596: Morley Robbins on Magnesium, Stress, Mineral Balance and the Root Cause Protocol

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is one I have been excited about for a long time. I’m here with someone who I have been waiting to talk to, and I’m so excited to finally get to chat with, which is Morley Robbins, who is the creator of what’s called The Root Cause Protocol. He’s also known in the online world as the Magnesium Man, and he is one of the foremost experts on magnesium’s role in the body, and the delicate dance that magnesium plays with iron, copper, and calcium. He’s probably the most well-read person that I’m aware of possibly in the world on this topic. And he has a mainstream medical history background. He’s been a hospital executive and consultant for 32 years. But in 2008, he developed a condition called frozen shoulder and he’s trying to find healing for himself, and that led him into a research pathway that now has helped thousands and thousands of people through his research into magnesium and mineral balance, especially including things like iron and copper in the body.
And I’ve followed his work for a while. Some of the things he talks about may surprise you. But I really encourage you to listen and read more and go deep on these topics because I consider him very much a first principles thinker when it comes to these different topics, and we cover some of them today. Though there will be definitely more episodes, including he is going to run some of the testing on me, and then dissect the results in real-time on the podcast. And even though I’ve been living in the health and wellness world for the last 15 years, I actually fully expect for him to find some stuff that I haven’t dealt with before, and I’m really excited to delve into that in real-time with you guys.
But we talk about the importance of minerals and understanding mineral balance in the body. We talk about stress, which he calls the body’s inability to make energy for the mind to respond to its environment. We talk about oxidative stress, and what happens to oxygen in the body, what ADP, not ATP, but ADP is, and why this is important. We talk about antioxidant enzymes, why copper is so unique in the ability to regulate both iron and oxygen, and why this is important for your health. The reason that you likely are not iron deficient or anemic, even if you have been told that you are. Why we need to produce 2.5 million new red blood cells per second and why this is important. But what iron recycling is? And you probably haven’t even heard of this.
We talk about the difference between iron in the blood and iron in the tissue. And why the distinction is very important. How iron ages us, and essentially how we can be rusting from the inside out as we age. Why most testing isn’t accurate, and what to actually look at. He explains when and why they started adding iron to our diet supplementally, and why it’s creating a lot of problems. And we talk about why he firmly stands behind his statement that there is no iron deficiency anemia, and what’s actually happening instead. We talk about how mental health and emotions have a measurable effect on physical health. And he explains the reasons for this. Then we talk about the best forms of magnesium, how to supplement with copper, and some good rules of thumb for all of these things. Like I said, there’s so much more to this than we could cover in a 1-hour podcast episode. So, there will absolutely be follow-ups. But to get the conversation started, let’s join Morley Robbins. Morley, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Morley: Katie, I’m delighted to be here, and looking forward to our conversation.
Katie: Well, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. You’ve been on my list…I’ve been excited to talk about with for a long time, and I think you have such unique knowledge in what I think are very, very important areas, especially for the moms that are listening. And we’re gonna get to go deep on some of those areas today. But, to start broad, for people who may not already be familiar with you, can you just give us a little bit of your background, and what kind of led you into this journey, I think now over 10 years ago?
Morley: Yeah. Actually, it goes back to 2009, believe it or not. It’s really, like, wow, where does the time go? But, former hospital exec and consultant, who really was questioning the system, but I developed what’s called a frozen shoulder. Couldn’t pick my hand up above my waist. Went to a health food store. They said “Go see Dr. Liz.” I said, “I don’t do witchcraft,” because I knew that meant chiropractor, and bought supplements that didn’t do anything. Went back months later, and the owner of the store looked me in the eye and she said, “Morley, we love you. Go see Dr. Liz.” So, that was a transformational moment. In two sessions, I had complete use of my shoulder, which was…it was absolutely a miracle. And she used a phrase in that conversation, that initial conversation, that I’d never heard in 32 years of working in the hospital industry, which was “the innate healer.” I’d never heard that phrase. And I thought to myself, I didn’t say anything to her, but I thought, “well, if there’s an innate healer, why do we have millions of doctors around the world, if we’re able to do this ourselves?”
And so, I set out on a quest. And for some reason, I was drawn to minerals. I can’t fully explain how or why, but it’s just become this all-consuming passion. And now, coming up on 14 years of daily, seven days a week, two to three hours every day, reading articles from around the world, trying to better understand, how do we get out of balance, and how do we get back into balance?
Because my whole model is based on one simple principle. The stress of life, and there’s a thousand different forms of stress, as you know. Being a mom to six, that would be a good start. But being in the modern society, with the challenges of our food system and have you, that stress causes mineral loss and mineral dysregulation, which then affects our ability to make energy. And when the energy goes, that’s when all the symptoms start to appear. It’s called metabolic dysfunction. And it’s been a fascinating process of discovery over the last 14 years to really begin to identify how all of these conditions have a common point of origin, stress, and then oxidative stress, that then affects minerals. It’s absolutely amazing.
Katie: Yeah. I think that’s really important to understand going forward in this conversation is, I think, often, when we hear the word “stress,” most people think of it just as the mental, like, “oh, I feel stressed.” But truly, it’s having, to your point, physical effects on the body, that then make it harder to even reduce what feels like the mental stress. And this is a very vicious cycle when you get in that. So maybe, can you explain a little bit more of that relationship between stress we feel within the world, and oxidatively what’s happening in our body?
Morley: Yeah. No, that’d be great. So, one of my…probably my favorite definition of stress is by Mark Hyman, functional MD that a lot of people are familiar with, up at the Cleveland Clinic. It’s a wonderful explanation. Stress is the body’s inability to make energy for the mind to respond to its environment. And it’s such a beautiful and all-encompassing expression. And it really builds on this whole notion that we do know about mental and emotional stress. You know, a deadline and, “oh, I’ve gotta do this, I’ve gotta do that.” But what’s really in play, that you’re really referencing, is what’s called oxidative stress. And the way we make energy is very important on this planet. A lot of people know that there’s oxygen in the air, 21% oxygen in the air we breathe. But oxygen is not our friend. It’s actually a poison, believe it or not. And the way we’re designed is that there’s critical enzymes that turn oxygen, O2, into two molecules of water, 2H2O. Well, those enzymes run on copper. And this goes back to the beginning of time, and maybe in a subsequent conversation we can talk about that.
But it’s absolutely fascinating, and we’re designed to burn our fuel, oxidize it, and whether it’s carbohydrates or proteins or fats, but it really depends on this ability to turn oxygen into water, and then that process releases what are called energy precursor molecules called ADP. People may have heard of that. Most people have heard of ATP. And ADP is the precursor to ATP. And we manufacture about our body weight in ATP every day. So it’s real important that we do this.
Well, if we can’t activate that oxygen cleanly and completely, it’s gonna create exhaust. The phrase is “oxidative stress.” Some authors call it “reactive oxygen species.” Some just call it “oxidants.” And an oxidant is really an accident with oxygen. And we’ve heard of antioxidants, right? Well, what most of your listeners probably don’t know, there’s a whole vast network of what are called antioxidant enzymes, ferroxidase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, caroxidase, all these very fancy-sounding terms, that all require a copper battery to work. And if copper’s not present, then we can’t clear the oxidative stress. And as that oxidative stress builds, then it affects the metabolism of the cells, and the tissue, and the organs. And it’s absolutely axiomatic. It’s just, it’s, once you’ve tripped the wire, there’s a progression of decay that follows. Does that make sense?
Katie: It does, and it definitely leads to the question of then, how do we stop that? Once that’s tipped, what do we do about it? I know, I’ve written for years and years about magnesium, which I have seen over and over how important it is. But you explain so well that’s only one piece of this puzzle, and that there’s other really important factors that I feel like don’t get talked about enough. And you speak so well about copper and iron. So I’d love for you to give us maybe a broad entry into understanding the interrelationship of all of those.
Morley: Yeah. So, the beauty of copper is it’s the only element on planet Earth that can regulate both iron and oxygen. Iron is the master pro-oxidant element on planet Earth. It’s the number one element on planet Earth. Thirty-four percent of the Earth’s composition has iron in it. Thirty-four percent. That’s enormous. And oxygen, again, you know, we can’t live without it, but we can’t age without those oxidants. And so, the ability to regulate oxygen’s very, very important. And if we don’t manage iron and oxygen, we’re gonna get oxidative stress, which is just a fancy term for rust. We recognize a rusty nail and a rusty pipe and a rusty car. And we never imagined that those, that rusting process was taking place inside our body, and that’s exactly what’s happening. That’s what plaque is, you know, arterial plaque or neurological plaque. That’s just rusting, of a different nature. And when we’re missing copper, the rusting is gonna accelerate. But what’s also gonna happen is that oxidative stress is gonna burn up magnesium.
I call it the magnesium burn rate. So that when your stress is rising, again, you got a deadline due, and you’ve got some crisis that you’ve gotta deal with, bills to pay, whatever, or you’ve got a lousy diet, or you’re not getting enough sleep, or you’ve got, you know, another baby due… Because the bookends of stress on planet Earth, the bookends of stress are guys in foxholes worrying about death, and moms in birthing suites worrying about life. Nothing beats those two. And so, that mechanism of creating this stress, this oxidative stress, is gonna burn up magnesium and B vitamins. And that’s the way we’re designed, that they are the exchange for…what’s the body trying to do? One, it’s, there’s critical class of enzymes called kinase enzymes, and they have magnesium. And in order to release the energy that they have stored, they’ve gotta expend magnesium to do it. And so, under stress, the first nutrients to go are magnesium and B vitamins. They go right into our urine.
And then, if the stress continues, and it becomes chronic stress, then the handcuffs are put on copper, because of the unique nature of cortisol. So, the key here is to understand that there is a very predictable reaction to stress. And the greatest stress on planet Earth was articulated by a team of Italian iron biologists. And the first line in the article says, “The greatest stress on planet Earth is iron stress.” And it’s just, like, when I read that, and this goes back, gosh, it must be 10, 11 years ago, but when I read that, it hit me like a ton of bricks, because I was really focusing on magnesium, that was my original stage name, “Magnesium Man,” dealing with stress. But when I realized that it was the iron stress that was causing the magnesium loss, then I wanted to find out what’s causing this iron to act out? And that’s what got me into the whole work around copper and oxygen. And it’s been absolutely fascinating ever since.
Katie: And I love your approach to this, because you seem to me to be a very first-principles thinker, and not relying on the assumptions that exist currently within medicine, but actually going back to the root cause, which I think we can all benefit from shifting our thinking in that manner. But especially for women, this seems very, very relevant, because I know, often, women who menstruate, are in that age, or who are especially pregnant, are often told that they have low iron, or they’re anemic, and that they need to supplement with it. I had a emergency C-section with my third, and lost a lot of blood, and they kept telling me, “Oh, you need to keep supplementing with iron for a long time, because you lost so much blood.” And you were one of the ones that introduced me to really questioning this idea, or at least the mainstream presentation of this idea. So, maybe let’s tiptoe into the world of what about women who are told that they’re iron deficient at these various phases?
Morley: How much time do we have? A couple days, right? Yeah. It’s a very…it’s a fascinating area of exploration. An important statistic for folks to grasp is that every second of every day, we need to produce 2.5 million new red blood cells. Every second. And that’s a big number, right? That’s like, wow, you know, we’ve been talking now for almost 15 minutes, times 60, times 2.5 million. But what’s even more amazing is that within that 2.5 million are 2 trillion proteins that need to be made too, because you can’t make…you can’t make a red blood cell if you can’t make hemoglobin, but you can’t make hemoglobin if you can’t make heme. And the heme is being made in mitochondria. And everyone knows, oh, those are the energy furnaces. Well, that’s like saying that all your kitchen does is, you know, defrost food. No. It’s a lot more going on in the kitchen than just defrosting food. But the point is, there’s an enormous metabolic activity taking place in our body, 24/7, every second. And there’s an enormous movement, as you can imagine, of metals to support that.
And so, what’s absolutely fascinating is when you think about replacing…it’s actually 200 billion red blood cells in 24 hours. It’s a lot. That’s a lot. Okay? Big number. But what is absolutely mind-numbing is it only takes 25 milligrams of iron to support replacing 200 billion red blood cells. Twenty-five milligrams of iron. It’s like, it’s so small. And again, the average person probably has about 4,000 milligrams of iron, or so we’re told. I think it’s much higher, but we’ll deal with that later. But the thing is, 25 milligrams are needed.
But here’s the catch. This is the most important thing for folks to listen to and understand. Twenty-four of those 25 milligrams, 95% of the iron that we need every day, every 24 hours, comes from a recycling system that’s run by copper. And there’s a…and for those who can go back to their days of classroom math, you know there’s a difference between algebra and calculus. And calculus is like, oh my gosh, I don’t even wanna think about it. It’s complicated, right? Well, the process of supporting the replacement of, you know, 200 billion red blood cells every 24 hours, that’s calculus. And it’s run by copper. And what are doctors taught to use? Rulers. They use an iron ruler to say, “Well, your iron’s too low,” or, “your iron’s too high.” You’re serious? You’re using a ruler to try to solve calculus?
And that’s where the breakdown is, is that the deception, and I don’t know that it’s on purpose, but it’s been evolving for the better part of the century, but the deception is that iron in the blood, shows up in a blood test, is perfectly representative of iron in the tissue. And it’s not. And there’s a famous scientist named Bruce Ames. He was at Berkeley for most of his career. Very smart guy. And his colleague, Dr. Kamilia. Back in 2004, they did a study where they were looking at dying cells to see what the difference in iron content was of those dying cells versus younger cells. And what they discovered is that the older cells had 10 times more iron than the iron showing up in the blood, which is absolutely amazing. Ten times more iron, but it doesn’t show up on the blood test. So what happens is, the doctor does a blood test, or the practitioner or some nutritionist or whatever, someone does the blood test, and they see that one of the markers for iron is low, and they get out their ruler, not their calculus computer, and they’re not thinking about the recycling program. They’re thinking that the…it’s like a dipstick. Oh, well, your iron is low. It’s like, wait a minute, if 95% of the iron that I need on a daily basis supports this recycling program, could the iron in fact be tied up in these recycling, what are called macrophages? And those are the PACMAN that gobble up dying cells, and they’ve gotta get the iron out and get it back to the bone marrow, where it’s actually made into new red blood cells. Really critical function.
And so, there’s this belief out there that the iron in the blood is perfectly representative of the iron throughout the tissue. And what’s very well-chronicled in the research is, no, they’re not at all alike. And they’re not at all representative. And there’s all sorts of confusion between iron and hemoglobin, iron and ferritin, and iron that’s found in what’s called the serum. And so, what serum really is, it’s very, very simple. If you take a tube of blood, it’s red, right? But when you spin it down into a centrifuge, you get two fluids. You get the bottom half is red, and those are called packed red blood cells, and then the top half is this kind of milky, white searum. And I spell it differently. I spell it S-E-A-R-U-M. So you think seawater, because that’s what it’s supposed to be. And the red blood cells are swimming in the seawater, and it’s supposed to have the mineral composition of seawater. At least it has historically. I’m not sure it does today. But the thing is, there’s some iron in there, just as there’s copper, and zinc, and magnesium, and other metals and minerals. But the important thing is, the practitioners don’t default to the copper calculus. They always default to the iron ruler. And there are situations where the iron will look low in the blood, when in fact, it’s an absolutely overwhelming state of storage in the tissue. And this is, I think, one of the great mistakes that’s made in medicine today, is not understanding fully the recycling program that is so essential for proper iron metabolism.
Katie: And I think this is critically important, questioning these assumptions of the conventional testing that’s most often used, and then the assumptions that are made because of that, especially when we’re talking about things like magnesium, which, to my knowledge, is actually pretty difficult to test in an accurate way in the body. I feel like copper doesn’t even enter this conversation, much less the testing, most often. So, it makes me really curious, how can we actually know what we need if even the testing that we’re typically given is flawed?
Morley: No, it’s a great question, and I encounter it all the time. The testing is imperfect. The thing is, there are tests out there that we can do. I mean, if you really want to get it at the granular level of copper, what we need to be doing is measuring what’s the activity of what’s called the ferroxidase enzyme. Ferroxidase is the enzyme that is regulating iron status. If you go back to your chemistry, oh no, don’t do this. But there’s plus two iron and plus three iron, ferrous and ferric iron. Well, ferroxidase is managing that process. Really, really important. And it’s essential for the recycling program to be able to do that. Well, we’ve got…there’s an enzyme that I was describing earlier inside the mitochondria that actually turns O2 into 2H2O, and it’s called cytochrome c oxidase. Really important enzyme. I think it’s probably the most important enzyme on the planet. We can measure that. Then we’ve got an enzyme called superoxide dismutase. So, when you take an oxygen molecule, O2, and you add an electron to it, they call it superoxide. No, it’s hyperoxide. It’s really, like, it’s very reactive. And these enzymes are measured in research studies. But here’s the catch. The FDA does not allow them to be done by clinicians. Expressly barred. You might ask why. I’ve never had the gall or the curiosity to call up the FDA to say “why?” I think I have some ideas. But practitioners don’t know that these are available.
So, here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Katie, how tall are you?
Katie: 5’7”.
Morley: 5’7”. Okay. Does that in any way give us an idea of how intelligent you are?
Katie: Not typically, no.
Morley: No, not at all. So, I’m six foot, right? But we still don’t know how smart we are, right? And so, in the studies, when we’re doing blood work, especially when we’re doing blood work of copper, what we’re measuring is the height of copper, and the height of its protein, called ceruloplasmin. That’s, like, a word that most doctors have never heard. But what it stands for is blue blood, cerulo, sky blue, plasma. It’s beautiful. But it tells us nothing about its intelligence. We need to be able to get access to the ferroxidase assay, which is not allowed. So, that’s the catch. And what we’re left with is, and you’re asking the right question, about well, if we’ve got these defective tests, what are we supposed to do? Well, we do the testing because there’s still information that’s revealed in that testing, but there really are five habits of daily living that we can also do. And this is, any parent would know these habits of daily living, because they’ve monitored it with their children. Did they get a good night’s sleep? Or did I get a good night’s sleep? You know, am I hungry? Do I have an appetite? Am I able to eliminate my waste? Do I have energy to get through the day? To get all the tasks done that I wanna get done through the day? And then the final measure is, is my mood appropriate to my situation?
If I’ve just won the lottery, I should be excited. And so, we do delve into the blood testing and the hair testing, because it’s very representative. But what it really tells us…because we don’t diagnose anything, we don’t treat anything, within the RCP. But the point is, we use those tests to learn the individual’s story of stress. What’s been going on in your world? What changes have made? What was the stress that you were under just before the symptoms appeared? And it’s amazing how people are suddenly able to connect the dots, say, “Well, wait a minute. They all started right after the heart attack,” or “right after my relative got outta prison,” or, and I actually had that happen with a client, “right after I changed my diet.” And they can…they went, “You mean there’s no disease?” No. There’s stress-induced mineral dysregulation, that changes energy production, which creates the symptoms. And because we’re human, we’re very gullible, and we believe the label that the practitioner gives us. That’s what we have to question, is, is there more to the story? And to me, the most important thing about the last two and a half years that we’ve all endured, the stress that’s been endured, globally, is, there is more to the story.
And we do need to ask better questions, and we do need to demand better answers, because the wrote responses that we’ve been given throughout our lives are not complete. They’re not enough. And that’s really the basis of my work is to really pull the curtain back. And I spell Cu-rtain, C-U, hyphen, R-T-A-I-N, so you see the symbol for copper. And copper is just this hidden force, that really, in my opinion, that runs the body. It regulates the body. And there’s only four things that copper does in our body. Only four things. It creates energy, it clears exhaust, it catalyzes enzymes, and it combats enemies. All of them. Bacteria, fungus, virus, and parasites. And what blew me away in 2020 was the article I found from 2008, that clearly showed that copper stops SARS-CoV-2 in its tracks. And that’s when I knew to question more of the narrative.
Katie: That’s fascinating. And I have so many follow-up questions and so many directions we can go. I have a feeling that alone may be leading people to want to go just load up on copper supplements. And I know there’s much more nuance to it for that. And I wanna talk more in depth about copper and magnesium specifically. But before we do, is there any other nuance related to iron consumption? Because based on our conversation thus far, I could see people wanting to be cautious of consuming iron. And so I’d love to talk a little bit about the nuance of types of iron, and if there’s good iron versus bad iron, and sources to be aware of.
Morley: Right. Oh, boy. Just, great follow-up question. But it’s, like, bing, bing, bing. What’s important for people to know, again, iron’s number one element on the planet. It’s a big, dominant force on the planet. In 1941, they started adding iron filings, let it sink in, not organic iron, iron filings, to the wheat flour in the UK, in Canada, and the U.S. In 1969, the FDA wanted to increase it 300%. And scientists from around the world, 26, 28, I can’t remember the exact number, came to Washington, D.C. and testified and said, “What are you trying to do? Kill people?” Which is probably what they were trying to do. But what people also need to understand is there’s nine different forms of iron now being added to our food system. Nine. And all of them are carcinogenic. And all these facts are laid out in a book called “Iron: The Most Toxic Metal” by Jym Moon, J-Y-M, Moon, like the planet. He’s a Ph.D., iron toxicologist. So, people need to know that there’s a lot of iron being added to the food system. And then when you pick up your supplements, and there’s even more iron in your supplements, whether it’s One A Days, or prenatals or what, you know, senior tabs, or whatever you might be taking. And we got too much iron coming in, folks. I mean, it’s out of control. And yet, it shows up low on the blood test, right? Because no one’s talking about copper. That’s why.
Again, the calculus of iron metabolism and iron recycling requires copper, and they’ve known this since 1928. Very important study was done at University of Wisconsin, in Madison. And in 2021, a team of scientists were studying 13 genes that deal with metals in the liver. And under copper deficiency, there was only one gene that fired off, and it’s the gene that produces a protein that allows iron accumulation in the liver. It’s a very serious event that they were able to verify, genetically, what Dr. Hart and his team had developed, or identified, back in 1928. So, the question is, should we be adding iron? Well, first of all, we need to understand the context of iron on the planet, the context of iron in our food system, the context of iron in our supplements. But most importantly, we need to get the proper blood test. We call it the Full Monty Iron Panel. And there’s 13 markers there. And you need to be able to put iron in the context of copper, and zinc, and magnesium in the red blood cell, and vitamin A and vitamin D and a number of other factors. And you don’t just look at iron. You need to look at iron in the context of its partners inside the body.
And so, I think it’s important that people have a more accurate understanding of their true iron status, not the manipulated, “Oh, it’s a blood test, it says it’s low, and I gotta take more.” And one of my students, one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, spent her entire life being told she was anemic. Katie, she had 80 iron infusions. Eighty. And she kept showing low. And we’re talking about a lot of iron going into her body. And when she and I had our first conversation, about eight years ago, it was pretty tense. Because she’s like, “So, you’re telling me that I’m poisoning myself?” I said, “Well, I’m not saying that,” but, you know, but that’s what I was thinking. But the point is, to her credit, she decided to start the program, and then she took the training that I teach.
And I think it was earlier in the spring this year, there’s a picture of her arm at a blood center. I think she was coming up on, like, her 50th birthday or something. And she, too, has six kids, by the way. And it was the first blood donation she had ever done in her entire life. And what’s amazing about that is that she just was this, just filled with iron, but her body was able to heal itself by following the principles of the Root Cause Protocol. And it’s a really, it’s a stunning example. Now, it’s an N of one. I know, it’s anecdotal, it’s just one case study. But there are lots of folks out there that have experienced this. And I think that what people need to do is be a little bit more cautious about adding iron. They’ve gotta be reading labels. And if the label says “enriched flour,” or “fortified flour,” you don’t want that iron. You wanna stay away from that iron.
A lot of people think that they are gluten sensitive. It’s not the gluten. They’re spraying wheat with glyphosate, which is a desiccant, which means it’s a drying agent. They spraying it four times with glyphosate. People don’t think anything of it. Well, glyphosate chelates copper from the body. That’s not good. And then they’re adding…they’re sprinkling the iron filings into the wheat. You’re reacting to the iron and the glyphosate, not the gluten. Because I’ve got full-blown celiac clients that can go to Europe and they can eat the bread over there, whether it’s in Italy or Germany or France, because they don’t allow that in Europe. So, the idea of adding iron because you think you’re anemic, I think you have to be really careful. I’ve got a series of YouTube videos where I’m talking about you’re not anemic. I’ve got at least five or six what are called iron toxicity posts, “You’re Not Anemic,” where I go into detail, and have the literature there.
And then, there are two principal forms of what are called anemia. There’s about 12 different forms of anemia. But the two that stand out are what are called iron deficiency anemia, which most people think they have. And the other is anemia of chronic inflammation. I would go on record, and I have on numerous occasions…there is no iron deficiency anemia. It’s impossible on the planet that has the number one element is iron. And I think what most people are dealing with is anemia of chronic inflammation, because it’s indicating that the iron recycling system isn’t working right.
But let me go back to the iron deficiency anemia. In order to believe in that, again, we go back to iron is number one element, 34%. And prior to COVID, I would’ve argued that humans were the most evolved species on the planet. Now I’m not so sure. But the important thing is, in order to believe in iron deficiency anemia, what it means is that the most evolved species on the planet has lost the ability to metabolize the number one element on the planet, and it doesn’t make sense. And what’s missing is copper. And what anemia of chronic disease, the initials are ACD, well, what I’ve changed it to is anemia of copper deficiency. And there’s more and more authors that are coming to realize that this is in fact the major contributing factor to this perception that we have that we are anemic. And I would really encourage your listeners and your followers to dig a little deeper, and learn that there’s more than what they think is going on, and that there are tests available. And that there are practitioners out there, you know, Root Cause Protocol consultants, who are really good at helping to separate wheat from chaff, and get people to understand what’s really going on with their mineral status.
Katie: And to me, this is just another of many, many reasons to avoid enriched and process wheat for sure, especially in the U.S. So I definitely echo that recommendation and have for a long time.

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I am curious, though, that that might lead a lot of people to be afraid of even consuming, like, grass-fed beef, for instance, or organ meats, because they typically are thought to have more iron. I’m curious if there’s any nuance there for people to be aware of when it comes to dietary sources.
Morley: Yeah. No, it’s a very important issue, is that the grass that the animals are eating needs to be grown in soil that has mineral balance. Like, really important. And so, you know, wherever possible, we try to eat grass-fed beef products, or whatever the animal might be, especially for the organ meats. But the catch is, is the farmer aware that there needs to be copper in that soil? Because if the copper is not in the soil, then you’re not gonna get vitamin C in the grass. You’re not gonna get the beta-carotene in the grass that’s needed. And beta-carotene becomes retinol in the animal’s body. And so, we just have to be really discerning. And don’t be paranoid or shut down. Just know that it’s an iterative process of learning about the farmers in your area, asking the really important questions, and having the staying power to really hang with them, and get them to explain what are they doing to feed their soil and their microbes, so that the grass has the fullest expression? If anyone’s ever seen the videos with Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms, and he holds up the bouquet of grass, he says, “I’m just a humble grass farmer.” Well, that grass that he’s working with is just teeming with the vital, vitamins and minerals that it needs. And so, we just need to seek out farmers who have passion around that. That’s really, really important.
Katie: And, fully aware that each of these following questions could be a whole podcast or several in and of themselves, I wanna make sure we can touch on a few key points here. And we’ve talked a lot about magnesium, and I would love to go a little deeper on that, in understanding, maybe for people, what are some of the initial ways we can begin optimizing our magnesium levels? Because you talked about it being critical in that stress response, and that depletion of magnesium then intensifies it, and I think you called it stress-induced mineral dysregulation, which makes me think then, can we have a mineral-induced stress resilience? And if so, like, how do we optimize these magnesium levels in the body?
Morley: Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s really what the base of the RCP is, mineral-induced stress resilience. That’s a great phrase, Katie. The first thing we’ve gotta is we’ve gotta deal with our stress. And we put a lot of emphasis on that in the work that we do. And we get people to…what’s important to understand is that when we have emotional stress, or what we might even call emotional trauma, it’s gonna instill fear in our being. We can’t resolve an emotional issue at a deeper level, it’s gonna cause fear. And we spell “Fe-ar” differently, F-E, hyphen, A-R. So you see the symbol for iron. And we’ve also called it, “FeAR stands for ‘Iron Attracts Rust,’” which it does. And so, this concept of when we’re in a state of fear, it changes our pH, which makes us more attractive to iron. And any farmer will tell you that acidic soil attracts iron. That’s a fact. Well, there’s a backside to the dynamic, and there’s something called a danger sensor, or a fear sensor, in the cell, and it’s a protein called NLRP3. And it’s the nuclear origin of inflammation. It’s also called the inflammasome. And what activates it? Iron.
So, fear attracts iron, iron activates fear, and there’s this vicious circle that takes place in our metabolism. And what will slice right through it is emotional release techniques, like EFT, EMDR, Bowen therapy, things of that nature, that are very effective, but you need to do it with a practitioner, because the people who are drawn to these types of discussions are high-IQ. And people with high IQ have two genetic defects. We are control freaks, and we love complexity.
Well, doing the emotional release work with a practitioner is more complicated, so they’re gonna love that, but they will teach you how to let go. Because we’re not very good at that. And anyone who has issues of control, that’s really where it starts. And when does stress really begin for people with high IQ? When we feel out of control. And that’s really, really important. And so, dealing with the stresses, in terms of what Katie’s asking about, how do we protect our magnesium? We’ve gotta deal with that. We’ve gotta deal with the stressors in our life. The big stressor, iron, we’ve gotta deal with this iron, and get it into proper recycling and proper regulation in our body, and stop thinking that we measure iron status with a ruler, when in fact it’s a very sophisticated recycling system, that has calculus driving it. And copper’s running the show. It’s so important to understand that.
Then we’ve gotta deal with the fact that our diet can be a factor, as a source of stress. There’s magnesium loss associated with that. And so, what we really encourage people to do is just take magnesium supplements. I mean, there’s four different ways to get magnesium. We can get magnesium in our water, magnesium bicarbonate. It’s immediately available. A lot of mineral waters from Europe are gonna have magnesium bicarbonate in them. So that would be your first stop. Another would be magnesium-rich foods, especially leafy greens, are gonna have a lot of magnesium in them. It’s great, but you gotta cook ’em right, you know. Then we’ve got transdermal. We’ve got magnesium foot baths, or full baths. They’re very restorative. The body loves to absorb magnesium. You know, again, they say we evolved from the sea, where there’s a lot of magnesium in the seawater. And then the fourth would be magnesium supplements. And the two forms that we’ve found the best results with are magnesium malate and magnesium glycinate. And it’s, you know, based upon the pioneering research of Mildred Seelig, who is a mom, and a very gifted physician, and she figured out that what we needed was five milligrams of magnesium per pound body weight. But when you know you’re in a stressful situation, you need more.
Again, back to our bookends of stress, to me, one of the greatest blind spots in medicine is not measuring magnesium status of the pregnant woman, not measuring her copper status, and not measuring her retinol status. And maybe that’s a topic for a subsequent conversation, Katie, but one of the most important phrases I ever heard was, again, from Mildred Seelig, and she said “pregnancy is a magnesium-deficient state from stem to stern.” And the fact that obstetricians and midwives don’t even measure magnesium status is a little unsettling, especially when you think about how important it is. What people like to talk about is, “Well, I was, like, I developed preeclampsia, and they gave me an infusion of magnesium and I was fine.” And my response is, why wasn’t the practitioner measuring your magnesium in the red blood cell from the entire beginning of your pregnancy, to stay on top of it? Because it would’ve shown up there, and they would’ve known that there was rising oxidative stress, burning through the magnesium, that was going to then change the metabolic dynamics of the uterus, that led to high blood pressure, and edema and things like that.
And so, again, the conventional medicine is based on the white knight. “Oh, I’m gonna save you at the last second.” No, we don’t need saving at the last second. Let’s deal with the problem throughout the entire pregnancy. And so, I think we can restore our magnesium through our diet, and through supplementation. But the most important thing to do is to prevent its loss, its perpetual loss, because our stress is out of control. Whether it’s mental-emotional, dietary, iron that we’re just not clear on, and it’s, you know, there’s ways to get clear on it, this conversation being a prime start for that. But the thing is, we can get on top of our stress, and that will then lower our magnesium burn rate, which is really, really important for our overall health.
Katie: I think that’s perhaps one of the best explanations I’ve ever heard on how our mental state, especially fear, relates to physical health. And I saw this play out in my own life, when I had unresolved trauma that I thought I had just dealt with, and it turns out I had ignored it. And working through that with practitioners actually was the thing that shifted my health, without additional dietary changes or changing anything else. And so, now I’m a big advocate of that is one of the most important pieces that often gets ignored in the physical health equation.
Morley: Absolutely. It’s one of the most important. Absolutely.
Katie: And same with magnesium. So, I’m a doula, and that’s something I noticed anecdotally, and have written a lot about is, when I started really optimizing my magnesium, my pregnancies got drastically easier, my labors got shorter. And I’ve seen this play out over and over again in doula clients as well. And so, especially, I always encourage people, you know, just, this is what worked for me. At least research it, because it seems to make a tremendous difference. And to your point, maybe it would be best not to wait till it’s in an emergent state, and we have to do IV infusions of magnesium to keep someone from having, you know, a stroke. Maybe what if we address this from the beginning, or even pre-conception? What would that look like? And also, we’ve talked a lot about copper being a really important part of this equation, but I also wanna be aware of people who might just wanna go start taking supplemental copper, and the caveats that they need to understand there. So, maybe give us an overview of what are the best ways to get copper, and do we need to be aware of not overdoing it, or any caveats related to copper consumption?
Morley: Yeah. Absolutely. Again, I come back to the framework that I really encourage people to get a working knowledge of what’s going on with their minerals, through the hair test and the blood test. You know, it’s so important that we have this reference point of knowledge. But copper is the most overlooked mineral, no question. But it isn’t just copper. It needs to be what’s called bioavailable copper. Copper works in our body through a network, an extensive network, of enzymes. The master antioxidant enzyme is called ceruloplasmin, and it can express up to 20 different antioxidant enzyme functions, which is, it’s mind-boggling to think about. And the one that they always talk about is called ferroxidase, but there’s others that are just as important, critically important. And so, practitioners don’t know that. They need to know that, but they don’t know that. But the thing is, there’s many, many, many other enzymes that require copper.
And the catch is, there are two critical enzymes called copper pumps. One is called ATP7A, and another is called ATP7B. Some people like to call them the Menkes’ protein and the Wilson’s protein. But, at the end of the day, what they are is copper pumps, running on the energy of retinol, that you get from, like, cod liver oil, or, you know, grass-fed beef liver, things of that nature. But the retinol is critically important to activate the mechanism to literally load the copper into these different enzymes. And if you don’t have these ATP7A/B enzymes pumping copper, well then you’re not gonna load them right, and then they’re not gonna work right. So, when you begin to step back and look at the focus of the Root Cause Protocol, we have about 12 to 15 different nutrients, but there’s method in our madness, because what we’re really seeking to do is optimize the production of bioavailable copper that we’d be measured, through a blood test, with what’s called copper and ceruloplasmin.
And so, what we typically talk about are the importance of bee pollen as a source of copper. You can’t pollinate a flower, and you can’t pollinate an animal unless you have copper. And for those of you in the listening audience who are having trouble getting pregnant, if you were a sheep on a farm, there’s only one nutrient that farmer would add to your feed, and that would be copper. Copper deficiency is what’s contributing to the inability to conceive, for a wide variety of reasons. But just, the big point is we need more copper. But bee pollen, very, very important. Again, organic, wherever you can find it.
Then we’ve got whole food vitamin C, and it’s important for the listeners to know there’s a difference between ascorbic acid, which is a synthetic chemical, and whole food vitamin C, that has multiple moving parts. And at the center of it is an enzyme called tyrosinase, which very few people have ever heard of. But tyrosinase is what makes the protein melanin work, which is what gives us our skin color, eye color, hair color, and does a thousand other things beyond that. And so, tyrosinase is very, very important. It’s not insignificant that the food industry relies on what are called tyrosinase inhibitors, because they’re trying to prevent the browning of the food. Do you think it might affect the browning of the human? Of course it does. And so, tyrosinase is a very important source of copper. There’s two atoms of copper in the tyrosinase enzyme. And then the third source that we typically go to is grass-fed beef liver. And in ideal situations, where the grass is being mineralized properly, you’re gonna get twice as much copper in the beef liver as you’re gonna get iron.
The liver was never intended to be an iron storage depot. It’s been turned into one in the last century. And so, the liver is highly dependent on copper to do its hundreds and hundreds of different functions. And storing iron is one of them, but it’s not the dominant purpose of the organ. And all of our organs are incredibly dependent on making energy, but you can’t make energy without mitochondria. And mitochondria don’t work without copper. So the organs are a very rich source of copper, historically. And then, there’s clear evidence that not all soil has copper. And so, I decided to do something bold, and I worked with a manufacturer, and I developed something called Recuperate. And it’s a form of…it’s a supplement that has grass-fed beef liver, spirulina, a little bit of turmeric, and copper bisglycinate in it, to guarantee that copper’s gonna get into your daily routine. And the impact it’s having, it’s subtle, but very significant. People are just amazed at how their symptoms are gradually disappearing as they get more and more copper into their body. And I don’t want the listeners to think, “Oh, gosh. He’s just a supplement pimp,” because I’m not. What I really encourage people to do is, if someone put a gun to my head right now, and said, “Morley, boil down 14 years of research into one sentence,” here it is, folks. Please get more copper in your daily diet. It’s absolutely essential for our overall wellbeing.
And I think we have to be careful what the sourcing is. Don’t run out and just buy any source of copper. Be discerning. Food-based is best. And just know that there are other forms out there. There’s a wonderful form called copper hydrosol, that’s made by the folks that make Sovereign Silver. A wonderful form of copper. And another one that’s transdermal, that I absolutely love, is called… It’s made by Reverse Skin Aging. They’re out of Seattle, Washington. And it’s a 3% VIP luxury cream, and a 3% VIP luxury serum, and it’s amazing. Again, women seem to prefer the cream. Guys seem to prefer the serum. But they’re both blue, and that’s significant because copper loves to express through blue proteins. And there are a variety of ways that we can get the copper back, but the key is getting on top of the accumulation of iron. And when we deal with the accumulation of iron, it’s gonna help us preserve the magnesium, and preserve the copper that we need so desperately in our day-to-day metabolism.
Katie: And as I expected, this, our time has already flown by, and there’s so, so many more questions I wanna ask you, and topics we haven’t even begin to touch on. So I think we’ll have to do follow-up interviews, absolutely for sure. And I will also make sure to link to a lot of the different topics that you’ve written about and that you talk about, so people can watch your YouTube videos and continue learning from your writing in the interim. But I’m curious if, obviously, with the understanding that this is very nuanced, and every body is a little bit different, I know you have practitioners who do your Root Cause Protocol, and that you have much more specifics about this online, but I’m also a big fan of Richard Feynman, the physicist, and how he had what he called “The Feynman Technique,” where he would summarize a lot of information, whether it was a book he read or whatever, at the end, and his idea that you don’t really understand something till you can kind of explain it to someone, and you’ve done such a great job explaining it to me today.
But I’m curious if there’s any kind of Feynman summary of where to get started, for people who this is an entirely new concept to, who maybe we’ve challenged some preconceived notions that they had related to iron, or whatever it may be. Is there a good starting place for them? I would guess things like maybe reduce or avoid any of those enriched foods that you mentioned would be an example, or consider a magnesium supplement. But any other starting points that you would give for people for continued research?
Morley: Yeah. I think for those who are readers or listeners, I’ve got a book that I published a year ago, called “Cu-RE Your Fatigue.” Again, the “Cu” is highlighted on the title. But again, our solutions are around getting more copper into our body. But the front half of that book explains what the problem is. The back half of the book explains how to solve the problem. So that would be a great reference point. Lots of scientific articles referenced in that book, for those gearheads who really wanna get into it. Then, another source would be, there’s, on therootcauseprotocol.com, or you can also find it, rcp123.org. But on that website are 81 posts on iron toxicity. And each of those articles that I wrote has anywhere from four to seven scientific articles referenced in the article.
And that’ll take you into a deeper level of understanding. I’ve got…my goodness, I’ve got a couple hundred podcast interviews out there. The ones that people regularly tell me about that they really, I say, “Well, how did you hear about the RCP?” It seems almost without exception, it’s coming by way of “The Strong Sistas.” There are two sisters over in Michigan. They’ve got a farm, “Angel Acres.” And just…we spent, I guess, three or four, maybe five conversations talking about these factors. And so, I think your audience would probably find them to be very entertaining, very educational, and get ’em pointed in the right direction. And then, for those who are interested in social media, we have both what’s called the Magnesium Advocacy Group, where we talk about these issues, and then there’s the RCP Protocol page. And so, lot of sources. And then, for those who might be interested in a deeper dive, or in the…if they are a practitioner as well, we do a 16-week institute training for people. Twice a year, we have classes that really take it to a much deeper level, so people have a working knowledge of what you and I have been skimming over in the course of our time together.
Katie: Awesome. I will include all of those links as well. And this is perhaps the most notes I’ve ever taken for show notes in a podcast. I’ve got a whole lot of notes for you guys at wellnessmama.fm, and I’ll link to more learning from you, Morley, as well. I hope that we can do some follow-up episodes, and really go deep on the pregnancy implications, and also talk about things we didn’t even touch on, like synthetic vitamin D versus sunlight, and calcium supplementation, and so many more things. But for today, I’m so grateful for your time. It’s been an absolute honor to get to talk to you. I’ve respected your work for a long time, and I’m very grateful you took the time to be here.
Morley: Well, I’m absolutely thrilled to have this opportunity to chat with you. You are a living legend as well, and was very, very honored that we had a chance to have this initial conversation, and I’ll look forward to our follow-up conversations going forward.
Katie: Wonderful. I look forward to it as well. And thanks as always to all of you for listening, and for sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

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