639: Morley Robbins on a Deep Look at My Labs and My Life (What I’m Deficient In)

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Morley Robbins on A Deep Look at My Labs and My Life (What I’m Deficient In)
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639: Morley Robbins on a Deep Look at My Labs and My Life (What I’m Deficient In)
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Today’s episode is more of a vulnerable one for me. I’m back with Morley Robbins, magnesium and mineral expert and founder of the Root Cause Protocol. Morley is one of the foremost experts on magnesium’s role in the body and the delicate dance it plays with iron, copper, and calcium.

Since Morley understands this at such a deep level, I decided to get hair and blood testing done and have Morley go over the results. It’s really fascinating to see how he can analyze the two tests together and draw interesting insights. For example, high levels of magnesium on my hair test mean my body is burning through it a lot. And it actually indicates I need more (not less) magnesium.

While these are my personal results, they indicate I’m under a lot of stress (no surprise there!). Most of us have stress of some kind and deal with a lot of the issues seen in my personal results. Things like estrogen dominance, iron imbalance, and not enough copper.

Morley goes really deep into what’s going on in my body, how minerals play a huge role, and which factors are common in other people (especially moms). We also go over what foods and supplements to take, when and why to do castor oil packs, progesterone’s role, stress reduction techniques that work, and so much more.

I always learn so much from my talks with Morley, and I hope you’ll join us and listen in!

Episode Highlights With Morley

  • What my labs say about what’s going on in my body and in my life
  • Why he did a hair test and a blood test and what the results say together
  • What showed up… surprise! I have some stress going on
  • More data about the importance of addressing stress and how it shows up in lab work
  • Oxidative stress in the body and what this means
  • The minerals that drive liver metabolism and why I am low on these
  • Why high magnesium on my hair test doesn’t mean I need less magnesium and actually means I need more
  • The reason women especially tend to get estrogen dominance paired with adrenaline dominance and iron dominance
  • Why progesterone is important but supplemental might not be necessary if we balance copper and magnesium
  • How we lose copper and what to do about it (cortisol depletes copper)
  • Ways to use techniques like EFT, EMDR, Emotion Code, etc to help with stress
  • Why my hemoglobin is low and what this means for my iron recycling
  • Labs that point to my liver being slow because of excess iron and how castor oil packs, quercetin and supplemental copper, retinol and magnesium may help
  • Why it was probably a good thing that I gave blood
  • The two most important proteins for regulating the health of the body in his opinion and how they relate to iron status
  • Good food and supplement sources of retinol, and copper
  • One unusual lab result that means I might have parasites
  • It takes 56 days for blood to rebuild itself and why this means we can make improvements fast
  • Minerals run the body and hormones respond to minerals and not vice versa
  • More reasons to avoid processed food… as if we needed more reasons

Resources We Mention

More From Wellness Mama

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is with a repeat guest, Morley Robbins, who has been on here before. He is the founder of the Root Cause Protocol. He’s also known as the Magnesium Man, which is how I stumbled across his work. And he is one of the foremost experts in the world on magnesium’s role in the body and the delicate dance, magnesium, plays with iron, copper, and calcium. And I think he understands this at a deeper level than most people do, certainly than a lot of doctors that I had worked with in the past.

And because of that, I actually agreed to let him do, or I did myself, actually then sent to him the result of blood testing and hair analysis. And he combines these in a way that gives a lot of data that other tests don’t really show and explains how it’s not just the values themselves, but the ratios and how hair being sort of an excrement part of the body. It gives us an insight that blood test alone don’t give us. So this is a pretty vulnerable episode for me because a lot of these things can relate to stressors in our life. So we talk on a personal level about some of the stressors in my life that are contributing to this.

And we talk about the reasons that even though I do so much to live as optimally as possible, there are still some stress related issues going on in my labs that might be similar for a lot of you listening. So, actually, if you’re watching the video, look at my labs themselves. You can see all my results there. But he explains what’s going on in my body reflected by what’s going on in my life. No surprise I apparently have some stress going on.

But he talks us through the data about the importance of addressing stress and what, how we can tell when this is showing up in lab work. He talks about what oxidative stress looks like in the body and in lab work and the minerals that drive liver metabolism and why I have some low markers on these, why the high magnesium in my hair test doesn’t need less magnesium. It actually means I need more. He talks about the reason women can tend to get estrogen dominance paired with what he calls adrenaline dominance and iron dominance and why this is a bad combination. He talks about the importance of progesterone, but why supplemental progesterone might not be necessary if we balance copper and magnesium correctly.

He talks about how we lose copper and what to do about it. He talks about stress reduction techniques and how they actually physiologically benefit the body. He explains why my hemoglobin is low and why my iron is so, so high, despite the fact I don’t eat that much red meat. He gives some specific suggestions about ways to improve liver health and some of these markers, including things like castor oil packs, quercetin, supplemental copper retinol, and magnesium. We talk about why it was a good thing that I gave blood. I know this was a controversial topic on social media recently. He talks about two important proteins for regulating the health of the body and how they relate to iron status.

We talk about food and supplemental sources, how one marker might indicate that I have parasites that I could look at. And he gives them a lot more reasons to avoid processed foods, as if we needed more reasons. As always with Morley, this is a deep dive, and I feel like a college level class, and I always learn so much from him. I know that you will as well. He will definitely be back again, but enjoy this very vulnerable look into my lab and into my life with Morley Robbins. Morley Robbins, welcome back.

Morley: Well, thank you, Katie. Delighted to be here. Looking forward to our discussion today.

Katie: I am, too, somewhat selfishly, because we’re going to actually get to go deep on my labs. But we talked about being able to use these as an example for the listeners, because I’m guessing that some of the things that show up for me might be pretty common to moms, for instance, or to people who have some similar life scenarios going on. And I’m always happy to be a very open book if it’s helpful to other people.

So I have a feeling I’m going to find out some interesting things about myself that will hopefully lead to very positive changes. So even if they are like things that are not optimal right now, I’m excited to learn about them. So with that, do you maybe want to kind of go through the testing that we did with me so people understand where these results are coming from?

Morley: Yeah, and before we jump to that, let me just point out something for the listeners. When I started this work, I really began looking at the minerals in the hair test. And my mentor, Rick Malter, who’s a clinical psychologist of some repute, of significant repute, he said, what we’re really measuring in a hair test, Morley, is, Is this individual under stress, and are they able to mobilize energy to respond to that stress? And it really puts the hair test in a very different context when you think about those are the two driving questions.

And as I was becoming more and more familiar with it and the first couple of years were very disorienting because we’re used to seeing bars on a graph, and we think, well, high is good or low is bad, and it doesn’t work that way on the hair test. But I remember banging my head more than once during the first couple of years of learning how to do this. But I remember reading in different websites around disease of the month, you know, whether it’s the American Heart Association or the American Diabetes Association or American Cancer Society, every one of them talked about how stress causes these conditions to appear. I’m like, that’s fascinating. They all acknowledge the importance of knowing your stress level but never telling you, what does that mean and how do we quantify it or how do we leverage that information. It’s just we have this vague understanding, well, we’re all under stress, right?

You know, it’s 2023, and we’re all under stress. Well, we’ve got different reasons why, and some of them are economic, and some of them are lifestyle and maybe relationship stress or just the backdrop of what’s happening in the world. But we don’t think about, what’s that doing to my minerals. How is that affecting my ability to make energy? And that’s the most important piece of the puzzle, is how is this stress that I’m experiencing affecting my metabolism. And the way I describe it, I think we talked about this in our first conversation. If we have stress in our world, and we all have stress in our world, you got a big microphone now that’s stressing you out, and I’ve got a little tiny microphone that’s stressing me out because it’s brand new. Hope it’s going to work okay, but if you have stress in your world, you have oxidative stress in your body.

Well, what’s oxidative stress? It’s a fancy phrase for rust. And we just have to acknowledge that we’re all experiencing this dynamic in our daily lives, and to varying degrees, depending upon how much stress we have, you, by virtue of your public persona, you have the excitement of being able to share your experiences and guide people in appropriate directions. But there’s also a certain kind of burden that comes with that. You know, you got a lot of folks who rely on the caliber and the quality of your information. You take it in stride now, but it’s still it’s playing in the background of your psyche, right?

Katie: Absolutely. Yes. And I feel like people are willing to say things on the Internet that they might not say in real life. So that definitely is always running in the background, for sure.

Morley: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So what we’re looking at, folks, is Katie did both a hair test and a blood test. We’re going to start with the hair test, and what we do within the program, within the root cause protocol, is turn the values that come back from the lab, which I’m showing now. The report comes back from the lab, and what we do is put them into an algorithm that was actually developed by Rick Malter. It’s called the Malter Analysis. And what it does is that there’s a normal value for each of the minerals that are profiled here so that we can compare the relative importance of each mineral to each other. So that it’s 42 units of calcium compared to six units of magnesium versus 24 units of sodium versus 10 units of potassium, and so on and so forth down the line.

And so back to Rick Malter’s two driving questions. Is this client under stress, yes or no? Well, technically, these blue bars, Katie, should all be kissing the red line straight across. Now, I want you to know that I’ve actually seen it once. I’ve done about 7500 consults, and I have seen a perfect hair test once. But I think what’s going to surprise you is to find out the demographics of that client. She was 95 years old. She grew up on a farm in in North Dakota, drank well water her whole life. She still wore two-inch spike heels, not none heels. And she had more energy than her 70-year-old daughter, who lived in Houston. And so she became the norm or the ideal, if you will. And I remember sending it to Dr. Malter, and I said, what do you think of this? He goes Morley, it’s the best hair test I’ve ever seen. But she was 95 years old, and you’re just a puppy. You’re 35 years old. Right. How many kids do you have, Katie?

Katie: I have six.

Morley: Well, that says it all. Okay, let’s move on. What’s the age spread on those six kids?

Katie: 6 to 16.

Morley: Oh, my God. You’re an animal. That’s amazing. So, we know one form of your stress is raising six kids. Now, do you homeschool, or how do they get their education?

Katie: Yeah, so I can probably give you the rundown on the stress. It’s the single mom to six kids, four businesses, and then hobbies and then also working out really hard to last two years. So if I had to guess, that would maybe be some of the areas that stress comes from.

Morley: Yeah. No kidding, right? Okay, so, the thing is, with the folks who are not viewing this, the bars for calcium and magnesium are significantly elevated, well beyond the ideal. The sodium and potassium not too bad. But what we see is that both magnesium and potassium are higher than their partner. So, calcium and magnesium are partners. They’re supposed to be hanging out together. And while there’s less magnesium in the body, magnesium regulates calcium status, and sodium and potassium hang out together. And when magnesium and potassium are both above their partner, it means the individual is under stress. But we know you’re under stress, right. And so those are showing clear signs of stress.

And then the next five bars are the four metals: copper, zinc, iron, and manganese. And then there’s phosphorus in the middle. But what’s important for people to realize is it’s kind of a hill shape pattern, which is very common. And zinc is always the highest. In any hair test, you’ll always find that zinc is most aligned with the ideal. But what we’re seeing is lower levels of copper, iron, and manganese. And that doesn’t mean that Katie’s short on those metals. It just means she’s under stress. And these four metals are what drive liver metabolism. The liver depends on these four metals. There’s 500 enzyme functions in the liver, and trust me, these metals are intimately involved in many of those most of those enzyme functions. And then we have a handful of other minerals. The boron is blank. Don’t think that you have no boron. It’s we don’t test for it because they want, like, 25 extra dollars now to test boron. So I typically exclude it.

But I think what’s important for people to realize is that, ideally, these blue bars are all supposed to be kissing that red line straight across, and you don’t. So then we know you’re under stress. So we’ve just answered the first question. Is Katie under stress? Yes or no? Second question, up in the top right-hand corner of the page, we show that you are what’s called a slow oxidizer. And there’s two types. There’s fast and slow. It’s not good or bad. It’s not right or wrong. Think of it as left-handed, right-handed, and 80% of people are right-handed. And by coincidence, 80% of people are slow oxidizers. Now, it doesn’t mean you have a slow metabolism. It means you’re slow to rust. That’s what it means. Oxidizing. Oxidizer. And so to the right of that is a phrase, energy loss. And then we see in a red box 48%. So there’s a way to interpolate. There’s both a thyroid ratio and an adrenal ratio. Thyroid ratio is calcium divided by potassium. So your calcium is elevated. Your potassium is not so high. So your calcium to potassium versus your adrenal ratio, which is sodium to magnesium. And your sodium is on the low side, and your magnesium is really high because you’re a stress cadet. And when you multiply those two ratios together, we get what we call energy loss.

Now, for those purists out there, this is called Morley Math. This is not a conventional, accepted scientific study of Katie’s energy loss. It’s my, I use my thumb to measure an inch. That’s exactly one inch. This is what this is. This is just a way to evaluate, is Katie losing energy. And the significance of it is, when we’re under stress, we need to be able to mobilize energy to respond to that stress. My favorite definition of stress comes by way of Mark Hyman, physician that many of you probably are familiar with. He’s in charge of integrative medicine at Cleveland Clinic. And the phrase is stress is the body’s inability to create energy for the mind to respond to its environment. And so single mom, home educator, four businesses, running from pillar to post, exercising hard. And so we’re seeing evidence of it in your hair test, and it isn’t that you’re broken. You’re out of balance. That’s really what’s going on. And what it underscores is the importance of the magnesium that you’re losing is not able to regulate the calcium that’s rising. Does that make sense?

Katie: It does. And I think I want to make sure I’m understanding for the sake of anyone listening as well. So just because on this test, it shows my magnesium is high. That does not mean I would stop taking magnesium or stop consuming magnesium. Right?

Morley: Absolutely. Thank you for pointing that out. So I coined a phrase. When we’re under stress, we have an increased magnesium burn rate. So when the body senses stress, what it does is it mobilizes what are called kinase enzymes. And the kinase enzymes all have a phosphorus attached to them. And the process of releasing that phosphorus, which becomes energy in our body, there’s a burst of energy when phosphorus gets released, magnesium gets lost, goes right into our urine. And I call it the magnesium burn rate.

And I tease people when I see them in a situation like this. I imagine you during the course of the day with a bucket of magnesium under your chair because you’ve lost so much because of all the chaos. And as we were just starting this conversation, she says, don’t be troubled by the fact that I’m going to mute the mic because I don’t want you to hear all my kids. Well, it’s like you’re used to it, but you know, it’s a stressful din of activity that you’re living with 24/7.

Katie: And that’s why I’m excited to have this conversation because obviously my kids aren’t going anywhere. Hopefully my businesses aren’t going anywhere, and I love working out, so I don’t want those things to go away. But I think also there’s that positive feedback loop of we think of, we’re told we need to manage our stress or reduce our stress. But as you point out so well, stress is also a physiological thing happening within the body. So if we can improve that, we also probably are reducing our perception of stress and we’re improving our body in the process. So that’s what makes me so excited about this conversation.

Morley: And that point about perception is so important that, again, when we look at your magnesium, the first instinct is, well, Katie has too much. Your question was, should I stop? No. What we’re doing, you’re losing it. And what’s important is when magnesium is not available to the body and to the mind, it’s like wearing night vision binoculars. The world around you gets bigger and brighter than it really is, and that only intensifies the stress because you feel more threatened than you would under ordinary circumstances. Does that make sense?

Katie: Yeah, absolutely.

Morley: Yeah. So the key is the interpretation of the hair test isn’t as simple. Oh, it’s a histogram, there’s bars, and if it’s high, it’s good, if it’s low, it’s bad. It’s like, no. We have to really use counterintuitive thinking to make sure we understand it. So I think what would be helpful to the listeners especially is, okay, so you’ve, you’ve got this dynamic, and we’re going to get to your blood markers in just a minute. What would be three or four symptoms that you deal with on a routine basis that are indications that you’re under stress? Is there any habit of daily living or symptoms that you have to experience that say, wow, I feel kind of stressed out. What do you experience?

Katie: Yeah, I would say in general, I feel really grateful that for the most part, I don’t forever feel the acute stress of where I feel like I need to yell at my kids or I feel like I am just not going to be able to get everything done. If anything, it’s more of I can tell when I’m in just drive mode all the time, like go mode. And I can feel that jitteriness even without caffeine and sometimes having trouble turning off to go to sleep, which is not super often, but occasionally I will have a night where my brain is just going and going and going and I have trouble sleeping.

But then I would guess also some stuff like I see sometimes my HRV will dip. I would guess that maybe there’s a stress component there as well or feeling more tired in the morning sometimes. So even though I’m up early, sometimes I wish I wasn’t getting up so early.

Morley: Yeah. So you’re an adrenaline junkie. You’re living on sympathetic nervous system a lot. Whether you’re whether you’re drinking coffee or not, you’re, you’re pumping adrenaline, and that’s a very common dynamic, certainly in the Western world. Do you drink coffee, by the way?

Katie: I occasionally do, usually decaf, actually, and I don’t do anything every single day, so I definitely don’t habitually drink coffee, but I occasionally drink coffee.

Morley: You’re running circles around me. I’d never had coffee until I met Dr. Liz. And now my day starts with two cups of coffee, and that’s what gets my engines revving. It zaps me. But it’s like I think differently when I have caffeine in my brain and you know you’re the only mom that has trouble sleeping, right?

Katie: Oh, yeah, totally. I’m glad it’s just me.

Morley: There’s a great book out there for folks who are readers. It’s by Michael Platt, MD. And it’s called Adrenaline Dominance. Now, the good news… it has helped thousands and thousands of… puzzle that very few people know about, and that is that too much adrenaline, too much sympathetic nervous system is really hard on the body and it and there’s a price to pay for it. And what most people don’t realize is that when you’re in an adrenaline dominant situation, you’re going to be affecting your iron metabolism and you’re going to be affecting your copper metabolism and the whole purpose behind adrenaline is we as a species, we’re designed to be in sympathetic state maybe 5% to 10% of the day. But in fact, what’s happened is that’s flipped and now we’re in sympathetic overdrive 90% of the day. And what Dr. Platt has done has been able to use progesterone therapy to help people kind of calm down, not knowing that what’s behind low progesterone production is that when we don’t have adequate levels of copper, we’re not going to have adequate levels of ceruloplasmin, which is the master antioxidant protein in our body. When we don’t have the master antioxidant, we’re going to go to plan B, and that’s called estrogen. Estrogen is an antioxidant and estrogen and iron like to create havoc inside the body.

And so then you’ve got this estrogen dominance, iron dominance, adrenaline dominance, and Dr. Platt doesn’t connect all those three, but it’s a very important piece of the puzzle. And when estrogen is high, can you guess what might be low in the body?

Katie: Progesterone.

Morley: Absolutely. And so what’s needed to make progesterone is magnesium, an active B6. Well, if you’ve got a lot of iron, because you’re cranking on the sympathetic overdrive, you’re going to burn up the magnesium in your liver. And in order to turn B6 into the active form, which is P5P (pyridoxal five phosphate), there’s a key enzyme, pyridoxal five phosphate oxidase, which means that the body takes oxygen and puts it in there and it suddenly becomes activated. And that’s a copper-dependent enzyme. And so when you’re in a sympathetic state, you’re going to be accumulating iron, you’re going to be losing copper. How do we lose copper? Because when you are anxious, when there’s a sympathetic response, cortisol gets released. Cortisol increases the production of a key protein called metallothionein four to five fold, Katie. That’s an enormous increase in metallothionein.

And why is that a problem? Metallothionein binds up copper 1000 times stronger than it binds up zinc. And so suddenly you’ve taken copper offline. Again, in normal situations, we’re only supposed to go into sympathetic overdrive on occasion. When it becomes a habitual chronic situation, that’s when we begin to see mineral dysregulation. And I think it’s going to come out more when we take a look at your blood work. Does all of that makes sense for you?

Katie: It does, and I’m curious to see the blood work and how they interact, but I’m then guessing for a lot of women who may have considered progesterone therapy, they might actually just need to address these things and they might not then need exogenous progesterone?

Morley: Yeah, the thing is, exogenous progesterone, it’s a great hormonal crutch. It gets you over a hump, but it’s only correcting the symptom, which is low progesterone production. It’s not correcting the underlying dysregulation between copper and iron. And back to your earlier comment about the perception of your stress. One of the most important things that we recommend in the root cause protocol is getting people to release their fears that are attached to their stress. Oh, how am I going to get everything done? We’ve talked about this before, but how do we spell fear? Fe-AR. That way you see the symbol for iron and you know that when you’re in a state of fear, you’re accumulating iron. And it’s important for people to realize that we can deal with that.

But another way we’ve got to deal with it is on an emotional level using emotional freedom techniques or emotional release techniques like EFT, emotion code, body code, EMDR. There are a number of different techniques that people can use on a regular basis to shed themselves of the stress and the fear that they’re experiencing. I can’t remember the book, but there’s a famous passage in the book where it talks about the zebra being chased by the lion and the zebra outruns the lion and then it goes to the savannah and it shakes for about five minutes while it’s trying to to decompress from all of that threat. And then once it does that, it’s fine. It’s like it resets its metabolism. What you’re not doing, and what everyone like you is not doing is going to the savannah and shaking off the stress.

Katie: It’s so interesting that you use that as an example because I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I was sexually assaulted in high school and at that time I locked down. I remember locking down emotion and vowing to never feel helpless again, to always be in control. And so I just did not have emotional expression for like a solid at least ten years. And then I had a somatic experience that helped me start processing it. And after that experience, I shook for 3 hours and I likened it to like, how an animal shakes. And I finally processed the emotions, I think, of that experience.

Morley: That’s amazing. And I think it’s so important for your listeners to understand that, again, people put you on a pedestal whether you like it or not. Well, Katie’s never had a problem in her life and we know that that’s not true. But people tend to glorify the people that they look up to. But for them to now understand what you went through very, very powerful. And for them to recognize the importance of that type of somatic therapy and that release process is essential to restore the body’s physiology, restore the body’s ability to make energy, that’s really what it comes down to.

Katie: Yeah, that’s why I’m excited we’re getting to delve into my actual labs because people are getting to see I definitely don’t have everything perfect in my labs. And that’s awesome because there are things us to learn from that. And I feel like I’ve well chronicled a lot of the things I do to live a healthy life online. So I think it’s a really important reminder of we can do so many things that are aligned and that are great, but there still can be some blind spots for us. And so I’m excited to get to delve into blood test and this and learn from you. What can I do that will help?

Morley: Absolutely. And what’s funny, when I first started doing this work and I would be doing follow-up consults with people and they were starting the stops and starts, and they were, you know, they were kind of getting their life back. And then I would ask them, so when we were doing the follow up hair test, or the follow up blood test said, so how are you doing? And I must have heard this 100 times. They said, I was feeling great until I saw my hair test and blood test. And I went, you know, sometimes it takes the body a while to catch up with how you’re actually feeling. So then I coined this concept of habits of daily living. You know, are you getting a good night’s sleep? Are you waking refreshed? Do you have an appetite? Are you able to eliminate your waste regularly? And do you have enough energy to get through the day to get the things done? And it’s what parents worry about with their children. Those are the five functions we worry most about with our kids. We have to do that for ourselves and make sure that we’re getting those habits under control. That’s really, really key.

So now we’re jumping to the blood test, and it’s a dizzying array of yellow and red. And I apologize for that. But what people can see here is that when something is in a black excuse me, is black letters in a red field, maybe that’s not ideal. And so first thing we look at is hemoglobin. So I think we talked about this in the first conversation, but I just want to reinforce it. There’s three containers for iron. There’s a bucket, a bucket of iron called hemoglobin, the red blood cells. But hemoglobin is the protein that we’re looking at, and that accounts for 70% of the iron in our body. It’s an enormous concentration of iron in the body.

The second container is a teacup, and the teacup is stored iron. It’s a protein called ferritin. And then the third container is a thimble of iron, just a little tiny bit of iron. It’s only 1/10th of 1% of the iron in the body, but it’s a really important one 10th of 1%. And it’s called serum iron because what it tells us is how well is the iron being recycled in the body? And in a woman’s body, the closer it is to 100, the better it is. And when it’s below that or above that, we know we have some dynamics going on. So what we see here is that the healthy range for a woman’s hemoglobin is 12.5 – 13.5, and you’re just a little bit below that enough that I would say, gee, I wonder what’s going on with Katie’s iron recycling system.

And just to refresh the listener’s memory of what we were talking about before, every second of every day, we need to replace two and a half million red blood cells. So two and a half million are dying and two and a half million are being birthed and hatched. And that’s taking place in the bone marrow in our hips, pelvis and the long leg bone, the thigh bone, and at an enormous rate. And so if hemoglobin is looking a little low, the first thing we need to think about is, are we recycling the iron fast enough and efficiently enough in the body?

Then what’s interesting is we, we look at the magnesium inside the red blood cell and ideally, this should be in a, in a perfect world, I’d love to see you at a 6.5, you’re at a 4.7. So Katie, she’s a stress cadet. We’ve established that. We now understand what the stressors are in your world and your magnesium burn rate. It shows low in the blood, in the red blood cell, and it shows high in the hair test, which means it’s being lost to the stress that you’re under. The hair follicle is actually tissue of excrement.

It’s a funny way of thinking about it, but these strands of health, as Rick Malter calls them, these strands of health are telling us, what did we lose in our daily living? Zinc is on the low side. Ideally, it should be 100, but anything below 80 is considered low. And the mistake that a lot of practitioners make is that when they see a low zinc, they say, oh, you need zinc supplements, not knowing that when you take a zinc supplement, you’re going to block copper absorption. And it turns out that, why is the zinc low? Well, the body is really smart and the liver is really, really smart. So when the liver sense of stress knows that magnesium is being lost, we can see it’s low in the red blood cell. The liver needs for certain enzymes. It needs a mineral with a plus two valence. Magnesium is plus two. Zinc is plus two. And so it starts to grab zinc because there isn’t any magnesium and the zinc looks low. And what you’ve got to do is work on dealing with the copper iron dynamic. Don’t focus on zinc. Then you’re going to create what does zinc do? It increases the production of metallothionein that we were talking about before, which is going to bind up the copper, which is only going to increase the problem.

And then we see that your serum copper is 84 little on the low side, and your ceruloplasmin is 24. Well, ideally, copper should be 100, ceruloplasmin should be 30. But what’s interesting about your copper to ceruloplasmin ratio, Katie, is your body is in balance. Ideally, it should be 3.33. You’re a 3.5. So we’re splitting hairs, no pun intended. But the thing is, what I’m sensing is you need more copper in your diet and your supplement routine. You need more retinol and you need less stress in your liver.

And I’m guessing that there’s a certain buildup of iron in your liver because of the stress that you’re under. And so regular castor oil packs would be very important to do. The quercetin is an iron chelator, but it also stimulates the AMPK metabolic pathway, which is very good to releasing that iron. And you probably would benefit doing a blood donation blood donation a couple of times a year, in addition to the blood loss that you experience with your monthly menses. Does that make sense?

Katie: That does make sense. So I’ve been making notes as you, and I’ve talked about Castrol packs before, so that’s helpful to know that they help with this as well. And you also mentioned quercetin and donating blood, which I did recently, actually, after this test. So I’m glad I did that. I think we were texting or emailing that day that I was getting blood, and you might have been as well. But this is really helpful to understand that. I’m glad. Since the ratio is not too far off, does that mean if I focus on those things, that the ratio should maintain a good ratio and they should both get back to better levels?

Morley: Well, you know, it’s funny. I’m often asked that. Do you think it matters what I think or what you think?

Katie: This is true placebo is the strongest medicine we have, so it probably matters a lot what I think.

Morley: I can tell you that it will, but you’ve got to believe that it will. That’s the key.

Katie: And you mentioned specifically needing more copper, retinol, and magnesium. I already eat some foods that are pretty rich in those. Do you think it would be worth supplementing specifically with those things at this point?

Morley: Yeah. So people often ask about the root cause protocol. Is it something that I have to do for the rest of my life? And I say, yeah, it’s a it’s a lifestyle program. If you’re under stress we know you’re under stress. We know you have mineral dysregulation. Well, then you want to be in a regular program of restoring these minerals and these nutrients. Because even if you have a pristine diet, even if you’ve got a network of the best farmers on the planet, I don’t think there’s enough nutrients in the soil these days to really run the physiology the way it needs to be run. So just something to keep in mind.

Katie: Got it. Okay.

Morley: So what we’re seeing in this next section is at line 19. We’re looking at 14% of your copper is unbound. Katie, I’ve got clients where it’s as much as 40%. So, relatively speaking, even though there is a portion of your copper that is unbound, and that’s just showing that’s a sign of stress. It’s nowhere near what I would have thought it might be with the level of stress that you’re under. So that’s a good sign. That’s a really strong resilient sign.

There’s a check and balance in the system. The two most important proteins for managing the overall health of the body is ceruloplasmin and transferrin. And they are really keeping track of iron status in the body because iron is one of the biggest threats to our overall status, our overall health status. Both of these markers ceruloplasmin at line 14 and transferrin at line 22. Both of those markers, ideally, should be at 30. You’re just a little bit below that. But the good news is you’re within 96% of ideal. I mean, having them two within the same number, 24 and 25, that’s great. I’ve got clients where the, where the transferrin might be 20 and ceruloplasmin might be in the 30s. So it’s it shows a real dysregulation inside the liver. That’s where the that’s where it plays out. And so this is a real sign of balance in your body. We just need to get more retinol and copper to the liver. Because copper and retinol are essential for ceruloplasmin, and retinol is what activates the production of transferrin. The gene transcription is looking for retinol in order to make the transcription take place. Does that make sense?

Katie: That does. Can you just give us some good food and supplemental sources of those things? Because I know there’s a lot of variation out there when it comes to sourcing.

Morley: Yeah. So on the copper side, I typically tell people bee pollen, whole food vitamin C, not ascorbic acid. There’s a couple of really good let me just finish the food side. So whole food vitamin C, and then the grassfed beef liver. And then on a supplemental side, for vitamin C, you’ve got Innate Response and you have Formula IQ supplements. They have a great supplemental form of vitamin C. And then for the copper, I developed a copper supplement, again, with Formula IQ supplements. It’s called Recuperate, and it’s got 2 milligrams of copper in addition to the desiccated beef liver and the spirulina. It’s just a very bioavailable form of copper.

On the retinol side, we’ve got Rosita’s. It’s probably considered the best cod liver oil that you can get. And then I think a very strong brand is again, Formula IQ has a great form of cod liver oil, and so those would be really good sources and then food sources. On the retinol side, we want to have free-range eggs, grassfed, butter, grassfed heavy cream. Right. We want to have grassfed beef liver. There’s a lot of retinol in the beef liver. And everyone is drawn to the tablets occasionally. And I would encourage people on a regular basis, they should be eating beef liver like their grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents did. But it’s a bitter pill for a lot of people to do that. But if it’s grassfed, it tastes completely different than what you were fed as a little child when you were growing up.

Katie: And it’s not usually popular advice when I say this, but my tip for that, and I could get better about doing it regularly, is I will just cut beef liver into little pieces that are swallowable size, and I’ll just swallow some in the morning because I don’t love the taste. But it’s easy to swallow it and I don’t really taste it.

Morley: Yeah, no. There’s a celebrated blog, I never can remember the author, but she, over the course of two years, healed herself of every conceivable manner of chronic disease by just taking beef liver tablets like you’re describing, cutting them up, and just over the course of two years, reversed chronic fatigue and all sorts of hormonal issues. And it was a fascinating story. So it’s very powerful nutrient in its raw state.

Katie: And for right now at least, while liver is not super popular yet, you can usually get it less expensive than muscle meats from local farmers. If you find a good grassfed source, I find liver is usually cheaper and then I can just like a couple packs of it last a long time when you cut it up like that.

Morley: Yeah. And if people are looking at who’s a farmer, I can go to go to your nearest Whole Foods, talk to the butcher. The butcher knows all the farmers in their region within a 250 miles region, and they’ll tell you who are the really good sources of grassfed meat products.

So the real anomaly here was your serum iron was well above what we would typically expect to see. It should be somewhere around 100. Yours was 261. And I can’t remember now, where were you in your menstrual cycle when you did this blood work?

Katie: I could look up and tell you exactly for sure, but this is really interesting to me while I look this up because I don’t actually eat a lot of red meat right now. And I know we talked about that in the first one and how that might not be as related as people think. I’m, let’s see, I was right before my period started.

Morley: Okay, so that makes sense that the iron would be rising again. People think when they think menstrual cycle, they’re thinking estrogen and progesterone. What’s really playing out is a dynamic between iron and magnesium. And the iron is building, building, building, just before the menstrual cycle starts, before the period starts. And then the body sheds that blood and that iron because it’s not going to be needed to make the next baby does that make sense?

Katie: Yeah, that does.

Morley: So the 261, it’s a little higher than I would expect to see it. The thing is that there’s also, is there much fruit in your diet?

Katie: I do eat a lot of berries and then when it’s in season I’ll eat other fruits, but I typically just do berries most of the year and then seasonal fruits the rest of the time. But like I said, I do eat raw liver occasionally, several times throughout the week, but I don’t eat red meat a lot, maybe once or twice a week. Outside of that, I prefer things like sardines and seafood.

Morley: The question I would have is, I wonder if the fruit might be influencing what’s called the polyol pathway. That’s triggered by fructose. Fructose sugars triggers the polyol pathway, and the polyol pathway can influence blood markers. Particularly typically, it would be hemoglobin, but it can also influence the serum iron as well. So, again, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. And I think what would be fascinating is you donated after you did this blood test, so maybe 60 to 90 days after that blood test. To the extent that your curiosity is brimming, it would be fun to do this follow up test and see what’s going on. And maybe that’s a sidebar conversation we could have. But I think the fact that you did the blood donation, I think is a good sign that you’re going to lower the stress of the iron in your body.

Your TIBC, it’s total iron binding capacity, so it’s a derivative of transferrin. So transferrin is just a little bit below ideal, but the TIBC is a little bit above ideal. And so the question that I would have is she I wonder if Katie, by chance, might have parasites in her liver or her spleen. And that’s a very common problem for people to have, especially in the modern era, because when you divide the serum iron by the TIBC, and what TIBC is really measuring is all the binding stations for iron in the blood. Your iron is high, your binding stations are strong, but the percent saturation is over 70%. And again, when you did the blood donation, you lost a pint of blood, but you also lost 250 milligrams of iron, which was probably a good thing. It just lowered your iron footprint inside your body, if that makes sense.

And then what we see is serum iron. I like to see it between 20 and 50, and you’re at 35. So, again, I think it’s important for people to realize that there are these three containers of iron, again, the bucket, the teacup, and the thimble. Your bucket is just a little tiny bit below ideal. Your teacup is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Your thimble is overflowing, but we’re talking about one 10th of 1%, so let’s not lose our cool about that. It’s just an indication of stress in your body, if that makes sense.

And what you don’t want to do is keep your percent saturation. Really, you don’t want it to get above 35% to 40% on a consistent basis. It’s just too much iron in the system that you want to cool down and get the saturation somewhere between 20 and 30%. That’s where I’d like to see it.

And then finally, what we look at is the markers for vitamin A retinol, storage D, and the ratio of A to D. And ideally, I like to see the A to D ratio be three parts A to one part D. Well, you’re closer to one to one. So again, your vitamin A is just below where I think it’s supposed to be. But your vitamin D is higher than I would expect to see it. Again, this was done in January, so you have the benefit probably, of full sun throughout the year. But you don’t take vitamin D supplements, do you?

Katie: I don’t take vitamin D supplements, but it is pretty warm, and I am in the garden a lot, even in the winter, so I do get sunlight.

Morley: Okay, so again, nothing to stress about, but the ratio of A to D really, ideally should be higher than what it is. And again, you just have to be focused on food and supplemental sources of retinol. And what the liver is really designed to do, Katie, is it’s designed to store copper and store retinol so it can regulate iron. And what’s happened in the modern era, ever since you’ve been born is it’s been turned into an iron depot, and that’s not how the body works. It’s not supposed to have a lot of iron. So, again, all the more reason to be doing the castor oil packs to ease the accumulation of iron in your liver.

Katie: And I will link to my blog post about castor oil packs for anybody who may not be familiar with those.

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Any guidelines specific to these labs on timing? Like, I know some people just sleep with them on. Some people just sit and kind of, like, watch a movie with them on. What do you recommend for castor oil packs?

Morley: I think whatever is convenient. I think the classical use has been to strap it on and spend 30 to 45 minutes quietly. The new form that’s come out, I think it’s Queen of Thrones has one that you can wear overnight. That’s fine. I think that’s okay. I think what’s important is consistency of use, and do it two or three times a week, especially if you have signs of imbalance and particular stress. Again, the axiom that people need to understand is that there’s a relationship between copper and iron. It’s like a seesaw. When copper is low in the diet or the bioavailability of copper is low in the body, there’s going to be a rise of iron accumulation in the liver. It’s axiomatic as soon as copper is low, iron rises.

And there’s a handful of studies from 1928 and 1929 that proved that this was the case. Different research teams documenting this biological fact. And if copper is low, the iron recycling, the blood formation, all of the blood components, the heme, the hemoglobin, the red blood cells, these are all copper dependent components that nobody knows about. And we’ve all been trained to think that we are iron anemic and we are copper toxic, when in fact, the truth is just the opposite. We are copper deserts. And as a result of that, we’re not able to regulate the iron in order to recycle it and rebuild it. That’s the real key.

And then in terms of recommendations going forward, again, it’s go to the stops and starts of the RCP, which I think we’ve talked about before and I think you’re pretty well versed on. I think the key is this is not the design of that program is not to solve a short-term problem. It’s to restore long term homeostasis in the body. And the homeostasis is designed to create more energy. So for those of you who have been on a boogie board, but there’s a ball in the center and got a board that you got to stay in balance on, it takes a lot of energy in your legs to stay in balance. Right? And what happens when you release the energy? It goes one way or the other. Well, there’s no energy there, is there? And so to be in balance, we need to be able to produce a lot of energy to stay in balance. That’s what fuels are, what’s called the immunometabolism system. The energy production to drive the immune system requires energy, and that requires the minerals to be imbalanced, but requires a regular and steady supply of particularly magnesium and copper and retinol to enable bioavailable copper to regulate the iron to prevent the magnesium loss. Is all that connecting for you now?

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. And I was connecting some anecdotal dots for myself, too. And I want to say before I jump into that though, that it seems like for moms, a good general recommendation would be we all hear we need more self care. And that doesn’t just mean bubble baths, but maybe spending 15 minutes at night with a castor oil pack, maybe in front of a red light with some kind of EFT or calming meditation on, might be sort of universally beneficial for moms.

But as you were saying that, I remember thinking, so this blood test for me was on January 5, and also, like, I was not taking supplements the week before because you’re not supposed to with these tests. And then I came off of a short fast. I started taking copper and magnesium. I had just given blood, and I remember those two weeks, I was super energetic and blissfully happy. I was like, I would have thought I was on something that was making me happy, because I was just blissfully happy. So it seems like even mild changes can make a big difference when we are talking about this energy system and stress. And I feel like a lot of those factors lined up for me probably in the week right after this test and I felt awesome.

Morley: That’s amazing. That’s fascinating. Well, I think what’s going to be educational for you and maybe for your listeners is to see what a follow-up blood test looks like 60 to 90 days after you’ve done this blood test, it takes 56 days for blood to rebuild itself. So once you did the blood donation, add 60 days to that or 90 days just to be on the safe side and then see what, what’s going on. And it’s an easy way to monitor, am I in balance or am I stressed out? And if so, what do I need to do? Not just from a supplemental side or dietary side. Is there something I need to do on the emotional side or as you were talking about the castor oil packs or other, other detox, do I need to, do I need to have more magnesium baths during the course of the week in order to calm down?

And I think it’s what’s really important is for people to realize that the body responds to stimulus. And once you begin to address these dynamics of too much stress and what can I do to lower that stress, but what can I do to stimulate the parasympathetic state? And again, what is progesterone doing? It’s driving parasympathetic function. And again, my take is that what runs the body is minerals and hormones respond to mineral status. That’s not the conventional view. Most people have been trained to believe that hormones run the body and that they influence mineral status. I don’t think that’s how it works, but that’s just me being a bit of a contrarian as it relates to this process.

Katie: Well, I love contrarian thinking and I love first principles thinking. And it seems like your approach very much goes back to first principles with these things and then built on that to figure out what’s actually going to work for the body. And it seems like the gold standard would be for everybody to be able to get these tests and analyze for themselves. But it also sounds like there are some patterns that tend to emerge often, like people needing more magnesium, more copper, things like cod liver oil would be a good general recommendation. Magnesium would be a good general recommendation. We all know we need to deal with stress as a good general recommendation.

Morley: And more real vitamin C. We’ve been led to believe that ascorbic acid is vitamin C, it is not. It’s a completely different supplement. And we drive cars that have an engine and a steering wheel and four wheels and a cover. That’s a lot of parts and that’s called a car. But it’s also very similar to what the whole food vitamin C complex is like, what is ascorbic acid? It is the cover of the car and no moving parts. And people need to know how ascorbic acid is made. When you mix sulfuric acid with GMO high fructose corn syrup, you get ascorbic acid. Well, that’s not in our best interest, and people need to know that. And so these minerals that you’re talking about, the copper and the magnesium, really important. Retinol, vitamin C. It has an enzyme called tyrosinase, which is a blockbuster enzyme. It’s important for sugar regulation, melanin function. We would need another hour just to talk about tyrosinase, but I think it’s in short supply and people don’t realize that the food industry uses what are called tyrosinase inhibitors. Why? Because it prevents food spoilage. So they’re worried about shelf life, they’re not worried about human life.

Katie: Well, as if any of us needed even more reasons to avoid processed food. That sounds like another good one, for sure. And like we talked about before I did the testing, I love that you’re looking at things that until meeting you, I had never even heard of people testing. And then it sounds like a lot of doctors don’t even understand or would consider testing for people. But as I found out in this process, these are things I can actually request the test myself. And I was able to get these tests ordered and do the hair test. And it’s really fascinating to me to see this different view of what’s going on inside my body in a way that I feel like puts a lot of power back in my hands of things I can do that will likely make a huge difference in how I feel. And that as you were talking, I was making notes for my kids as well. It sounds like for teenagers who are going through puberty, things like getting them real food-source vitamin C and cod liver oil would be a great idea while they’re in those early phases.

Morley: The 16 year old, a boy or a girl?

Katie: 16 year old boy, 14 year old girl.

Morley: Okay, well, again, I’m not going to push blood tests on your kids, but the gear head in you. Now that you’ve been through this, you’re going to want to know where your kids are. I can guarantee you that, because if you’ve been through stress, they’ve been through stress they have to put up with you, right? This hard charging mom is trying to help the world but they chose you. They chose you and their dad for a reason. But the key is they’ve also got to deal with the stress that comes with that, and that’s part of the process and making sure that people realize that the body does respond to stimulus. That’s the key. We’re not helpless and we’re not we’re not broken. But we are out of balance because we’re under constant stress.

Katie: And I feel like there’s a lot of hope in this because based on the things you were saying, it seems like the body can respond and does want to respond very quickly when it’s given these appropriate things. And I love at a podcast guest named Kathy Huckabee who said we need to even just reframe the words that we’re using. It’s not that we have disease. Our body’s not trying to kill us. If it wanted to, it could do it instantly. Our body is trying to adapt to keep us as healthy as possible, to keep us alive. And so how can we ask better questions and work with our body and love it and reduce our stress and give it what it needs?

Morley: Yeah. And the phrase that I use now is, ignore the enemies, ignite the energy. The body knows how to make energy, but it needs critical nutrients to make that happen. But it’s not 100. It’s only a handful. It isn’t that complicated. And it’s just making sure people realize that they do have this empowerment within. They just need to stimulate it properly. That’s the key.

Katie: So building on that and are there any other specifics related to my labs that would be recommendations and/or anything that would be a good general recommendation for other women listening who might have a lot of these same life things that I have going on that might be experiencing stress?

Morley: I think the key is going to be regular release of the emotions around the stress, whether it’s current stress or as you were referring to it, something that happened many years ago and making sure that there’s a discipline of not only having good food but having the right nutrients and supplements in their routine. And this is not, oh, when I remember to do it, this is every day supporting yourself, nurturing yourself. And it’s very easy in the excitement of daily living to lose sight of that. And the more people can do to discipline themselves and bring themselves back to that center point of what have I done to nourish myself today to release my stress, to support my metabolic pathways? And then it becomes second nature.

But it’s really critical for people to realize that they do have control, that they do have influence over how they feel. And that’s not a mainstream idea. They want us thinking that we’re broken, we’ve got to go to the doctor. And that’s simply not the case.

Katie: And I love this because I think when moms do these things, not only does it change the energy in our house and make that difference for our kids and our spouse as well. But also, I’ve heard it said so many times, so many different ways of our kids are more likely to follow what we model than what we say. So basically get busy becoming what you hope for them rather than trying to push on them what you hope for them. And so I think to any degree I can give moms more calm or less stress or more good lifestyle habits that rippled them to future generations as well, which is so exciting.

Morley: Years ago, I was talking with a mom about your age. We were going through the thing and I said, I really think you need to have a regular intake of cod liver oil. She said, I’ll never remember. I said, do you have any kids? She said, yeah, I’ve got a four year old and a six year old. I said, Ask your six year old daughter to ask Mommy, did you take your cod liver oil today? And that little girl was like a bell every day. Mommy, did you take your cod liver oil? And she told me, she said, that’s one of the greatest ideas that anyone’s ever suggested. She said, thank you for that. Injecting my daughter into my daily routine. Take advantage of the talent that you have around you.

The one area for a follow up chat that I would love to get to. It doesn’t have to be anytime soon. There are a lot of women who follow you who get pregnant or who are pregnant. We need to have a conversation about that and we need to have a conversation about what really happens in pregnancy to the woman’s physiology. And there’s a critical loss of magnesium throughout the pregnancy, ongoing loss. And there is what’s called hypoxia. And it’s not a lack of oxygen, it’s an inability to activate the oxygen. So I think it would be really educational for your listeners to understand that side of it. And I would look forward to at some point later in the year being able to have that conversation with you.

Katie: Yeah, well, I’m absolutely always very excited to keep learning from you, and I’m excited to do some personal end of one experiments of myself and do some castor oil packs and get some sunlight and some magnesium and some copper and some retinol and give blood a couple more times and then check back in and see how things look then. But as always, I feel like I just spend our whole episode taking copious notes and writing in the show notes. So everything we’ve talked about for you listening will be in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm, along with links to our other podcasts that have some foundational information. If you haven’t heard those, I highly recommend them as well. And Morley, of course, I will also link to your website and to where people can find out more about the Root Cause Protocol and about testing. Any parting or wrap-up thoughts on this episode until to be continued next time?

Morley: I was chatting with Kitty Martone the other day, and we were doing a podcast, and she said, I feel like I’m not a tough enough investigative journalist. She says, when you start talking, I just start taking notes, and I’m just listening. I said, well, that’s very sweet. Okay. She says, I just feel like I don’t ask the hard questions. I said, well, maybe there aren’t any hard questions, so no. I so appreciate your interest in this, and you have a very clear channel of trying to help people, and what we’re trying to do is simplify the message. And so I really appreciate these conversations and the chance to share these thoughts and give people formulas on how to get back into balance that aren’t overwhelming and that they really are just based on common sense. So appreciate that.

Katie: Well, I love that. And I do think, like I said before, that moms have a very profound and unique ability to influence the world. And so I don’t take it lightly that I get to share with so many other moms. And I am grateful that you took the time to be here today and to share as well. I always learn so much. Thank you so much for your time.

Morley: Absolutely, absolutely appreciate it. You bet.

Katie: And thanks, as always, to all of you for listening and 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.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

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This episode is sponsored by Wellnesse, the personal care company I co-founded when I couldn’t find products I felt comfortable using on my family that worked as well as conventional alternatives. My focus was figuring out the 80/20 of products that account for the most harmful chemical exposure and making safer alternatives that worked just as well. We started out with oral care and haircare and now also have a safe natural deodorant that actually works. By changing out just these products in your routine, you can reduce your chemical exposure by as much as 80% and these products are safe for the whole family. Wellnesse has three types of remineralizing toothpaste, original whitening mint, whitening charcoal and natural strawberry for kids. The deodorant has a neutral scent and is designed to work without causing irritation like many natural deodorants do. And the haircare is designed as a hair food… focused on nourishing your hair and scalp for healthier and healthier hair the longer you use it. Check out these all the Wellnesse products at Wellnesse.com.

Katie Wells Avatar

About Katie Wells

Katie Wells, CTNC, MCHC, Founder of Wellness Mama and Co-founder of Wellnesse, has a background in research, journalism, and nutrition. As a mom of six, she turned to research and took health into her own hands to find answers to her health problems. WellnessMama.com is the culmination of her thousands of hours of research and all posts are medically reviewed and verified by the Wellness Mama research team. Katie is also the author of the bestselling books The Wellness Mama Cookbook and The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox.

Comments

3 responses to “639: Morley Robbins on a Deep Look at My Labs and My Life (What I’m Deficient In)”

  1. Valerie Riggs Avatar
    Valerie Riggs

    This podcast was a bounty of insightful information, Katie. TY for hosting Morely Robbins. Good wellness for all!

    1. Brittany Avatar
      Brittany

      Where would I go to get the mineral information through my hair? Is that a special type of doctor that would do something like that ?

  2. Amy Avatar

    HI Katie,
    I have been an avid listener and reader of your blog since you started it. My personal family situation is very similar to yours. I have 6 children, home educate and my husband owns multiple businesses. I also just had my HTMA done in February, so it was really lovely to have this blog session. I got to pull out my results and follow along. I have followed many of your blogs on red light, fasting, nutritional genetic testing, liver cleansing, etc. From a listener’s point of view, there are many points of confusion regarding HTMA. I received my results through Trace Elements and the very thing Morley says to add, Trace Elements says to avoid, including cod liver oil and grass-fed liver. Also, Rick Malter, who is referenced by Morley, has a VERY different perspective on Copper Toxicity. Obviously, there are many different perspectives in the health realm, but as a mom that also is a health researcher, I am more or less just commenting on the hurdles I am facing when trying to figure out my health issues. It feels like the more answers I get, the more questions I accumulate.
    All in all, I do appreciate your blog highly.

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