Excess Copper

[pone]

Does Ray Peat ever acknowledge the possibility of excess Free Copper in the body, and if yes how does he advise removing it?

Copper is a necessary nutrient, and there is good documentation in the literature about what can go wrong if you are short of copper. But the body can have more copper than it can store. You can calculate the so-called "free copper" in the body as:

Serum Copper MINUS (3.15 * Ceruloplasmin)

Ceruloplasmin is the major copper carrying protein in the body and is used as a marker for copper that your body is utilizing.

The supposedly correct level for Free Copper is around 5 to 15 ug/dL. When you have levels much higher than that you need to be evaluated for Wilson's Disease, a rare but extremely serious disorder caused by excess copper.

I read in the literature that excess free copper and free iron are together suspected as the source for most free radicals as we age. So apparently some of the evil that Ray Peat sees in excess iron also exists for excess copper.

Assuming Ray Peat even acknowledges the possibility of excess Free Copper, how does he recommend getting rid of it? With iron, it is easy enough to donate blood. With copper, you can chelate (which is dangerous), or you can try to up your intake of zinc and try to outcompete copper, or...?

I'm not seeing a lot of wisdom on this issue online. There are lots of naturopaths who don't even understand the value of the ceruloplasmin calculation and who rely just on hair analysis (which is suggestive but pretty fuzzy science). Their methods for removing copper are "fuzzy" at best. I am looking for clarity on this issue.

I have a "free copper" measurement over 40 ug/dL. So I have a lot of it and at this point do not understand how to safely get rid of it.

 

[nograde]

I'm also very interested in that topic. I experimented a lot with copper, both oral and on skin but it always caused inflammation for me. From experience I know that I need lots of zinc and vitamin C and I can't eat liver because of its high copper content.

I can tell exactly when I have copper excess from the time I used Dr. Pickart's copper peptides (I read that Peat knows him). After two days of ingestion or applying copper on skin I get a greyish skin tone with red patches and lots of wrinkles. Skin overall gets very loose, it looks horrible, like being very sick. On the back I typically get an acne outbreak. It takes three more days for the symptoms to subside. In the skin-care community this is a well known "side-effect" of copper peptides called "the uglies".

Obviously Dr. Pickart being a salesman doesn't like reports of "uglies" on his boards but nevertheless after lots of complaints he acknowledged that it does happen for some clients. He says that it has something to do with poor circulation and it happens mostly in smokers. He recommends exercise, Vitamin C and MSM as a remedy.

I researched a lot about possible causes of copper sensitivity but I did not come to a definitive conclusion. It might be possible that if metabolism is wrecked that the copper does not get used efficiently in the respiratory chain. Another possibility is indeed a lack of ceruloplasmin synthesis but I could not find any link to nutritional factors. Only one obscure study mentioned Vitamin D as a factor.

Anyway, I would be very thankful I someone knowledgable can shed a light on this topic ...

 

[nograde]

I forgot ... another theory is that excess copper leads to increased respiration which uses up oxygen quickly creating hypoxia. This would at least match with Dr. Pickart's observations.

 

[PeatMonster]

Pone, before you got that measurement were you eating gelatin? Chronometer says gelatin is high in copper, and its slightly concerning to me for the reasons you mention.

 

[sm1693]

I was warned off copper supplements for the longest time. Ray is one of the only people who I have read as recommending copper as something to be desired (tho he doesnt recommend supplementation I believe).

Recently, I was experiencing some itchy skin and I was trying a number of things to fix the problem. I never liked how difficult it is to determine your own copper intake, because of copper pipes, pots, someone even mentioned it might be in gelatin, etc. When trying to be surgical with this diet, I like having everything as a known quantity. Copper seemed nearly impossible to quantify.

So, I decided to just start supplementing in high dosages until something bad happened. Some of you may cringe at that, haha, but I believe that at this moment in time we are like explorers boldly blazing the way for future humans. Risk is necessary to me if I want to avoid the sorry fate of those I see around me.

So I started at 8 mg copper gluconate. I have been taking around 15 mg zinc gluconate daily for a year, so I read about certain advocates of copper being around 50% of zinc intake. I figured it was a good place to start.

The first day I experienced a profound energy boost and dopamine fueled laser focus. This lasted the first day, the second day was much less of the effect and the third day the copper had no noticeable effect. After a week of this dose, I started to experience strong estrogen symptoms throughout the day. Irrational anger etc. I stopped copper supplementation completely and even stopped liver for 2 days. The symptoms went away completely.

Overall, I felt really good (high thyroid) before copper supplementation and afterwards I went back to feeling great. This experience convinced me that a healthy person can excrete unwanted copper from their system within a day or 2. Now I do 1 oz of liver daily and occasionally take a 2 mg pill of copper because I worry about taking in too little.

 

[pone]

I was warned off copper supplements for the longest time. Ray is one of the only people who I have read as recommending copper as something to be desired (tho he doesnt recommend supplementation I believe).

Recently, I was experiencing some itchy skin and I was trying a number of things to fix the problem. I never liked how difficult it is to determine your own copper intake, because of copper pipes, pots, someone even mentioned it might be in gelatin, etc. When trying to be surgical with this diet, I like having everything as a known quantity. Copper seemed nearly impossible to quantify.

So, I decided to just start supplementing in high dosages until something bad happened. Some of you may cringe at that, haha, but I believe that at this moment in time we are like explorers boldly blazing the way for future humans. Risk is necessary to me if I want to avoid the sorry fate of those I see around me.

So I started at 8 mg copper gluconate. I have been taking around 15 mg zinc gluconate daily for a year, so I read about certain advocates of copper being around 50% of zinc intake. I figured it was a good place to start.

The first day I experienced a profound energy boost and dopamine fueled laser focus. This lasted the first day, the second day was much less of the effect and the third day the copper had no noticeable effect. After a week of this dose, I started to experience strong estrogen symptoms throughout the day. Irrational anger etc. I stopped copper supplementation completely and even stopped liver for 2 days. The symptoms went away completely.

Overall, I felt really good (high thyroid) before copper supplementation and afterwards I went back to feeling great. This experience convinced me that a healthy person can excrete unwanted copper from their system within a day or 2. Now I do 1 oz of liver daily and occasionally take a 2 mg pill of copper because I worry about taking in too little.

I'll quote from a post on Longecity because I don't want to repeat:
http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/75 ... ntry705860

So the study referenced showed that lowering daily copper intake from 1.38 mg to 1 mg had catastrophic impacts on heart health, in a human population.

Then refer to this post:
http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/75 ... ntry705929

Many people in the US under supplement copper, well below the 1 mg/day level.

I seem to remember perfect health recommends about 1/4 lb of liver per week, roughly 4 ounces. If you don't eat liver, lots of chocolate, or nuts, they recommend supplementing something like 1mg/day (this from memory only).

This is all fine, but now how do I make sense of this concept of "free copper", as calculated in my original post? And how do I get rid of the excess free copper while maintaining the necessary levels for heart health and other proteins/enzymes that need copper?

This appears to be a nutrient that people need to take from diet or supplement, but you can easily get too much and show some excess. How to balance this all out is tough? And how to safely get rid of it without compromising health isn't clear either.

 

[SaltGirl]

My problem with this is that I haven't seen much studies on this. I have seen people talk about serum copper being high, but they are usually higher due to inflammation and/or estrogen. Aldosterone also seems to exert some corticosteroid effect and makes you retain copper.

There are explicit diseases(Addison) and defects that can cause copper toxicity but if you suspect you might have them then it might be in order to see if you can get a diagnosis(if available).

 

[Such_Saturation]

When people have for example anemia with high iron stores, the system is messed up to a far point for sure. Ray Peat says iron can replace copper in enzymes and that seems hard to reverse.

 

[SaltGirl]

I know that every time I start taking copper my ferritin levels start going down.

Of course anecdotal evidence.

 

[pone]

When people have for example anemia with high iron stores, the system is messed up to a far point for sure. Ray Peat says iron can replace copper in enzymes and that seems hard to reverse.

I am borderline for iron overload, and thanks for mentioning that effect. I am 280 on ferritin and my transferrin saturation is around 39%. I need to start donating blood to bring ferritin below 70 and transferrin saturation hopefully adjusts to under 35%.

Once you get the iron out of your blood, presumably the copper should redistribute on its own? By the way, which enzymes are involved?

In general, I appear to be a rapid reabsorber of my bile, because I appear to have problems collecting heavy metals. I am high on mercury and on lead. It seems consistent with the iron problem as well.

Some of these are easy because they involve metals that never leave the body, so you have to manually adjust them with blood-letting. Iron is an example. Others are metals that you never want in any quantity, such as lead and mercury. But copper is tough. We really need it, and many people do not get enough. The health effects from too little copper are extreme: events like aortic rupture. But you can also get too much, and the problem I am having is that I test low on RBC and serum copper, yet the calculations online for "free copper" suggest I have a pretty high free copper load. I can't make sense of that.

This appears to be an area that practitioners know very little about. There is a tight region of benefit, and understanding how to diagnose excess and treat it is something that you do not see explained clearly anywhere.

 

[pone]

My problem with this is that I haven't seen much studies on this. I have seen people talk about serum copper being high, but they are usually higher due to inflammation and/or estrogen. Aldosterone also seems to exert some corticosteroid effect and makes you retain copper.

There are explicit diseases(Addison) and defects that can cause copper toxicity but if you suspect you might have them then it might be in order to see if you can get a diagnosis(if available).

There are LOTS of studies on copper supplementation and risks. Did you click through to the Longecity posts I authored? Those reference specific studies. See the Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet chapter on Copper, for a wonderful summary of literature.

Jaminet addresses the risks of low copper but doesn't do a great job of talking about free copper load.

 

[fyo]

My understanding is that copper and iron are to a degree interchangable, and that copper is preferable to iron. Further, iron is ubiquitous, potentially dangerous, and correlates with aging, while copper is more scarce and I'm not aware of any dangers despite OP's claims.

Supplemental copper may be excessive because of an improper form, but I'm not sure dietary copper can be excessive. There are organisms with copper-based blood rather than iron.

Ray's writings about iron are insightful. I take this as a suggestion to, for example, eat more shellfish (often higher in copper) instead of iron-rich meat. Shellfish also usually have a better amino-acid balance.

 

[johns74]

I am high on mercury and on lead. It seems consistent with the iron problem as well.

Heavy metals can be eliminated through sweat. Another method of elimination of toxins is bile binding (raw carrot, or for a more intense effect, activated charcoal), but I don't think a lot of heavy metals are eliminated this way. Bile binding seems to work for other toxins such as plastics.

 

[jyb]

I am high on mercury and on lead. It seems consistent with the iron problem as well.

Heavy metals can be eliminated through sweat. Another method of elimination of toxins is bile binding (raw carrot, or for a more intense effect, activated charcoal), but I don't think a lot of heavy metals are eliminated this way. Bile binding seems to work for other toxins such as plastics.

I think that's why seem say a warm bath is useful. That's a lot of sweating. Though there several other benefits like just increasing temperature...

 

[pone]

My understanding is that copper and iron are to a degree interchangable, and that copper is preferable to iron. Further, iron is ubiquitous, potentially dangerous, and correlates with aging, while copper is more scarce and I'm not aware of any dangers despite OP's claims.

Research Wilson's Disease, which is what happens in a small number of people who retain too much copper. They get liver failure and other equally horrible impacts.

In association with Wilson's Disease, there is a calculation that can be used to estimate your free copper load, and I published that earlier in this thread. Mine is high, even though serum and RBC copper are low-normal. That makes me want to resolve the contradictory evidence.

Supplemental copper may be excessive because of an improper form, but I'm not sure dietary copper can be excessive. There are organisms with copper-based blood rather than iron.

Do you have any research on that? I'm pretty sure that Wilson's Disease is based on retention of excess organic copper.

Ray's writings about iron are insightful. I take this as a suggestion to, for example, eat more shellfish (often higher in copper) instead of iron-rich meat. Shellfish also usually have a better amino-acid balance.

If there is one or two articles that you think are most insightful on the copper issue, please share those.

 

[gretchen]

.....
I can tell exactly when I have copper excess from the time I used Dr. Pickart's copper peptides (I read that Peat knows him). After two days of ingestion or applying copper on skin I get a greyish skin tone with red patches and lots of wrinkles. Skin overall gets very loose, it looks horrible, like being very sick. On the back I typically get an acne outbreak. It takes three more days for the symptoms to subside. In the skin-care community this is a well known "side-effect" of copper peptides called "the uglies".

Obviously Dr. Pickart being a salesman doesn't like reports of "uglies" on his boards but nevertheless after lots of complaints he acknowledged that it does happen for some clients. He says that it has something to do with poor circulation and it happens mostly in smokers. He recommends exercise, Vitamin C and MSM as a remedy.

I researched a lot about possible causes of copper sensitivity but I did not come to a definitive conclusion. It might be possible that if metabolism is wrecked that the copper does not get used efficiently in the respiratory chain ...

I have been using the copper peptides for a few years, with increasingly bad results as my metabolism has improved. I'm assuming, as you mentioned, it has something to do with increased O2 needs; my skin simply can't metabolize the product.

I also think it might have to do with zinc sunscreen; they contain ions which oppose the cu. I think Pickart himself has said this, but I've read elsewhere the skin doesn't absorb it.

It seems like GHK is becoming the preferred peptide over the 2nd generation products which haven't been researched much, but even it has uglies reports. It's a shame because Pickart makes a compelling argument for copper, and is quite devoted to it, despite the fact that the products don't work for a lot of people.
http://www.skinbiology.com/copper-the-p ... metal.html

Pickart says you can't have copper excess, the body naturally regulates it, and that the peptides don't deliver any actual copper to the skin. The more copper, the better.

But nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman says copper excess is a problem due to vegan and vegetarian diets (Ie, the nuts, soy, etc) and even coffee; she says it can cause fatigue. She recommends adding zinc and alpha lipoid acid to oppose it.
http://m.annlouise.com/?url=http%3A%2F% ... ed%2F#2888

I wouldn't say I'm fatigued; I don't think I have copper excess, but I suppose I could. I have added a lot of oysters lately and am feeling peppier.

 

[fyo]

Wilson's Disease, which is what happens in a small number of people who retain too much copper.

I don't think one disease which few people get therefore means that copper is any dietary problem. Nor does the accumulation of copper necessarily mean that consumption of copper is the source of the problem.

there is a calculation that can be used to estimate your free copper load, and I published that earlier in this thread. Mine is high

I'd be weary of any calculation. Why are you doing this calculation, in the first place? Where is the evidence that copper is harmful? What about all the people who healthfully consume regular amounts of copper-rich seafood, or the studies where supplemental copper improves health in people?

Are you simply trying to avoid one disease? Well, there must be thousands of different diseases, involving every possible nutrient or lack thereof, so by avoiding one you may fall into another.

I think it'd be much wiser to 'aim for health' rather than 'avoid disease' or any particular disease, unless you have already developed some particular known disease.

If there is one or two articles that you think are most insightful on the copper issue, please share those.

Google:
site:raypeat.com iron
site:raypeat.com copper
Also some interesting things here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemocyanin

 

[tara]

Pickart says you can't have copper excess, the body naturally regulates it, and that the peptides don't deliver any actual copper to the skin. The more copper, the better.

If Pickart really said this, I'd be pretty sceptical about trusting him about anything else he says about copper.
Quite apart from whether anyone here actually has excess copper, or could get it from normal food sources, I'm pretty sure copper toxicity is a real and harmful thing when it happens.

 

[pone]

there is a calculation that can be used to estimate your free copper load, and I published that earlier in this thread. Mine is high

I'd be weary of any calculation. Why are you doing this calculation, in the first place? Where is the evidence that copper is harmful? What about all the people who healthfully consume regular amounts of copper-rich seafood, or the studies where supplemental copper improves health in people?

Are you simply trying to avoid one disease? Well, there must be thousands of different diseases, involving every possible nutrient or lack thereof, so by avoiding one you may fall into another.

I am high on metals, specifically mercury, lead, and iron. These show high on urine, serum, and hair. And actually the iron shows in high ferritin and high transferrin saturation percentage. That got me interested in understanding the status of my other metals. In reading about iron risks, many people feel excess copper and iron can be source of free radicals as we age.

But, unlike iron, which seems trivial to diagnose excess, copper seems quite complex. At this point I'm simply trying to understand if there is a reliable way to diagnose excess free copper.

 

[BingDing]

I have no answers for you pone, but found this paper. It relates to the equation you used.