This post is a continuation from part 1.

Historical Use of High-dose Copper

The historical literature shows longstanding use of copper for medicinal purposes, at quite high doses and at great benefit, although not for long durations of time. Copper was the first metal to be mined and therefore one of the first minerals to be used medicinally in ancient Egypt and Rome.

As recently as the early 1800’s we see its use at high doses by Dr. Rademacher of Germany, who describes copper as a “universal medicinal product” that can “eliminate most forms of disease” in his book “Universal and Organ Remedies”. In a translation of his works in 1909 by Ramseyer, he claims that “when given in proper doses, it acts mildly and agreeably on the human body, and, as it were, increasing life quantitatively; hence its use by the ancient alchemists as a panacea for the prolongation of life. It is useful in acute and in chronic diseases.”

Rademacher used amounts from 32 mg black copper oxide to 260 mg copper oxide, in doses no larger than 65 mg to effectively treat a wide range of problems.

“With copper Rademacher cured some neuralgias of the head, apoplexy, paralysis, angina and scarlatina, threatening paralysis of the lungs, pleurisy, dropsy [edema], haematuria, acute and chronic rheumatism, eczema and herpes, asthma, and worms.”

Is Elevated Copper Always Problematic?

I want to share here a few screenshots of HTMA lab results to illustrate the point that when someone is sick and shows elevated copper on an HTMA, there can be a tendency to assume that the high copper is the culprit in their health problems.

Here are the HTMA results for a client of mine who I’ve been trained to view as “copper toxic.” The bottom value is where she started out and the top value is after four months of a low copper diet and taking various copper antagonists and following my protocols. She has improved in her symptoms, but not as rapidly as many other clients. Could this be because her body was mobilizing copper for a very good adaptive reason? Could it also be because although her copper was elevated, the elevated copper was perhaps not the cause of her migraines, since they have persisted even after her copper was lowered?

(Important note: although the reference ranges for the screenshots below show copper in the normal range for the general population, in HTMA methodology we use 2.2 mg% as the optimal value for copper as based on a wide pool of healthy people, not the general population).

A thermography scan that the above client received from another practitioner revealed heat and inflammation coming from what is probably an underlying infection in her gum cavity from a tooth extraction, which is spreading to her sinus area and taxing her lymphatic system. The doctor who ordered this scan commented that “The study is consistent with dental infection as delineated, thyroid dysfunction and mild sinusitis.”

The client has experienced more improvement treating that underlying gum infection with ozone and herbal antibiotics, and lowering copper is no longer the prime goal. Her elevated calcium levels have also greatly improved.

On the other hand, here are two screenshots below of friends of mine with no known health issues, who feel energetic and well, who wanted to see their HTMA results out of curiosity. The first person in the screenshot below, in addition to somewhat elevated copper, also has mercury toxicity and a molybdenum loss.

The second person in the screenshot below also has elevated mercury, aluminum, and iron. She has been on a copper IUD for years, which may explain her somewhat elevated copper. Despite this elevated copper, she feels emotionally and physically well.

These two friends live lives that are just fine despite elevated copper and metal toxicity. But over time those imbalances will probably catch up with them and compromise neuroendocrine function if they are not proactive in addressing these issues. That’s one value of HTMA – it can reveal issues before they become chronic. In either case, the elevated copper does not seem to be causing symptoms of toxicity.

I realize there are more extreme cases of elevated copper than those presented here, and I’m not saying that copper doesn’t cause problems in the absence of cofactors. What I am saying is that we cannot or need not always attribute the person’s health issues directly to the elevated copper.

One could simply conclude that HTMA is not an accurate test for evaluating copper. I would argue instead that it is a great test for evaluating copper, but the reason that its results confuse us is because our model for interpreting copper and identifying copper toxicity is misleading, and we think copper is more toxic than it really is.

Does Taking High-dose Copper Always Raise Copper?

I found it interesting that one participant in Jason’s FB group took 15 mg of copper sulfate (which the copper toxic website says is even more toxic, but which Jason promotes) for four months along with the needed co-nutrients he recommends. The participant, a woman who had originally been diagnosed as having “hidden” copper toxicity via HTMA, spent five years trying to “dump” bio-unavailable copper, with little success, before she reversed course and started experimenting with high-dose copper.

The story that she had hidden copper was in her case inaccurate, and while this doesn’t prove that hidden copper doesn’t exist, it demonstrates how misleading having that as an underlying assumption can be.

After four months of higher dose copper supplementation, this woman’s copper levels only went up .2 mg% and remained technically in the deficient range (the top value is the most recent result and the bottom value is the older result):

The point is that clearly, even on four months of higher levels of copper, this woman’s body did not accumulate copper in the hair and presumably was able to excrete through the bile any excess that it did not deem usable. 15 mg a day of copper is far more than what a copper IUD releases. If copper toxicity is not that easy to induce in some people at higher levels even over longer periods of time, how can symptoms of toxicity from such low levels be explained? (We’ll go into this in part 3.)

Those that believe that the copper is just hidden in bio-unavailable form in her liver still cannot explain why someone who is supposedly now copper toxic feels better physically. Even if our methods of detecting high copper are less accurate than actual liver biopsies, one would logically assume that if copper is as toxic as so many say it is, people supplementing at doses as high as 15-20mg a day would start to feel worse, not better. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. Clearly other bio-individual factors are at play beyond that of copper itself.

My Experiment with High-dose Copper

Although I’ve been a huge fan of copper for over five years, and have supplemented it at upwards of 5mg a day, I didn’t gain the full benefit of copper until experimenting with higher doses after reading Jason’s book. Recently, I took 30 mg of copper for a three week period, along with what I thought were its key nutrient cofactors (vitamin C and zinc). Turns out I was missing one critical cofactor (more on that later).

While I generally tend towards copper deficiency, I think this experiment is relevant also to those with elevated copper, because the amounts I was taking were well above what most people would ever get through food, supplements, IUDs, or from internal tissue stores.

What I experienced in this experiment has confirmed for me that:

  • After three weeks on 30 mg of copper, I started to experience intense mental/emotional imbalances – neuro-chemical changes that are the real basis for being cautious with copper (ie, altered liver and kidney function is not the true marker we should be gauging copper toxicity on). This somatic experience helps me to greatly empathize with women and people who are dys-regulated by copper. (However, it doesn’t mean copper is the sole culprit here. More on my theory on that in part 3).
  • Copper is a wonderful, powerful, and vital healing agent, for which I have immense gratitude. My longstanding liver congestion that I’ve had since the c-section operation that catapulted me into migraine hell has FINALLY resolved thanks to my high-copper experiment and backing down to a new maintenance dose. (This very well could be because the copper helped my liver to detoxify fluoride lodged there from the anesthesia I received during the c-section).
  • As a lover of copper, the 5 mg per day I had been taking for years was too low for me. My new maintenance dose of 12 mg a day is above the established Upper Tolerable Limit of 10 mg/day.

The bottom line is that despite negative effects on very high doses of copper, it was the copper “toxicity” narrative that ultimately held me back from getting the full benefit of copper at the right dose for me for so many years.

I believe most people will benefit from more copper than they are taking (IF they are taking any copper, which most people don’t), and that side-effects from copper supplementation can be better mitigated with a deeper understanding of the necessary nutrient cofactors (beyond vitamin C, vitamin A, and zinc).

To Summarize Parts 1 and 2

To be clear, many people feel very sick when they have elevated levels of copper in their body or are exposed to copper. But this does not necessarily mean that copper itself is toxic, or that symptoms are due to the mineral causing damage to organs. People may be sick from other causes (like a pathogen) and the mobilized copper may be an intelligent adaptive mechanism that is a response to, not a cause of, that problem (copper raises white blood cells, so the body may mobilize more copper to improve immune response).

Copper may cause problems at the point when its cofactors are depleted, when it is detoxifying another mineral like fluoride or mercury, or when removal of copper by bile is compromised. More likely, people who have reactions to copper are experiencing a combination of a few or more of the above factors.

There are huge discrepancies in doses people are taking and the effects those doses are having on them. Bio-individuality is obviously a thing, but we may want to stop demonizing the mineral copper itself and try to suss out the nuances of why some are so sensitive to copper while others can tolerate very high amounts of it – in order to reframe what we now call copper “toxicity.”

In order to have a balanced view here we will need to get out of any sort of “camp” or school of thought. The copper toxic folks, while recognizing copper is an essential element, may be overly fearful of it. Morely Robbins is in favour of helping to make copper bioavailable, while the copper proponents like Jason Hommel are biased against some nutrients that deplete copper, and question or deny any association between copper and its so-called “toxic” effects.

Perhaps by integrating the truth of these different perspectives, we can come to a clearer explanation for what gives rise to copper dyshomeostais by examining:

  • the nutrient depletions that elevated copper can cause or be exacerbated by
  • the differences in dietary intake that affect people’s individual nutrient status, including the real toxins in our food supply, and how those affect copper homeostasis by impacting copper’s needed nutrient cofactors.
  • the medical scenarios that contribute to these depletions
  • the genetic variations in bio-individuality that affect how copper’s nutrient cofactors are metabolized by the body

You can read part 3 here.