The Mineral Disaster Making People Sick [Iodine, Magnesium, Copper]

Do you think that a meat is enough to fix your health? No, I don't. There's tremendous value in the carnivore diet. But here's the catch. You can't make energy, blood, bone, and babies without copper. Copper is the missing link.

Molly Robbins, [music] known as the magnesium man and author of Cure Your Fatigue, is going to show you why the supplements you trust are doing more harm than good and what your body actually needs instead. Stop taking calcium supplements. Stop taking zinc supplements. Stop taking vitamin D only supplements. Stop taking iron supplements. You start to load iodine into the body, it's going to block copper uptake.

Well, I have a problem with that. His name is Paul, 86 years old, and he was complaining of fatigue, muscle aches. He wasn't sleeping well. And so I said, Paul, I think what would really help you is to take one of my recuperate capsules. I get his results. He said, "All my symptoms are gone 100%."

Why are we low in magnesium? There's 15 classes of drugs that cause magnesium deficiency. If you think that you're low iron means that you need a supplement, well, think again. If you're low carb, carnival, or keto, but still struggling with fatigue, PCOS, or brain fog, maybe you can't lose weight. The real culprit isn't a lack of vitamins. It's a profound mineral imbalance.

Now, joining me today is Molly Robbins, who has spent over 30 years proving why your high cholesterol is actually a massive warning sign of low copper and why your vitamin D supplements might be doing more harm than good. Now, this episode is completely opposite to what your doctor will tell you, but it's absolutely fundamental for your health. And if you want to take control of your health when doctors can't, an easy step is to hit the subscribe button cuz next week I'm sitting down with Dr. David Brownstein, the iodine expert, to discuss exactly how much iodine you need for your health.

So Molly, my first question, do you think that if somebody has a mineral imbalance that that can make you sick?

Well, you know, it's a great question. What I think is really important for people to understand is the hidden factor in health is their stress level. What kind of stressors do they have in their life? Marital stress, dietary stress, occupational stress. People don't think about that. And what stress there there's actually two models of stress. One is called chronic social defeat syndrome. Very, very carefully studied model. The other is repeated restraint stress. When those were actually developed in the 80s when were they applied to society into 2020. Chronic social defeat, repeated restraint. Don't you dare leave your house. And so people don't realize what that did to the iron recycling system in their body. And that is probably the most powerful factor in health in getting people to um be more resilient. They need to really deal with their stress. Uh but in terms of um nutritional factors, I I think there's tremendous value obviously in in the keto and the carnivore diet. It's just what we got to be really sensitive to are minerals. Are we getting the full spectrum of minerals that we need?

Absolutely. So, we're going to talk about a spectrum of the minerals, but I want to ask, is there a link between people not having enough, say, iron, magnesium, vitamin D, and copper? And is that linked to elevated insulin levels?

Yes. The reason why we're having this conversation is that higher order thinking required more energy. And that increase in energy came from oxidizing our food, oxidizing our carbs and oxidizing our fats. That oxidation doesn't take place without copper. Copper is it's actually why we're on the planet is because of copper and its ability to manage iron and oxygen. And what do they love to do? Create rust. They love to pair up and create rust. And copper is the only element on planet Earth that can regulate iron and oxygen at the same time and not allow the rust to happen. But what it goes on to do is copper creates energy in the mitochondria and copper clears exhaust all over the body. People don't know this fundamental yin-yang of making energy and clearing exhaust.

And so the [clears throat] way I characterize it is depending upon which school you follow, there could be as many as 82 minerals. Some say it's as high as 102. Okay? So, doesn't matter. It's a there's a hierarchy of minerals. At the very top in my world is copper and the next line down are iron and magnesium. And what's important for people to understand is that if copper is not right, and it's very challenged in the uh the diet today for a wide variety of reasons, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, but if copper is not right, iron recycling is not going to be right. And if iron recycling is not right, it's going to interact with oxygen to create oxidative stress. That's a fancy term for rust. That rust is going to burn up magnesium. And what's real important to understand is that yes, magnesium is involved in the insulin response, but what's even more foundational, which I just learned uh a few months ago, um the insulin receptors, they're called tyrrosine kynise receptors. Very, very important part of our physiology. They need to be activated. They need to be what's called phosphorolated. Well, in a state of copper deficiency, there's a protein that gets increased in our physiology called fetuin A. I'd never heard of it. A lot of your listeners have probably never heard of it. A lot of your listeners, doctors have never heard of it. And fetuin A is very good at inhibiting the phosphorilation of tyrrosine kinase receptors. And what does that lead to? Glucose intolerance. and insulin resistance.

Absolutely. And and what's happening is um people are not taught how the body really works, how energy is made, how sugars get metabolized. And so we're taught about disease. We're not taught about the physiology of the body and how it really communicates. So, yeah, I think it's there's clearly a connection, but you need to start at the origin, which I think is the copper, and then work your way through the the process.

Well, there was a reason why I asked that question because I think people just do carnival, keto, low carb, and that gets you to a point, but then you find you still have problems and we're going to talk about these problems. Deficiencies in minerals, copper, magnesium, vitamin D, iodine, I also want to ask about, it's a big topic, and the MTHA, MTHR gene, uh, which people always talk about. I'm not absorbing things. First of all, you've done been doing this for a long time. How many hundreds of people I know that you're very humble. How many people have you helped recover from different conditions? Thyroid, can't lose weight, brain conditions, brain fog, heart problems. How many people?

Well, I've I've done 8,500 consults, but there there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people doing the RCP. I I would we have a we have a class, a 16-week course, and each week we have a case study. One of the students um will be profiled but this was actually one of the students was asking a question and in the course of his question and he was from down under, very interesting guy, his name is Victor, he's u in his late 50s. He starts talking about all of the things that have been corrected in just the last couple years as he's been doing the RCP. The gout is gone, his fatigue is gone, his blood sugar dysregulation is completely resolved now um and he's having still having some lingering issues with psoriasis, but it's like I I said, "Victor, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop. Let's take let's take account of what you've touched." He said, "I know. It's pretty amazing, isn't it?" And so, it's just I don't know the number of people that I've touched now. And and I think that I I began this uh process in a very unexpected way, you know, suffering from a a frozen shoulder and that got me into natural healing that I didn't even know existed. And so I I think what this has taught me is that one person can make a difference. And what I all I was trying to do was democratize healing. I wanted to give the average person the tools that they needed to restore the energy production in their body, which then restores the immune system and the and the homeostatic pathways that we were not taught about. And we basically have been trained that our body is stupid and you can't make it through life without some. I don't think that's true. And so I think it's important for people to understand these fundamentals about how energy is made, how blood is made, how bone is made, how babies are made. And and those four, just those four alone are not properly taught in medical school. How do I know that? Because they don't use the word copper. You can't make energy, blood, bone, and babies without copper. and they never talk about it in any kind of medical training. So, it's just I have a we have a very different perspective within the root cause protocol and um I I would be I think I would be blown away by the number of people I've touched to be honest. I just I just do my thing and I get calls from people all over the world routinely through the week, every every day I get a call from somebody. It's very humbling, but um it's very gratifying to know that people are seeking out alternative information. It's very, very exciting.

Absolutely. When we correct the mineral imbalance, we can fix our health. Let's dive into iron. Now, if somebody is anemic, they have low iron. My sister has low iron. That doesn't mean that you have low iron. What does that mean? A third of earthlings are anemic. Let's think about that for a minute. Iron's the number one element on the planet. 36% of the Earth's composition is iron. So what we've got is the most evolved species on the planet can't metabolize the number one element on the planet. That doesn't make any sense. And so the whole concept of of anemia has been flawed by some very lax thinking. And so we have blood tests and we have tissue tests. They're not the same. But what what people need to understand is that every second of every day, every second, we have to turn over two and a half million red blood cells. Every second. And in the course of 24 hours, it's 200 billion red blood cells. And what might surprise you is how little iron it takes to replace 200 billion red blood cells. It's 25 milligrams. Very, very tiny amount. And the part that will shock you though is to find out that 24 of those 25 milligrams come from a recycling system that's run by copper. And only one milligram is supposed to come through our mouth. And what's happened in the modern era is they flipped the narrative. They've convinced people that they need to be eating at least 25 milligrams of iron, maybe higher. I've got clients who've who've been at in the hundreds of milligrams of iron a day, which is it's a staggering amount of iron that we're being exposed to in a in an environment that was never supposed to have this much iron. We were never designed to be exposed to this much iron. So, your sister is very likely what I call as functional iron deficiency. She does not have absolute iron deficiency. And the functional means she's copper deficient.

Now she uh younger or older than you?

He is 2 years nine months older than me. Her feritin is 12. Okay. So she probably has parasites.

Um what parasites?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does she have does she have black hair as well?

He does. Well, we're Indian. Yes. Okay. Sorry. So, so people with black hair, Indians, Asians, Africans, right? Native American Indians, you need more copper in your diet than I do. And I don't have black hair, do I? Right. How much how much more copper do you need than I do in your daily diet in order to sustain and support your melanin to make your hair so black? How much do you think you need?

50% more. Six times more copper in your diet. And so this is research from the 1960s in Japan. They were really trying to understand why do the Japanese have such black hair. And they were able to it isn't just humans. It's all animals with black hair need more copper.

But can I ask you this question more? What is the what is the relationship between low copper and then an iron overload? What's happening in the body?

You're asking really great questions. It's like I'm trying to think. I know. I know you're doing well, but I'm trying to compress down. So, you can't make heem without copper. You can't make hemoglobin without copper. You can't make a red blood cell without copper. You can't deal with the oxidative stress in the red blood cell without copper. I mean, it gets to the theory, the absurd, like why don't we know this? And we don't. But but the thing is um iron is like a four-year-old with a hammer. Would you give a four-year-old a hammer and then go next door and have a cup of tea with your neighbor? No, it wouldn't do that. And so every facet of iron metabolism needs to be regulated. And copper is the regulator. The phrase that I use is copper is the general and iron is the foot soldier. And people, they pick that up. They understand that. It's just the whole concept of anemia though is when you think about the fortified diet that we're eating, when you think about the amount of iron in our supplements, when you think about people who get iron infusions, actually I call them invasions now, but people have no idea the exposure that we have to iron and it's not resolving the problem. It's is iron resistant anemia. As soon as you have that situation, copper is the missing link. And it's been borne out in the research since probably the 1920s is when they first knew that copper was essential because 1928 was when they knew that copper was an obligate mineral to make hemoglobin. That's when they first knew, oh wow, this copper thing is really important for our blood. And it's just been a very artfully pushed aside in an era where everyone's supposed to be taking and eating more and more iron, not realizing that there's a recycling system that's allowing the iron to pass from the dying red blood cells to get back to our bone marrow so we can make new red blood cells.

Now, if you have low copper, that can also cause high cholesterol. What is the link?

Well, this goes back to uh 1973. A world-renowned cardiologist and copper expert named Leslie Cle. It's a guy. He's 93 years old, so he's 20 years older than I am. Um still going strong, still publishing. Uh I send him a birthday card every year. Um and he he's one of the the giants of copper research. But in 1973, he did a study and he found that animals that were copper deficient at rising cholesterol. H what what's significant about 1973? That's when the statin industry was being cranked up. He wanted to he basically wanted to put us poke the eye of the bear with a stick. And for his finding, his very unconventional finding to become science, one other lab needed to get the same results. Since 1973, over 30 labs have confirmed Dr. Cle's finding. Lack of copper causes cholesterol to rise. Why? That's the question you want to know. Why does it rise? It takes 11 molecules of oxygen to make one molecule of cholesterol. Cholesterol is an oxygen sink. We live on an on a planet that has 21% oxygen in the air. Can't live without it, but it's not our friend. If we can't if we can't metabolize that oxygen, if we can't turn that oxygen into water, we can't release energy in our mitochondria. It's the most important uh chemical reaction on the planet is turning O2 into two molecules of H2O. And there's only one enzyme that can do it. It's called cytochrome oxidase. It's inside our mitochondria. All 40 quadrillion mitochondria. That's 15 zeros. And so if the body is sensing it can't metabolize the oxygen, it sends a message to the liver, hey, we need some more cholesterol to mop up the oxygen so we don't have to create oxidative stress. And the the part that people never were told is it isn't your cholesterol level, it's the amount of oxidized LDL that's the issue. If if it's oxidizing, that means you have an iron problem. And what's what's behind all of the coronary plaque? Iron dysregulation because of lack of copper. And it's it's hanging out in the endothelial cells of the of the blood vessels, especially the arteries.

Wait, wait. If you have heart disease, uh plaque buildup in the arteries leading to heart heart attacks and strokes potentially that is coming from low copper iron overload elevating oxidized LDL particles um causing which are attracting which are attracting macroofagages and they become what are called foam cells and then those foam cells begin to patch over the problem with calcium. Calcium always follows an iron problem.

Okay, let me so let me move on to the copper because people are going to be thinking, well, just tell me where can I get copper from because we have low copper. What is the number one best food source that we need to eat to get copper?

Great question. Uh, if it were 1950, it be very easy to find. We would get it in our organ meats. So, the carnivore community would love that. Uh, we would get it in nuts and seeds. We get it in shellfish, get it in leafy greens like collard greens, mustard greens, beet greens, things like that. Those those plants are very rich in copper, which is a wonderful source. We don't live in 1950, do we? 2026. 2026. And so we're now dealing with 50 years of Roundup, 50 years of glyphosate. And people don't like to think about what you can't live without that, right?

Well, um I mean I've had three I've had three separate conversations with soil aronomists and and each one they realized where I'm going. They said, "So what you're advocating is get rid of glyphosate." I said, "That's exactly what I'm advocating." They said, "You'll kill the world economy." I said, "Well, you're killing the world's population by focusing on glyphosate." The part that people don't realize is that glyphosate chilates minerals on a logarithmic scale. You you're probably familiar with earthquakes. An earthquake of three is very different than an earthquake of 12, right? It's powers of 10 going from three to four to five. These are massive changes in uh activity. [snorts] Well, there's a famous um research scientist named Don Hubert. He's retired from Pur Purdue here in the states and he's he's been studying glyphosate for a long time and he's come up with a logarithmic scale for the speed with which glyphosate pulls minerals out of the soil, out of the plants and out of the human tissue. Okay, so it's pulling calcium and magnesium out at a three. Okay, that's not too bad. It's pulling iron and zinc at a nine. It's pulling copper at a 12. So, what does that mean? Well, it means it's pulling copper a thousand times faster than it's pulling zinc and iron. It's pulling copper a billion times faster than it's pulling calcium and and magnesium. It's like, okay, well, those are really big numbers. They're kind of going right over my head. I don't understand that, so it can't be very important. So it's very, very important as we've discussed so far.

Mineral balance is so important for our health and that includes the major minerals including sodium, potassium and magnesium. And I know so many of you have dropped the carbohydrate significantly to improve your health. But when you do this the need for those electrolytes is actually more because as you do this your body goes through a major transition and you might experience some side effects. Things like headache, nausea, fatigue and even cramping. Now, this is where salt is so important. Now, I want you to be very generous with your salt. Salt your meals and salt your water. But if you still feel those side effects, you really need a precise balance of electrolytes, specifically sodium, potassium, and magnesium. And that's why I'm so proud to have Element as a sponsor of today's episode. Now, I personally use Element, the unflavored option, because it has a sciencebacked ratio without the nasties and no preservatives and nothing artificial. I've even started reaching for their new lemonade iced tea in the morning instead of my regular cup of coffee because it uses four black tea extract and electrolytes, not isolated caffeine. And I've noticed steadier energy without the crash. And since the caffeine is bundled with elenine and polyphenols, you get that sharp clear lift with no sugar and no dodgy ingredients. And right now, Element is offering my viewers this free sample pack on every order. So, you're going to get eight single servings of their most popular flavors to try for free. So, if you want this, just head to drinkelement.com/theprimal podcast.

Magnesium. Everybody loves magnesium and we are deficient in magnesium. Why are we low in magnesium?

Great, great question. Uh, it took me a while to figure this out. When I first got into this work 17 years ago, I was focusing on stress, focusing on magnesium loss. Very inspired by um Carolyn Dean, but but even more central to that was the work of Mildred Sea League, who was back then the world's authority on on um magnesium. She actually began her career as a research scientist. She was a physician, but she was a research scientist in big pharma and she discovered that all the drugs she was working on were causing magnesium deficiency. She she left big farmer and dedicated 50 years of her life to teaching people why magnesium is so important. Has a question there. Do you think that most drugs cause magnesium deficiency? People need to read um Susie Cohen's drug muggers. There's 15 classes of drugs that cause magnesium deficiency. It's a real big deal. Drug muggers. It's really It's a very uncomfortable book to read. Um but it just it's a fact of life. Um the thing is make taking magnesium very, very important. It helps us deal with our stress. It helps us deal with the perception of stress. What what might stress you out may not bother me at all and vice versa. But when we are magnesium deficient, it's like we're wearing night vision goggles and everything is bigger and brighter than it really is. And so the lack of magnesium causes an accentuated response to the environment which causes an increased loss of minerals in the body. And so you really want to keep your magnesium uh at optimal levels. But here's the catch. You can take a bucket of of magnesium to solve the symptoms but you won't correct the underlying problem which is lack of copper causing iron dysregulation causing increased oxidative stress causing the impact on magnesium. People need to understand there's a chain of reaction there and and why that's important is that um it's going to affect liver function especially there's hundreds of of enzyme functions in the liver and they prefer to use magnesium but when magnesium's out there it'll start to use whatever uh plus two veilance mineral happens to be around well that usually is zinc so it'll start to grab zinc and then zinc will look low in the blood test and a lot of practitioners will interpret that and say, "Oh, you need to start taking zinc supplements," which we don't believe in in the RCP. Why? Because it blocks copper uptake and then you've only intensified the downstream confusion in the body. So, it's just once you understand the fundamentals of how copper's at the top and it influences the the regulation of the subsequent minerals, it's a very easy process to stay in in control.

Okay. So, basically, copper is at the top to regulate everything. Is there a copper supplement that we can take? Cuz you mentioned that earlier.

In 2021, I decided to inspire the creation of a supplement called Recuperate. That's my unending wit. Recuperate. And it's got uh desiccated beef liver. It's got spirulina. It's got turmeric. It's got um boron, but it has 2 milligrams of copper biscetate. And that way I know you're going to get not only the nutrients you need, but the copper you're absolutely missing in your diet.

I've never heard that you have to take a copper supplement or increase your copper instead of looking at the other minerals because as you said, copper is at the top and then that feeds into iron, etc., etc. Does it also feed into vitamin D?

It does. Um, it's not as direct, but absolutely does. Um vitamin D only supplementation is I think very um misapplied. We'll just leave it leave it at that. Um one of my strategies as a researcher was to identify research that was really inspiring and then I would do something very simple. I'd pick up the phone and call the author and thank them. And so I I read this wonderful article about cholesterol and the person who wrote it was Fred Kumaro. He got his PhD at University of Wisconsin here in the States in 1940. So when I called him, he was 98 years old. We were having a lovely conversation. He said, "I I'd love to have you come down and and have lunch with me and I'd love to give you a tour of my of my lab." He's 98 years old. He's still working 20 hours a week in his lab. I'm like, "Dr. Kumro, I'd be honored." So, I come down and um grass-fed burgers, homegrown tomatoes, raw milk, you know, you can imagine the meal was was very, very uh hearty meal. And um he had done 10 years of research on pigs supplementing vitamin D. That's a long time to be researching vitamin D metabolism. And a lot of people don't know that the pig's metabolism is very similar to the human metabolism. We've we've got some friends we think are pigs, but but our metabolisms are very similar. And basically he took the position, you do not supplement with vitamin D. Well, in the early 80s, there was a international symposium and he was one of the keynote speakers and he got up on the stage and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, you do not supplement with vitamin D." He was basically booed off the stage and I said, "Dr. Kumer, I'm curious what what happened as a result of that experience." Now, you have to picture this guy. He's 62. He's he's at that time he was almost 35 years older than I was, full of viv and vigor. And he said, he said, "Well," and he leans in. He said, "All the others are dead. I'm the only one left standing." He outlived everyone that who was at that conference. And um he g he gave me research that I was just absolutely floored by that absolutely proved that there was more to the story than what we've been led. Everyone thinks that oh vitamin D is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. And there's so much more to it. And so what what I think the real threat with vitamin D is it um it blocks vitamin A uptake which is very, very important. Most people don't know how important vitamin A is. They've been trained more recently to believe in the toxicity of of retinol. That's part of the the zeitgeist. Oh, stay away from the the vitamin A, stay away from the copper, you know, take as much iron as you want. And people don't realize that that mix mixture of signaling is why people are so sick. And so the part that's critical is that there are pumps in our body, little tiny pumps, um, but they have the the uh the names ATP7A and ATP 7B. And they're activated by retinoic acid. Retinoic acid is a derivative of retinol. You you can't get there from beta carotene. You have to have retinol as as a originating substance. And if you're drowning in vitamin D, you're blocking the retinol uptake. You can't activate the pumps. And what do these pumps do? They load the copper into the coupro enzymes that run and regulate our body. the the surulo plasmine that people have never heard of. It's the master antioxidant in our body. The lysil oxidase that keeps 45% of our cells are connective tissue. That one enzyme is what ensures the integrity of our connective tissue. um the super oxide disputates that people probably had never heard of, but it was the most important discovery in 1969 when it said, "Wait a minute, the human body has a mechanism to defend itself against oxidative stress and it doesn't work without copper." And they they're always quick to tell you, "Oh, there's zinc in there." Well, zinc is structural, but there's two atoms of copper that are catalytic. And that's the part there's there's just this um narrative out there that wants us to believe that, you know, it's copper needs to be in balance with zinc and be careful of the vitamin A. And it's it's it's exhausting. When you get into the literature and you see how clear the research is about how important these minerals are, but especially how essential these coupro enzymes are to run our body and that's never given any credence in in any legitimate way whether you're talking to an alipathic physician, osteopathic, homeopathic, herbalist, whatever. They they just they've never been taught how energy is made in the body. And that's really what the root cause protocol is all about is you know our phrase is ignore the enemies, ignore the the pathogens, ignore the toxins, ignore the heavy metals, ignite the energy. That's how our immune system runs. There's a blueprint that runs our body and it runs on energy and energy can't be made without copper. So that's that's how we've tried it together.

So people are going to be shocked when they hear about the vitamin D. Don't take a vitamin D supplement because that's not fixing your actual vitamin D or perhaps your lack of energy if you're taking vitamin D or if you have low vitamin D. But doctors are going to say that you need a D level of 80 to 100. Is that adequate? Is that good?

It's way too high. Um I'm was born I was born and raised in Baltimore. My nickname is Baltimore and so I worship at the altar of John's Hopkins. It's a very esteemed institution there and they did some very important research in 2014. Muhammad Amr was the lead scientist clinician and it was an all cause mortality study looking at what level of vitamin D is really going to help you. And what they concluded there was no clinical benefit to having storage D above 21. And you've got people like Hollik and others beating their chest about it's got to be between 80 and 100. So what's what's never talked about is A and D work in tandem just like calcium and magnesium work in tandem just like iron and copper work in tandem. Sodium and potassium. So people need to know there are pairs. It's not zinc and copper. It's iron and copper. It's big deal. But the thing is [laughter] the um people have been led to believe that if they don't have enough D their immune system is not going to function right. So there was a very important study done back in 2012 and they were comparing vitamin D versus vitamin A and it turns out that that vitamin D suppresses immune system. Vitamin A downregulates the immune system. There's a big difference between suppression and uh downregulation. So if you're tired and you want to suppress somebody, you put a pillow over their head to to block their breathing, right? But if you're trying to downregulate, you sing a lullaby. There's a difference between a lullaby and a pillow. And so people don't realize that cod liver oil is a beautiful source of A and D, but there's 10 at least 10 times more retinol in cod liver oil than there is vitamin D. And so here's the important thing about uh context. When Dr. Kumo was at at um Wisconsin in the late 30s getting his degree, they were doing a lot of research on vitamin A at the University of Wisconsin. That was that was the main stay of the research. The tremendous it was a it was the the field of lipidology study of breakdown of fats centered at University of Wisconsin. You come full circle a century and now everything is vitamin D back in the 20s and 30s. What were they doing with the vitamin D fraction that they were studying? They were throwing it away. That's what they did back in the 20s and 30s, 1920s, 1930s. And now we're supposed to worship at the altar of vitamin D and never talk about vitamin A. No. The reason why vitamin A is so important is it what it is the clinical and metabolic factor to make copper bioavailable make it usable in the body. And so if you don't know that about retinoic acid, if you don't know about those copper pumps, if you don't know how effective vitamin D supplementation is to block vitamin A uptake, out of sight, out of mind, you don't know about it. But but what I've bothered to do is not unlike Toto in the Wizard of Oz, it's a very critical scene when the wizard's behind the green curtain, right? And Toto pulls back the green curtain. Well, guess what? I'm Toto. I pulled back the curtain to reveal the research that no one knows about. And it's absolutely amazing. You know, after you read 12,000 articles, you begin to see a pattern. There's a very definite pattern of uh confusion. Uh there's amazing information that's out there, but you have to be able to sort through the um the disinformation and the misinformation and get to what are the kernels of truth that we really need to act on. And that's really what the book does. It gives people the front half is what's the problem. The back half is what's the answer. And there's almost 300 footnotes for people who who like to know on that and really get down to the real science. Uh there's plenty of science behind the root cause protocol. It's a it's a compendium of science.

I'll link your book in the description as well as your website because I think this is a lot of information for people to break down. It's and it's new. It's not like something that they've heard before in terms of they don't have low iron, they have iron overload because of low copper. They might have high cholesterol because low copper. They might have vitamin low vitamin D. They don't have because they're blocking vitamin A. So in that just to close the vitamin D, I'm hearing that let's quit the vitamin D supplements and let's take cod liver oil because it got the A and a bit of D. Is that good takeaway for people to do that? Take do that today. Codive oil.

Here's the catch. There's over 100 different brands of codive oil. We support three. Rositas, which is a family up in in um Norway. We support FIQ and we support Jigsaw. And those three companies have gone out of their way to make sure that the codive oil is the best available sources of A and D. There's a lot of a lot of corners get cut in the fish oil industry as I'm sure people know, but don't think that you can run down to your average store and get the best. You you really need to focus on those three sources.

Okay, I'm going to pro try to provide the link for those three in the description that people can click on it. I don't know if they can buy it from Norway. Like, does that ship to the US?

Oh, it ships all over the world. Oh, okay. I'm going to buy it as well then. I'm in Dubai, but I'm going to actually Norway in August.

So, um, next one. Iodine. So many people are like, I have to take iodine. Does everyone have to take iodine? Someone asked this question in our RCP community. We have an online community, and they wanted to know about the benefits of iodine loading.

Well, let's let's look that up. I I didn't know what what the uh the good or bad was, but what surprised me and I've got the research um right here that um you start to load iodine into the body, it's going to block copper uptake. Why have a problem with that? And so we we need to get beyond the pabum of take iodine because it's really going to help you deal with whatever they I don't think practitioners know what the iodine is doing. It's really allowing iron to be used in the body but it's not completing the cycle. It's not making the water and once it's been used you have to take more iodine. The beauty of cerillopplasm is it's circulating in the body all the time.

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It's not that you have to have iodine. It's just that iodine is going to interfere with the copper and increase the iron kind of transportation in the body, but then lower the copper. And because you believe in your work treating over, you know, 8,500 test um people and helping millions of people, you understand that the copper, the low copper is so important in health. So, anything that's going to block that is the problem. That's what you're seeing with the iodine iodine loading. So it's not that iodine is bad. It's not that don't take iodine. It's just that be aware that when you take iodine, something exogenous in the body, it's going to interfere with copper. It's a mineral. All these are minerals that have an interplay together as we have been discussing.

Exactly right. And the key is to ask why do I need to take the iodide? That's that's the question that people need to ask their doctor. Why do you think I should take it? The question is not being asked when people are told that they are vitamin D deficient. Doctor, why is my vitamin D low? What the doctor should be able to tell them is, well, actually, it turns out that your copper is low, which means your iron is high, building up in your liver, and the enzyme to make storage D requires magnesium. Why is that not working? Because a buildup of iron in the liver is causing magnesium loss there. That's a very simple explanation for why the vitamin D would be low. But taking vitamin D does not solve that problem. We're trying to solve the root cause of the problem. And so I think people are not asking enough why questions. Why why am I insulin resistant? Let's let's let's pull the curtain back and say why what is what's the mechanism of action that's taking place? There's a reason there this idea that there's disease. There's no disease. Doesn't exist. We have we have stress induced mineral loss that causes metabolic dysfunction which causes energy loss. And what follows energy loss are symptoms. So what do we do? We take our symptoms, we put them in a little sack, carry them into the doctor's office, empty all the the symptoms on their desk, and they move around like a Ouija board and say, "Oh, well, you have XYZ syndrome." They tattoo it right on our forehead and then we run home, go to Google, XYZ syndrome. Oh my gosh, that's exactly those are those are my exact symptoms. That's exactly what this is narrative. The symptoms are real. This is narrative. And people need to realize that there's a lot of money made by this getting people to believe that they're broken. And I spent 32 years working in the hospital industry. I was always wondering why is everyone so sick. I mean I grew up in a very sickly family. I was really fascinated how did how did that happen? Well, now now I can cite chapter and verse of how it happened. I can tell you why you know my mom was an alcoholic. Why she had heart attacks all the time? My dad was manic depressive with schizophrenia. I can tell you exactly down to a granular level what happened. And guess what threw my dad off? It was the psych meds they were giving him back in the 50s. They were blowing up his ceruo plasma. It was just so I mean I can I can go on and on. The the goal here is to put energy production at the center of the table. Everything hinges on energy. And what's important for people to realize is that there's a distribution of mitochondria in our body. If you go to the typical high school textbook, open a page that's t talking about the cell, there'll be a picture of a cell and it's got two or three mitochondria, right? What people don't know is that picture was drawn by Walt Disney has nothing to do with reality and that the average liver cell has 2,000 mitochondria. The average kidney cell, 4,000 mitochondria. The average heart cell, heart muscle cell, 10,000 mitochondria. The the mature eggs in a woman's body, 600,000 mitochondria. And there are brain regions where there neurons that have as many as 2 million mitochondria. Again, there isn't a disease. There's a chronic cellular energy deficiency that's that's been born of mineral dysregulation.

Okay, let's talk about practical tips because people are going to say, "Okay, what do I eat? What do I do?" Apart from taking the copper supplement because it's difficult. Okay, you say stop and start. So, stop this, start this. What should people stop?

Stop going to the internet for their answers. Good one. Good one, Molly. I like that one. Yeah, I mean, but you have to be careful because they won't find you or me if I don't go to the internet. I I know how important the internet is, but but the thing is, stop thinking that the internet is your best friend. They're going to give you information. And what I've learned of late is that um there's a bias in AI research. It's always going to protect the position around iron. Always iron. That's what AI stands for, always iron. And they're not going to reveal the truth of what's going on. And so um in practical terms what we did was we challenged the world of convention because we said stop taking calcium supplements, stop taking zinc supplements, stop taking vitamin D only supplements, stop taking iron supplements, stop I mean you you'd be amazed at how much better people feel just completing our stops once they stop the synthetic bees stop taking the one a day vitamins, things like that. All of those uh nutrients in there are synthetic. The ratios are all contrived and and people need to understand that uh food is always the best source. I think we can agree on that. Uh but but finding those food-based sources is increasingly challenging. But the but the whole basis of the protocol was let's start with the stops, get those under your belt and then let's begin to to work our way into the starts and we phase them where what we're really trying to do in the starts is get people to focus on the importance of minerals especially magnesium especially uh adrenal cocktails which is a very rich source of sodium and potassium and vitamin C and and get people to realize that ascorbic acid is not whole food vitamin C complex. They're miles apart. They're very, very different chemical structures. And just introducing people to these very um ancient historical sources of nutrients that were in our food system that have been lost to the uh the modern era. And that's really what we've done is just break it down. Let's make it specific. So the start. So we mentioned do organ meat high quality cod liver oil which I'm going to put in the link in the description. Um do you need to eat animal fats?

Oh absolutely. Yeah. I think they're really um the role

Of retinol, it isn't just copper. Uh, retinol as a, uh, nutrient is probably one of the most important sources of metabolic direction in our body. It, it plays a profound role in iron metabolism, plays a profound role in hormone metabolism.

Um, I think people don't realize the elegance of our design and how Mother Nature knows what the answer is. And I think it's just having the discipline to stay to that that language. Again, our ancestors did not struggle with their health the way we do. They really don't. And and what's really entertaining about humans is we're the only animal that asks each other for advice on what to eat. Squirrels don't do that. Emus don't do that. Kangaroos don't do that, do they? No. The animals seem to know what to eat. Humans really struggle with this. And I think an ancestral diet is best. And the the research of Weston A. Price is very compelling. I'm a huge fan of of Dr. Price's research. I I I think if he had lived longer, he would have discovered the minerals and then I would have been out of a job. Thank thank you.

But, um, he didn't he didn't realize that what makes retinol so important is copper in the body. There's there is a there's a a copper retinol axis just as there is an iron sugar axis and they work against each other. And I I really enjoyed the little vignette that she had with Sarah Mahel because she's spot on about the role of sugar. I It's really it's very destructive to our body. But but we need to understand that even sugar metabolism needs copper to be properly metabolized in our body. And so it's just it's so essential for people to realize that we have been as I say it misled and we have been misfed over the course of our lives. And what I've uh done my level best to do is uncover compelling scientific research. And it's not just one article. It's repeated articles that are saying the same thing. And begin to share that wisdom with the public so they begin to think differently about their situation because because people are not broken, they're out of balance. And what the the root cause protocol does is give them the operational steps, the stops and the starts to ease back into balance.

So if somebody eats more butter, can that kind of increase retinol which can increase vitamin D and then they can throw away their vitamin D supplements? Yeah, I mean the rich the richest sources of retinol would be, um, beef liver. Very, very rich source. Cod liver oil would probably be right up there with with beef liver. But grass-fed butter, grass-fed heavy cream, and yard eggs. Again, the the yolk should be the color of my book. Shouldn't be yellow. You don't want to be eating eggs that are yellow. That means that the yolk does not have enough retinol in it. It's the retinol is going to turn it orange. And so, um, again, our ancestors had this practical wisdom that's been lost to the age of of modern, uh, opinions. And that's that's my whole issue with the internet is it's a it's a compendium of opinion. I'm just looking for the facts. Give me the give me the information, the data to really back up why you're telling me to do something.

Got it. So, if we have more grass-fed cream, grass-fed butter, egg yolks, and good quality pasture-raised meat and beef and beef liver, that sounds like a delicious diet. Sounds kind of like carnival, but Weston A. Price mythology is what you like. Um, and that's what, um, is rooted in good quality nutrient-density foods. Um, moving on to Epsom salt baths. Do you think that is good? Oh, absolutely. Have you ever done one? No. But why is it good? Oh, it's just it's so relaxing. It's so restorative. Um, it's, um, magnesium chloride oil is basically what it is. And then you've got, uh, Epsom salt, which is magnesium sulfate. Um, it goes back hundreds of years to the river Epsom. And they found that cows like to eat, uh, the grasses that were near this river. And and a farmer began to study, well, why? And apparently that led to the discovery of of Epsom salt. And there's just this magical combination with magnesium and sulfate. And, um, very, very, uh, restorative. It it allows for relaxation in a very unique way. Again, the goal is to lower our tone in response to our environment. Be a little bit more chill. I mean, magnesium is the chill pill. That's really what it is. And it's working alone. It it can only do so much. And that's why we talk about the other components of the the protocol. But magnesium, um, Epsom salt baths are amazing, especially if you've engaged in a lot of physical activity and you just need to really restore the the mineral status in your muscles. It's so, uh, beneficial. It's amazing.

Okay. The adrenal cocktail, what is that and how do you make it? So the the adrenal glands, adrenal is adrenal. It's on top of the renal kid. It's on top of the kidney. They're supposed to be the size of walnuts. Most people are the size of pinheads. And so they shrink with repeated stress. And what what the adrenals really need in order to have full function, uh, they need to have minerals, especially magnesium and sodium and potassium. They love whole food vitamin C. 95% of the whole food vitamin C in our body is stored in the adrenal gland. That's an important thing to know. And there's a, um, devotee of Dr. Price's work, Tom Cowan. He's a, uh, US-based physician. Uh, his whole position on adrenal fatigue is this fat deficiency syndrome. And I I wrestled with that for years trying to figure out what is Tom Cowan. He's talking about vitamin A. If you don't have enough vitamin A, uh, you're not going to restore the function of the adrenals. And here's the, here's a little catch. I think your listeners will get a kick out of this. Think of all the different problems that begin with the letter A. We've talked about, um, arthritis. We've talked about adrenal fatigue. We've talked about anemia. Right? A lot of people, ADHD. Guess what? Guess what? One nutrient solves all of those problems. It's vitamin A. All the all the problems that begin with the letter A are addressed by retinol. Preformed vitamin A. Absolutely amazing.

How do you make the, uh, the cocktail? So you, um, the easiest way to do it is to use, uh, there, there are two different classic, uh, approaches. One is to take, uh, whole food or organic oranges and make a a glass of orange juice. Take a quarter teaspoon of sea salt and a quarter teaspoon of potassium, either, um, potassium chloride, potassium sulfate, whatever the whatever the form you've got, and take it with vitamin C, with a whole food of vitamin C, not ascorbic acid. And the times that the adrenal glands are weakest are mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Has been very carefully studied. There's a cycle to their ebb and flow. And so why do you think coffee breaks are mid-morning and mid-afternoon? Because you're using an artificial stimulant called caffeine to stimulate whip the adrenals back into shape when in fact people would be much better off taking adrenal cocktails. So that's that's one way to do it. The other is you can use, um, coconut water. It's a very rich source of potassium. Take an organic lime, squeeze it, add it to that, and then make sure you've got the the sodium and the vitamin C, and you've got another completely different version of the adrenal cocktail, but it's just as effective.

Amazing. So, that was all the takeaways so people can like start, um, getting back their minerals and just have a healthy, damn, healthy lifestyle. Um, who is your biggest success story? One person that you can think of that has restored a mineral or something and they've really fixed their health. His name is Paul. Um, 86 years old, and he was complaining of fatigue, muscle aches. He wasn't sleeping well. Uh, he had a handful of symptoms that were really bothering him. And and so I I do the consults on Zoom, and he, he was a big guy, you know, very, very vital. He was in his, but he was 86 years old. And so I said, "What, you know, Paul, I think what would really help you is to take one of my, um, recuperate capsules." And he said, "Okay." He said, "I can do that." So, I typically do a blood test at the beginning, and then for the follow-up, uh, consult, we'll do another blood test. And I get his results. He sent me his results a couple weeks before we had the consult. And his copper, copper is supposed to be around 100. His copper was like 205. Wow, that's that's really that's mighty high. [snorts and laughter] I wasn't worried. So when he got on the call, I said, "Paul, I'm fascinated by your results." I said, "You know, I noticed that your your copper was really elevated." He said, "I know. Isn't that really exciting?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "I'm just curious, but what exactly did you do?" He said, "Well, Marley, you told me two things. You said one, I was in charge, and you told me to take one recuperate." Well, I decided to take six. So that's that's 12 milligrams of copper. And I said, "Okay, that's that's fast. I'm you are in charge. And what have you learned from your experience?" He said, "All my symptoms are gone 100%." He said, "I'm sleeping like a baby. I have no aches and pains, no muscle fatigue."

And so what your listeners want to hear is the methodical process that I went through to do this and do that. I don't do that. I point people in the right direction. I put them in charge. I'm not the guru. I'm a guide. You're the guru. Each individual is the guru in their body. And they need to take the steps and the time and the discipline to follow this very, uh, well-articulated and documented, uh, protocol to begin to stop doing this, start doing this. And the the recoveries are amazing. In fact, just just to to build on that, we just, um, analyzed, we have 362 formal case studies that we've been tracking, and what we found is that, um, 38% of the people have complete resolution of their issue. Okay, that's pretty good. 38%. What issues are you talking about here? Like, what type of problems are people experiencing? Thyroid issues, um, blood pressure issues, uh, anemia, um, brain issues, heart, Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Heart disease, things like that. Like symptoms. Yep. 38% complete resolution. Completely all the symptoms are gone. 55% improvement in the symptoms, 7% no change. I would love to see the profile of the top 10 drugs used in big pharma and see what their complete resolution and improvement because all they do is they mush things around and they address symptoms. They're not solving the underlying problem. So, we're very excited about those results because they demonstrate that the average person can take this knowledge. Very, it's laid out in a very straightforward fashion, and with methodical, uh, application, they can change their symptoms, they can change their health, and then when you have your health, you have everything you need. So, it's, it's been a fascinating process to help develop this concept and and get the word out. That's really what it is. It's a, it's a process of always trying to find the next opportunity to spread the word. I'm guessing that's why you keep doing what you're doing because you're helping so many people with root causes, and that's why you call it the root cause protocol. Um, to actually help people from the root cause and not taking a pill.

Final question for you. If someone's thinking, Molly, I eat meat. I can get all the nutrients that I get I need from meat. Do you think that meat is enough to fix your health? No, I don't. I maybe a hundred years ago it might have been. I don't I don't I I don't think people appreciate the changes that have occurred in the soil around the world. Even even devoted farmers who are, um, preparing or raising grass-fed animals, I don't think we realize what kind of changes have occurred in the air. We're constantly being exposed to glyphosate. And so it's really important for people to, um, keep an open mind about that and and just know that that's directionally correct. Get those grass-fed meats, but you need to, um, broaden beyond that because I think the mineral profile has changed in the course of our lifetime. I know it's changed in my lifetime. I was born in '52. Massive changes. And and here's an example. When when I was when I was born, my grandfather was 72 years old. And I have this vivid memory when I was 20 years old. I'm in college, and I went out to Dad's home, and he had a hillside that had always had weeds. And so Dad and I were going to weed the, uh, the hillside. I'm 20 years old. He's 92 years old. He's working like a machine pulling the weeds, and I'm whining like a baby. Oh, I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm whatever. He's just looking at me like, "Keep going. You're not done. You're not done." And so I realize how much had happened in just a few generations because he was born in 1879, back when they had real minerals in the soil, back when food was really nutrient-dense. So it I think it does make a difference. It's absolutely essential, but we need to be vigilant about making sure we're restoring the minerals that are lost to stress. And everyone listening to this podcast is a stress cadet in some form or fashion. And you just need to, uh, accept that and honor that need to restore the, um, the mineral metabolism because that's really at the basis of your overall metabolism. Very, very important.

What if, uh, one more question, if somebody says, okay, fine, but I have salt, and that is enough. I just have lots of good quality salt and electrolytes, and that's enough. I don't don't have to care about your minerals and copper. Well, salt is basically sodium chloride, and they're very important. Can't can't leave those two minerals. I get that. I think we need diversity in our salt. Uh, we've at one point had salts from 10 different regions of the world, from Portugal out to Hawaii. I mean, literally all over the world. I think that would be a good strategy for people to not just go with one salt, you know, same thing all the time. But I, what's missing in that mechanism is there's no question we need magnesium and copper, and they're not richly found in salt. Um, you really need to be, what it really comes down to is the whole focal point is how do I make energy? You can't make energy without magnesium and copper. It's, it's absolutely central to the function of of the mitochondria. And once you internalize that, then you're more open to broadening the spectrum of of what you're taking. And it doesn't need to be onerous. You don't need to get lost in this process of of finding minerals. We've really tried to identify the core set that you need in order to restore your mineral mass and restore your energy production. And it's just a, it's a very, uh, it's, it's laid out in a very straightforward fashion. But the, but the variable, there's a very important variable that we haven't talked about. Does the root cause protocol work for everyone? No. Again, 7%, right? They, they got, they had no change. The most important question for someone to ask themselves, do you believe in your body's natural ability to heal itself? If given all the nutrients that are required? And I think 99 times out of a hundred people do have that belief, but 1% of the time they don't. And those are the people I think struggle with their health is they just, they believe they're broken, or they're being punished, or there's some force that's working against them. And I think it's really important for people to transcend that resistance and get them to realize that they do have this natural ability. It's, it's resonant within all of us, but it needs to be reawakened. And that's really what the, what the protocol is designed to do is restore the energy, which then restores the immune function.

Brilliant, Molly. All your links are going to be in the description. Thank you so much for your time. People are going to have a wealth of learning and new experiences with all the work that you do. Thank you so much for your time. You bet. Well, thanks for the opportunity. And let me real quick before we go, I always give people my email address. It's, it's morleyrobbins@gmail.com. And for the brazen few that like to use the phone, my phone number is 847-922-8061. Yes, I get calls from Australia, Europe, all over, uh, Asia. So, I'm, I'm very happy to get those calls because sometimes people need to get immediate response to their situation. Make that available. That is so nice, Molly. I'll leave I'll link that in the description as well. Okay, thank you so much for your time. You bet. Okay, I hope you enjoy this episode. Check out this one with Dr. David Brownstein. It is all about iodine and exactly how much you need for your health. I'll see you next week.