. It's its fancy name is called reticuloendothelial system RES. Took me two years to figure out that met recycling. So it's just you got to stay with it to really understand it. And 24 of the 25 are coming from the recycling system. One milligram supposed to come through our mouth.

>> Now who who identified that dynamic?

Well, in 1937 and 1938, there were two famous scientists. Canson and Woodison were their names. They were preeminent nutritionists, if you will. MC was a pediatrician. Whites was a biochemist. But they they forged the standard for nutrition in the UK and then eventually in the whole world because their their textbook on nutrition is in its 18th edition.

>> It's still used today in nutrition schools. the better nutrition schools are going to use mechanism medicine.

>> And so they were the ones that said we only need 1 milligram of iron a day.

>> Wow.

>> So that's in two articles in 1937, 1838 and then what happened three years later.

Well, let's start adding iron filings.

>> Right?

>> And the rest is history. So there's there's all sorts of fascinating uh developments that that as you begin to piece it together, you're like, "Oh my gosh, this makes no sense at all." But but the thing is that the there is a disconnect because people think that the blood test is an absolute measure of iron in the body and it's not.

>> It is one aspect of it and what they will typically measure in a blood test are three factors. They'll measure your hemoglobin.

>> They'll measure your feritin level.

>> They'll measure your serum iron. And if any one of those three is down, oh, you've got anemia.

>> Right?

And then they then they declare let's let's really start amping up the iron. But what's important to understand is that there are many different forms of anemia. There's B9 anemia, B12 anemia, hemolytic anemia. There's about I think 12 different forms of anemia. But but the two most important are absolute iron deficiency anemia versus functional iron deficiency anemia. The absolute suggests that the person is completely empty of iron. And the functional says the recycling system is not working right.

>> And what they've done is they've decided that anyone who has low iron numbers, they are absolutely iron deficient. There's no consideration given to the functional side. And just to give you a sense of why this makes no sense again why Jen says I am a dedicated historian of medical literature. I love that phrase. 1927. So a year before they did the research with the rodents, two famous scientists named Hans Krebs, you've heard of the Kreb cycle. He's the guy, he's the one who who invented it or discovered it, described it. But he was working for a guy named

>> Otto Warberg.

>> They were both MD PhDs. Otto Warberg was just he's a monolithic figure in science. He was only nominated 52 times for a Nobel Prize.

>> My god.

>> But he only got one. Only got one. Uh he was he turns out he was a German Jew and Hitler said one was enough.

>> Very interesting aspect of history that he was the most revered scientist but they only got one Nobel. He probably deserved a dozen or more. But 1927 a war and Krebs were doing this famous study of birds. They were working with pigeons and geese and they bled them almost to the point of death. They wanted to see what is the physiological response to no iron. just let all the let all the blood out and we want to see how the body responds to that.

>> Mhm.

>> And much to their shock. What happened in the pigeons was a three-fold increase in copper enzymes and in the case a six-fold increase in copper enzymes.

>> Now this study was done 20 years before they discovered ceruopplasma. But what is significant about that discovery and this is described in several articles that I've read is at that point they knew that copper was the general iron was the foot soldier. Copper was in charge because the body was saying let's express copper enzymes to restore iron homeostasis. And what did they do with that research? Swept it under the rug. And then Warberg actually got his Nobel Prize 1931 for complex 4, the sky blue enzyme. And he threw science off for about 80 years because he called it iron oxidase. And everyone thought iron is running that complex when in fact it's copper.

>> And so a lot of confusion about copper and iron. The base of the confusion is not understanding the difference between absolute deficiency and relative deficiency. And when people are absolutely iron deficient, copper fills in their liver. Well, how many people have had a biopsy of their liver? No one. It's very painful. And so we we're operating from incomplete understanding. And if you've ever heard the story of of the mom preparing a pot roast and her daughter's there and she's watching her cut the end off the pot roast and the little girl asks the innocent question, "Mom, why do you only to find out that their great-g grandandmother didn't have a pan big enough?" Right. Right. Well, we've always we've always done it that way. Well, that thinking is what rules science. We've always done it that way. We've always relied on a on a blood test to measure iron status. We've never measured copper. We've never measured suulo plasma. We've never thought to to do a biopsy of the liver. We use a standard. And and the tragedy is that it's affecting humanity on a big on a big scale.

>> Yeah.

>> So doctors now think nothing of giving people an iron infusion.

>> Yeah.

>> For a low hemoglobin. And it could very well be more likely than not that they don't have enough copper in their body. And I don't call them infusions anymore. I call them invasions. And I've had two clients who before they had the iron IV, they did not have hemocchromattosis. After the IV, two separate women became hemocchromes.

>> Wow.

>> And so,

>> and hemocchromattosis is is iron toxicity. Right.

>> Right. It's a very severe iron disorder. So the iron that you're eating can't get recycled properly and starts to fill in the organs and the blood and you've got to go some people have to go for weekly blood donations. Yeah.

>> Weekly.

>> Wow.

>> That's how serious it becomes. So there's a lot of confusion about the iron in large part because precious few outside of the copper researchers understand that copper is in charge of the iron removing the iron especially in that recycling system. And the uh the world of hematology is frightening because they don't really recognize the power of copper in that process.

>> When you said that about copper filling the liver, I think you meant to say iron filling the liver.

>> No, no, no, no. If you're if you have absolute iron deficiency,

>> you would have copper in the liver.

>> Okay.

>> Most people are copper deficient and the iron is filling up the liver.

>> Okay. I misunder I thought that's what you were saying.

>> Yeah. So, so here's the difference between copper and iron in the blood though. Mhm.

>> So if if if iron looks low in the blood, it means it's high in the tissue.

>> If copper looks high in the blood, it means it's low in the tissue.

>> There's the seesaw.

>> There's the seesaw. And so they express differently in the in the blood work versus the tissue.

>> And that is very a very important distinction for people to understand. So in your book on page 68 you actually list conditions that are scientifically linked to iron overload and one of them was hypothyroidism.

>> Absolutely.

>> Can you speak to that at all on any point to any data if people want to do their own research on that?

Well, there there is, you know, there are articles. I don't I don't have total command of that, but I think what's important for people to know is there is a process of programmed cell death called apoptosis. A lot of people may have heard that term. Well, what's evolving in the in the research now is a condition called fairoptosis where it's iron directed cell death.

>> And what we've done um in the last several months is begin to identify the top 10 causes of death and they're all linked to ferrotosis of one organ or another. M

>> and what we also know is if you want to stop feroptosis you need copper you need glutathione peroxidase or you need sulo plasma

>> again the master master antioxidant which is copper dependent

>> and so we've gone one step further we've not only identified the top 10 causes and that there's feroptosis driving it we've then identified that the studies that prove that lack of sulo plasma allowed the ferroptosis and then we went one step further and found the studies that They use ceruoplasm to reverse the

>> feroptosis.

>> Now, as it relates to the the thyroid, I think the most significant thing I can share, and I'm not a thyroid guy. I'm just I'm fascinated by the gland. It's very very important, but it's it's grossly misunderstood. But there's two forms of cancer where they've identified that there is no cerillopplasma in the tissue. Thyroid cancer and colon cancer.

>> Really?

>> Yep. There's no ceruoplasm. And there should and there should be cerualloplasm. I'm sure if they start to really pick at it, you're going to find out as my theory of cancer is it's not a disease. There's such a thing as cancer metabolism. And what it's anorobic metabolism. When did we have anorobic metabolism? Before copper was on the scene, right?

>> And so what what cancer represents is this very immature, very early life form form of energy production. Mhm.

>> The part that your listeners will probably find entertaining is that what's the go-to action in the world of oncology? It's to chilate copper out of the tumor. Wait a minute. And they're doing that because copper is really good at

>> angioenesis

>> supplying supplying vessels to bring blood to and it's like wait a minute that's that's a conserved response to needing more oxygen. And of course that in the world of oncology that's going to feed the cancer. And what they've now discovered is that actually what's really behind the cancer is too much iron.

>> Too little retinol and too many pathogens.

>> Especially parasites. And what are the parasites living on? Iron.

>> Yeah.

>> And what do the parasites like to consume? Retinol. It's absolutely fascinating when you get into it. And when when did they first identify that retinol deficiency was the cause

>> of cancer? 1925 and 1926 Montrose T Burroughs 1909 graduate of John's Hopkins medical school who was working at the Rockefeller Institute in the 20s and should make everyone a little nervous but he came out with five articles proving that retinol deficiency caused cancer and so the cutting edge for cancer is infuse retinol chilate iron

>> that's the cutting edge for cancer therapy and then real quick I know we're going to talk about the nodules you want to talk about that or

>> Well, let's get into that in a minute. I just want to kind of close this loop on iron being stuck in the tissue. One of I want to mention a couple of little stats real quick because we've talked about this hypothyroidism and there was a study Edwards at all 1983. So, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do what you do, Marley.

>> That's fine. That's great. I love it.

>> Men with hemocromattosis genetic disorder where the body loses its ability to shut off iron absorption having iron overload. these men with hemocchromattosis had an 80 times higher risk of thyroid dysfunction.

>> Perfect sense.

>> I think it makes perfect sense. Um, so I feel like that this is proof that when the iron is accumulating, the thyroid is failing.

>> When we talk about the zombie cells, we're going to find that's going to be prevalent as well.

>> Yes. Yes. We're going to we're going to get into that next actually. So I

>> And let me just explain real quick. Excuse me for interrupting, but real quick for people to understand hemocchromattosis means that the person is a copper desert.

>> And there's a very specific there's four different forms of hemocchromattosis. Different genes involved, but essentially there's there's no break when dealing with the iron.

>> Who's the general? So where's where's copper in someone who has hemocchromattosis? I'd say it's been low generationally.

>> That's what took the wire for those genes to change. Again,

>> right?

What's important for people to understand as it relates to genetics is you have genetics, you have epigenetics, the environment in which the genes find themselves in. But what rules epigenetics is energetics. And so if the energy is low, it's going to affect the environment which is going to affect the genes. And that's why we put so much focus on energy. We're we're all about ignoring the enemies, igniting the energy. Because once you've got energy, the blueprint of healing knows exactly what to do. It just needs that energy to make it happen. Yeah, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but I just want to touch on how um many times you mentioned in the book how our epigenetics are so influenced by minerals.

>> Absolutely.

>> And so if you if you're listening to this and you're like, "What does that mean?" It means that when you have minerals, you're going to be turning on good genes and you're going to be turning off bad genes. That's exactly when you don't when you especially copper, when you don't have enough minerals, you're turning off good genes and you're turning on bad genes. And that's how we end up with all kinds of serious problems. So I want to touch on this super quick because we have so much more I want to talk about. But talking about stuck iron, iron that's stuck in the tissues that we can't see on a blood test that's there because we lack the copper to move it. So if we don't have can you can we say definitively just as you said if they have hemocromattosis they're a copper desert. So basically, we can understand if you don't have enough copper, you're always going to have too much iron because it's a seessaw.

>> Yeah, I think that's I think that's a it's a fair statement. Some people criticize me for that. They think I'm oversimplifying it, but I think at a macro level, that's an important relationship to understand in the minerals inside our body. And then we didn't really talk about this much, but feritin being something that a lot of thyroid patients are familiar with having low feritin on their labs. You say that the ferotin is actually low because the iron is trapped in the tissues and that it's trapped in the tissues and it's rusting causing oxidative stress because we don't have the copper door man which we we didn't really talk about the feroportin doorway but basically in the mitochondria that that copper is not there to let it out into the blood. Am I understanding it right?

>> You got it right. So, so back in in 2018, my strategy all along has been find research that I find really inspiring, really captivating,

>> and call up the author and thank them for their work.

>> It served me very well. And in this particular occasion, I was reading an article um by a scientist named Douglas Kell. He's got more degrees than a thermometer. Very very talented individual. But he wrote an article in mine called iron behaving badly. And that's not the the mainstream thought. We need more iron. It doesn't behave badly and we need more of it. And so I was captivated by his article. It's very well written. And and if a scientist wants to make a statement, they'll have 100 footnotes in their paper. If they want to make a real powerful statement, they'll have 200 footnotes. Well, Dr. Kell's article, Iron Behaving Bad, had 2,469 footnotes. So what he was telling the the scientific and clinical community is you're not just wrong about iron, you're dead wrong. M

>> and so I called him up and u we had this conversation like you and I are having and I I got up the nerve again you got when I called him at that point that was eight years ago I was kind of like an alter boy talking to the pope I was very nervous to be in his company to be honest and I said you know Dr. Kell, I'm really curious. What's the ideal furitin for a human being? He looks right in the camera and he says, "Zero." And I went, "What?" And you have to understand he behind him was this wall of books. I'm sure he's read all of them at least once.

>> And he said, "Mory, I want to make sure you understand this."

>> He said, "Rising feritin is not a sign of iron vitality.

>> It is a clinical sign of organ pathophysiology." Do you understand what I just said? He said, 'Yes, sir. I'm very familiar with the terminology with your work. He said, that's where the confusion is. Is that they think that that if the feritin gets low, you need more iron. It's become this almost joke now within the medical community. Anyone who has low feritin is automatically given

>> whether it's supplemental or infused.

>> And the tragedy is when you really want to understand something, you find out who are the world's authorities. Well, Dr. Hamilton and Dr. or rosio are two that stand out. Woodle leaf would be another. These are preeminent hematologists and when you go back to their early literature, they're very clear about what feritin is in the blood. It's empty shotgun shells. There's no iron in that feritin in the blood.

>> And people don't know that. They just know that the doctor says you need more iron.

>> And the other thing that's really important for people to understand is that if you have fatigue, you have inflammation. Mhm.

>> You're not turning oxygen into water. You're turning it into hydrogen peroxide.

>> Two molecules of H2O is very different than H2O2. And H2O2 is going to produce, pardon my French, piss poor energy production. And so you're not going to be you're going to have a very different energy production. And the process is going to have inflammation as its hallmark.

>> What is very clear in the literature, there are dozens of articles that talk about this. The feritin blood test is completely irrelevant in a patient who has inflammation.

>> And who are the most inflamed people on planet earth? Pregnant women.

>> It is it is a process of inflammation from stem to stern. My two most favorite quotations for pregnancy. One by Mildred Cely. Pregnancy is an iron deficient state from stem to stern.

>> And there's tremendous magnesium loss.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> During pregnancy and women need to know that they need to be restoring that magnesium.

>> Um, but the but the other quote is by Sir Joseph Barcraft, famous alpine physiologist back in the 40s and 50s. And then in in [clears throat] the 60s he became he was fascinated by pregnancy.

>> And his famous saying is that pregnancy is Mount Everest in uterero. And the oxygen content of the of the womb is just like being at the top of Mount Everest. very low oxygen and so it's a very inflammatory state and for some reason this is what mother nature wanted and the rate with which birthing practitioners are using a low feritin blood test to justify an iron infusion is out of control all over the plan I get calls from people from South Africa Eastern Europe Canada doesn't matter where they live they're like but my doctor says and I'm like I explain to them what's really going on they go well that doesn't sound like a good idea and I've had I've had two clients in particular, a week before they were to do deliver. One on the east coast, one on the west coast, both got iron infusions, both women almost died,

>> both babies almost died.

>> And so just to amplify the point, pregnancy is an inflammatory state. The feritin blood test has no relevance.

>> And the the most succinct article on this is by famous copper researcher named Myra Fields. Got her PhD in in uh England and came to the States and was fascinated by copper. That's what she focused on when she was working at the USDA, Department of Agriculture. And in 1990,

>> she wrote a pre-minent article on copper deficiency in pregnancy.

>> If there's anyone in your circle of followers who is pregnant or planning to get pregnant, you need to read that article

>> and it will it will teach you how important copper is to pregnancy

>> and what's what do they focus on in pregnancy? Iron and vitamin D. Produces healthy babies, magnesium, copper, and retinol, not iron, vitamin D. And so that article will, at least from my standpoint, it was it was the most definitive declaration that this low feritin thing is a fraud. They're hijacking humanity with low feritin testing and then following it up with iron supplementation and it's it's out of control. Not that I have strong feelings about. I think the more you dig into this, the easier it is to have strong feelings morally because it just starts to make you wonder what what's going on with all of the these adi this advice that's being given that's so opposed to reality. So, you know, you say unless you've bled out and you have no blood, you still have iron in your body,

>> right? Absolutely.

>> So, we're not necessarily needing to supplement when we have a low feritin. It's a distribution problem, right? Not a supply problem.

>> Correct. No, it's very well said. And it and it does get stuck in the tissue

>> because the copper's not there to move it.

>> Copper's not there. And so the spleen, the liver, and the bone marrow are the principal agents in this recycling program. Just in the last couple weeks, I've learned about the importance of the kidney in this recycling program. Suddenly, there's a fourth player. If we had six hours, I'd tell you about what's going on with iron in the kidney. Mhm.

>> But it's absolutely amazing that I mean I've been studying iron recycling for a decade.

>> Yeah.

>> And I just learned about the kidney a couple weeks ago.

>> Mhm.

>> And so it's just it's general process of discovery. It's absolutely fascinating. And I I really feel divine providence. I feel like I'm being guided. I'm being very willing to be guided. But there's so much misinformation.

>> There's so much misunderstanding. And what I would encourage your followers to to question is if you're relying on the internet and your neighbors and your doctor for your decisions about copper and iron metabolism, that's a very dangerous thing to do because they don't have a broad enough understanding. They don't have a complete understanding. They have a they have a very scripted understanding. and not that we're the sole repository, but what we've tried to become is this resource that's integrated a lot of this knowledge into a coherent understanding. And we have a document now called the RCP Constitution that really talks about what the the the tenants of our program are. And we use that to do AI searches

>> because if you go to AI without the Constitution, garbage in, garbage out, you're going to get a really bad answer. But when you you frontload the constitution and say this is what we understand now go into the research and find out the information that we don't know and it's amazing what we're learning now.

>> Yeah.

>> It's absolutely amazing.

>> I'll just tell this really quickly before we move on to the my favorite part that I want to discuss with you is when I first was hearing a lot of the things you were saying on podcast that I just could not wrap my brain around. I thought this is the opposite of what I know to be true. I went to AI and I actually asked it questions about the things you the claims you were making

>> and it answered back to me and I didn't say who you were. I didn't say Robin says this, right?

>> I literally just asked it questions like what you were saying about vitamin D and iron and copper and it answered the questions back to me in the same way that you answered. And I thought that's amazing.

>> It doesn't that's that's reassuring.

>> The data is you know legitimate. So we're not going to have time to get into vitamin D today. We'll talk about that on the next time when you come back. Yeah.

>> But I just want to move now into this next part because this is going to be so relevant I think to our listeners because we're going to talk about

>> apoptosis and nodules and what we're going to call zombie cells,

>> right?

>> And so let's think about in your book if you remember on page 39 you discussed how the mitochondria decide if a cell lives or dies. And I think that this is so interesting when I think about thyroid nodules because thyroid nodules, not only do they tend to grow uh in people now, we have 70 to 80% of the population have thyroid nodules,

>> but once you have Yes, it's crazy. I had no idea.

>> Once you have them, their tendency is to continue to crowd.

>> It's very uncommon for them to to really just be stable or to decrease in size. So let's talk about this process of apoptosis regulated cell death that is decided by the mitochondria making that choice is the cell going to live or die and then the potential for that process to get stifled somehow.

>> No, I think it's a very important part of it. And so what what I was um as I was going through the the background research you had done, I just asked a very simple question about zombie cells. They're also called scinsesscent cells. Zombie is so much more provocative and just, oh man, I want to learn about zombie cells. But zombie cells have 30 times more iron in

>> suddenly we know what the problem is.

>> Um, again, when we're talking about cancer cells, the tumor cells.

>> Mhm.

>> It varies from study to study, but some studies say that there's as much as five times more iron in a breast cancer cell. I've seen it as high as 100 times. But but the point is 30 times more iron changes the intelligence of the cell

>> and it changes the ability to make energy. What's what's hard to fathom is that there's there's two types of of recycling. There's systemic recycling throughout our body particularly involving as we said the spleen, the liver and the bone. Now really cool system but then there's cellular recycling. So there's a system within a system. Try to picture being a cell and you need oxygen because you want to overcome the fatigue. I want to turn some oxygen into water so I can make some ATP. Now, what's absolutely amazing, I think this is I think it's one of the great unknowns in science.

>> Mhm.

>> They don't know how iron delivers oxygen to the cell.

>> That'd be a good thing to know, but it's but the closest they've come is two scientists, Whittenberg Whittenberg. They were husband and wife in 2007. and they reached the point where they said, "We just don't understand this. We don't understand. You don't understand the most important part of mitochondrial metabolism where oxygen actually gets into the cell." They have no idea how that happens.

>> Wow.

>> Wow. That's that's amazing. The the fact of the matter is the mitochondria like to do stuff. They need energy to do stuff. And what happens is as this iron is being as this iron is delivering oxygen, it stays it gets in the cell. It gets into the mitochondria. But it needs to be reformulated into hem groups and iron sulfur clusters. Those are just different proteins that are the backbone of our body. 95% of the iron in our body is attached to a hem group.

>> Not all of it's hemoglobin, but 95% of the iron is attached to hee. That's like wow. That's And guess what? You can't make heem without copper.

>> It's absolutely impossible to make he the first and the last. There are eight enzymes, but the first and last require copper. That's a good thing to know.

>> Iron needs to be recycled through the mitochondria, through the cell, get back out into the recycling system to get back to the bone marrow so we can replace those 200 billion red blood cells every 24 hours. But it gets stuck.

>> Yeah.

>> If it can't get out of the mitochondria because of a critical doorway called ABCBA, amazing studies done on that. If it can't get out of the cell because of a breakdown in ferro portin that you alluded to a little while ago. These are critical doorways that are allowing the egress the exit of iron and they're they're copper dormant running those doorways.

>> And if copper's not there then the iron builds up in the mitochondria builds up in the cell. But as it builds up in the mitochondria there can be a 20% 40% 60% 80% 96% loss of energy production. There's there's different studies at different levels of of iron accumulation. So iron, we can't live without it. Absolutely essential, but it needs to be properly regulated by who? The general.

>> And it's important for people to know that. And so as the mitochondria begin to get more iron toxic, it then undermines the ability to produce energy to do all the other stuff that needs to be done inside the cell. Then within the cell, there's something called the labile iron pool. labile. That sounds happy, friendly, I'm relaxed. I'm labile, right? No, in the world of science, it means reactive,

>> highly reactive. And I think we should rename it not the label iron pool. It should be the reactive iron pool. And then we've got the initials RIP, rest in peace, because as as the RIP builds inside the cell, it will cause cell death. And what I'm intrigued by is there is a there clearly is a signaling problem in the thyroid gland. There's a mechanism to trigger that apoptosis and it's not getting through.

>> And I think the signaling is being affected by the rise of iron and the

>> peptides that are supposed to be communicating can't get. It's like having two cell phones that have a bad a bad connection.

>> And that's basically what's happening inside an iron toxic cell. the the cell phones of the organels are not working right. And I think it's intriguing that have you have you googled ferro optooptosis with zombie cells?

>> I haven't, but I will.

>> Yeah,

>> let me do that real quick.

>> Yeah, because I'm just wondering if there's a relationship there with iron as opposed to with the the regulated cell that So, it's F E R R O P T O S I S. And for the for the listeners, any word that ends in OSIS in our world stands for oxidative stress is severe. And if it ends in itis, like in arthritis or gastritis, all these different words that end in it, stands for iron. It's excuse me, itis, it's the iron seeker. Iron is causing that inflammatory process. So I just Googled feroptosis thyroid and it came up with gosh 10 different papers national institute of health science direct frontiers vanderbilt nature endocrine diabetes all about how ferroptosis and thyroid cancer targeting feroptosis and novel insight into thyroid cancer. Yeah. So there's there's a lot of information here, more than we have time to get into here, but I I would encourage you viewers to do that same deep dive on your own. And I just want to read what you wrote on page 39 of your book.

>> Yeah.

>> Because when I read this, I I went in and I highlighted it and I wrote a note underneath it.

>> That's so funny. That's So I wrote So I wrote because you said mitochondria initiate apoptosis by releasing a chemical known as cytochrome C which in turn activates caspays one of the primary enzymes that are designed to destroy aging cells during the process of apoptosis. Apoptosis prevents aging or damaged cells from becoming cancer cells. So basically if they can't release this chemical the cytochrome C and activate cases then they can't die. They lose their capacity to die. And so what I took from that just to kind of sum up this idea is that if we don't have enough copper to make enough energy in the mitochondria and we get all this iron stuck in the mitochondria, the cells can't die. So they become cancer. That's not I think it's a very reasonable conclusion.

>> So it's it's mitochondrial dysfunction at the root. So that was so interesting

>> and the number of practitioners and nutritionists and biohackers who love to talk about mitochondrial dysfunction but never once mention copper or retinol. It's just it's like it's verboten to to bring up the reality of the of the function. got two papers that I found when I was reading yesterday that I want to share that I we won't have time to get into them but one is aberrant apoptosis and thyroid epithelial cells from goer nodules. This was published in endocrinology. Finding of the study was that cells taken from benign goer nodules were resistant to apoptosis. Even when scientists tried to trigger the cell death signals, the nodule refused to die. So this is showing they're they're not dying when they should. And then the other paper that I found is the association between metal element levels and thyroid nodules. This was published in Frontiers of Endocrinology just in 2024, so it's really recent. The study looked at specific metal exposure and found that iron levels were positively associated with the risk of developing thyroid nodules. I believe this study was done in um oil field workers and they found a positive association between the the iron and thyroid nodules and the I the idea is that the iron isn't inert. it's actually doing something to the tissue. So, I just think this is so so interesting to look at it all in context. We've talked about how important copper is. We've talked about how our view of iron is needing to be reframed. And so, I know this has been a lot that we've discussed in this episode. And for the viewers, I would encourage you to not let this amount of data we've gotten into overwhelm you, but to take a step back and try to get the big picture here, which is what I was just saying. We need more copper. We need to reframe our view of iron. And so the last thing I want to do before we close out this interview, Mley, is talk about some actionable solutions that people can do that you mentioned in your book. And you mentioned several. We're not going to get into all of them, right?

>> But we are going to talk about a few of them. Their stops and their starts. And so two of the stops that you mention, and I think this is kind of obvious based on what we've just said about how iron is overloading our system is to stop taking iron supplements. Now, obviously, you know, please please don't use this as medical advice. If you're listening to this and you're taking iron supplements, you need to have a conversation with your doctor. But by taking iron, you're adding fuel to the fire,

>> right? Especially in the context of no copper.

>> Right. Right. And then you also talked about, we touched on this retinol. I'm sorry, not retinol. That one's important too, but we touched on, we didn't touch on it actually, but I'll mention it here anyway because it's very important. Synthetic vitamin C or ascorbic acid. I've heard you say this in a number of podcasts that that protein cerillopplasmine, when you have it in the presence of ascorbic acid, it releases its copper like diarrhea.

>> Exactly.

>> Which when I read that, I thought, "Holy cow." Oh, and I went through all my supplements and found several of them contained ascorbic acid. And I didn't even realize it. So, we need to take whole food vitamin C, not ascorbic acid. And then also zinc because it disrupts copper.

>> Exactly. You have you have to avoid zinc. So,

>> get zinc from your diet, not from your supplement bottle.

>> There there's two two places I would start before we get to those, which I think really really basic. I would invite those who are dealing with their thyroid issues, let go of this idea that the thyroid runs the body.

>> It's a very important gland. Just as the hypothalammus is an important part of our body or the adrenals are important parts of our body,

>> the idea that what they've done, it's important for people to understand is there's a difference between correlation and causation. So the question that I always ask people is, do flies cause garbage? No. Do firemen cause fires? No, but they both show up when there's a problem, right?

>> And so what they've done in in the world of medicine, in conventional medicine, is they've attached every problem in the body back to a low thyroid function.

>> And the whole idea of the um thyroid being the gas pedal? No. It's built as being the spark plug that gets the mitochondria to work. No, as I described it, it's the oxygen sensor that's keeping track of oxygen status. And when when they realize when the T3 realizes that there isn't adequate oxygen, it sends a signal to get more copper dependent solulopplasm to bring more copper to the mitochondria so it can do its job, which is to activate the oxygen. So that would be the first thing I really encourage people to to ease up on your that whole that whole belief system. The other thing, the other really important premise is when people get sick or don't feel well or have fatigue, it's no fun.

>> You just don't you don't feel right. And when that sensation becomes a regular part of your life, you begin to think you're broken.

>> It's absolutely true. I've talked to thousands and thousands of people. And if you think you're broken, you're going to enter a state of fear. Well, we we spell fear differently within the RCP is fe a r, excuse me, fe a r. And that way, you see the symbol for iron and then the word fear stands for iron activates rust.

>> That's exactly what it does inside our body. And so the what's important for people to realize and this is information that we just came upon in the last year. When we're in chronic stress, when we're chronically worried about our thyroid, it activates a response in the body to trap the iron,

>> put it into storage, so it appears low on the blood test, which then invites the iron response, which then only intensifies the insanity inside our body. And so the two models of stress that they started using in the 80s were chronic social defeat syndrome, repeated restraint stress. When were those two brought forward in society? 2020,

>> right?

>> Chronic social defeat, restraint stress, can't leave your home. And so what people don't realize is that we've gone through this global stress event and it's affected our physiology, especially our iron metabolism. And what happens under chronic stress, cortisol gets released and it triggers the production of metallionine, which is a metalbinding protein. What does what does metallionine like to bind up? copper because if the copper comes out of the ceruopplasm, yeah, it is reactive, but it gets attached to other proteins, but the metallionine binds up the copper and the body's not being malicious. The body is saying, "Well, you can't seem to handle your stress, so I'm going to take you offline."

>> And so, it's important to understand that and that one of the most important parts of the protocol is to do emotional release techniques to release the understandable fear that something's not right. And what's the emotion that's attached to most thyroid conditions? Failure to speak up. A lot of people struggle with that emotional break. And so that becomes part of this whole stress response is you've got to release the fear that you can't speak up.

>> And the reason why this is so important is that when you're in a state of fear, you're in a sympathetic nervous system.

>> You can't heal in the sympathetic nervous system. As long as you're pumping out all these stress hormones, you're not going to heal. And so the the importance of integrative processing technique or emotional freedom technique or emotion code or body code. These techniques are so important to help the individual release the fear that they're broken and then then the body can heal itself with the help of the of the protocol. And then the only other one that I would add to what you shared in terms of the importance of the copper uh the importance of not taking iron don't take ascorbic acid. It's very

>> very challenging, but you need the the cause of oil,

>> which we put priority emphasis on

>> because it has both vitamin A and D in the right ratio and the body knows what to do with it. What people don't realize is that when they're taking vitamin D supplements, they're preventing the uptake of vitamin A in their intestine.

>> And then most people don't know that retinol is what makes copper bioavailable. Mhm.

>> I'm sure in subsequent conversations we'll talk more about that. But it's important to know that there is this relationship between copper and

>> retinol

>> in the same way that there's a relationship between iron and vitamin D.

>> Well, maybe you think maybe the focus on vitamin D is to increase the iron in our tissue and that's what the research will tell you.

>> But it's a very specific area of research that a lot of people don't know about.

>> And so there's more to the story. And what I really appreciate about Jennifer's work is the notes that she sent me. I've done I've done almost 400 podcasts. You you stand alone. No one has ever prepared for a conversation like you have.

>> And my goodness.

>> And I really my hats off to you because you you put a lot of thought. You're very forthcoming about the resistance to this information,

>> but you had the courage to stay with it. You had the curiosity to stay with it. And I really commend you and and the people in the audience need to know you're being guided by a very important figure who is willing to challenge the status quo, challenge the narrative. And we are basically being run by a narrative, not by mother nature. And so it's time for more people to just be more curious, be willing to step outside the box of convention and just experiment, see how your body responds to a different set of instructions. And like I said, the the the real breakthrough within the RCP was finding out people just like yourself. I don't need as much as thyroid.

>> In fact, I've had clients who had so much energy, they didn't know what to do with themselves.

>> They just I mean, and that's that's a nice problem to have after years of existing on a sofa.

>> Yeah.

>> And they they just were shocked that that suddenly the body had what it needed to get through the day. rule of thumb that we use within the RCP. If if you've ever had children, and I

know you've had, but I'm just thinking of your audience, there's five things you focus on. Do they wake up refreshed? Do they have an appetite? Are they able to eliminate their waste easily and effortlessly? Do they have enough energy to get through the day? Most kids have too much energy, but do they have enough energy to get through the day? And is their mood in concert with their situation? Mhm.

If you found out you just won the lottery, you should be pretty happy. But there's some people that it flips the other way. So those five habits of daily living have served us well within the RCP. Do you have the energy? Do you have the ease of elimination? Things like that. And what's amazing is all five of those improve as people do the RCP.

It's really It's kind of fun. And mother nature has a plan that it just needed to be dusted off. And that's basically what we've done. Just make it make more people aware of the wisdom of mother nature. I want to touch on really quickly another start that you mentioned in the book which is sources of copper because we've talked about how important copper is and how much we need it and how hard it is for us to get it due to it being depleted from our food in our soils. So some rich sources of copper are bee pollen and grass-fed bee liver. Now I'll just say anecdotally that I've been taking grass-fed beef liver supplements for a few months now and I feel better than I did before. So I think that because of the copper and like I said I've decreased my T3 medication and of course also we mentioned the vitamin C you need to stop the ascorbic acid and start the real vitamin C and then also the retinol. Retinol is back to beef liver is a good source of retinol.

So we need we need these things. These are the raw materials that our body needs to make energy like we talked about. And so I really really appreciate everything you have shared with us today. Morley, thank you for your kind words about me as a as a podcaster. That means a lot to me because no one ever taught me how to be a podcaster. Just like no one ever taught me how to do research. It's just something that I've learned to do over the years. But, you know, this is something I think it goes back to learning and teaching yourself and and thinking for yourself. It's so important that we advocate for ourselves.

That's right. I say it all the time, whether it comes to something like this where it comes to our nutrition or when it comes to choosing a procedure to uh be an alternative to a thyroid surgery for a nodule, you have to be the one who's going to take the time to do the research to understand it as best as you can and to make a decision not based on fear, but based on knowledge, based on science, based on data. So, thank you so much today, Mory. Um, we've learned about so much. We've learned the thyroid is a victim often times of mineral imbalance, not the culprit. We've learned that anemia might actually be iron recycling failure and that nodules might just be cells that don't have the energy to retire. So, let's talk about as we close out how people can find this amazing book, Cure Your Fatigue.

Yeah. Uh any online purveyor, Barnes & Noble, will have physical copies. You have to have to order it, but you'll have it within a couple days, but the online is certainly a viable. We have a website. It's rcp123.org. And within that website, you can go to the resources tab, request a copy of the starter guide, which is a great resource. It's just 11 pages long, but it gives you the fundamentals, the stops and the starts, and it answers a lot of questions in that uh in that document.

You can become a part of our community. We have an RCP community where we meet every other week and it's it's an amazing uh process of discovery. People get to ask questions. I get to answer their questions. A lot of lot of exchange. For those who want to dig deeper, we have an institute. It's a 16week program. It's a it's a wonderful program where we've trained just under a thousand people on how to understand the body's biology and physiology in in a completely different way. And then for anyone who is in the Denver area or wants to get to the Denver area on February 27th and 28th, love to have you join us at our very first conference, the RCP.

Oh wow. conference. It's called Ignite the Healer Within. We've got 10 speakers coming and it's going to be a lot of fun and people from all over the world literally will be at that meeting and I think people would find it a captivating immersion of of the truth if you will. So, those are are several coordinates and then I always give people an option if you want to speak to me personally, I'm happy to do it. My email address is just my first and last name atg gmail.com and then I always give out my cell phone which usually causes hypoxia in the podcast host but it's 847-9228061 and I've done that for years. I learned it from one of my clients who was a hospital CEO. I said, "Dude, you've got your cell phone." He said, "Relax, Mley." He said, "The more you make it available, the less people use it." [laughter] And it turns out he was right. But I get calls all week long, all month long from people all over the world. and absolutely love the exchange. And so I know there's certain people who just need to get their questions answered. So I'm happy to make that time available. So that's how you can get a hold of more about the RCP. Uh and I think you'll find the book a lot of fun. And if you do get the book and you do enjoy it, please write us a review. That that does in fact help us in our ratings as you probably can imagine. And uh we're doing very well, but we always want to do better. So thank you for the opportunity to to have this exchange. I know it's going to lead to other conversations, but it's been a it's been a real fun give and take about what's really behind the nodules and thyroid dysfunction. I'm not satisfied yet with this nodule thing. I'm going to really dig in and find out what's the signal that's missing. Why is the why is apoptosis >> silenced? >> That's not normal. It's not natural. And I I want to find out what the the peptide is. There's a peptide that's not doing its job. But I want to know what that is >> because I think it's I think it's leading to a lot of actions that may not be necessary.

I I can't wait to have you back on Marley. Everyone stay tuned. You don't want to miss our next episode because Marley and I are going to go over some lab tests, something called the full monty blood panel. So we're going to interpret that data on the show and show you exactly what changes when you implement the root cause protocol. And we're going to talk about some of the things we touched on today's episode, vitamin D. So there's a lot there's a lot more to unpack. So stay curious, keep asking questions, and join us on the next episode. Thanks so much, Marley.

You bet. Thank you.

That wraps up today's episode. If you found this valuable, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who might benefit. You can find links to everything we discussed in the show notes below. Find a physician, discover treatment options, and join our patient community at saveyouroid.org. To stay uptodate on new episodes, resources, and expert insights, be sure to subscribe to my mailing list at saveyouthyroidjen.com. It's the best way to stay connected and informed. There you can also find all podcast episodes and book a 1-hour patient navigation consult for personalized guidance on your next [music] steps. As always, please remember this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. No endorsement is given or implied for any specific product, [music] treatment, or physician mentioned.