Anemia: Iron, Copper, and Vitamin A
This article does NOT constitute medical advice. Consult with your physician before making any changes to your medical plan.
What is anemia? Let's start by defining it because many people don't really understand what it means. Anemia means there are not enough red blood cells, or hemoglobin, to support the oxygenation of tissue. Hemoglobin is a protein containing iron that allows for the transport of oxygen in red blood cells. Hemoglobin makes up about 96% of a red blood cell's dry weight, so it is the main component of red blood cells. The iron ion at the center of hemoglobin is the binding site of oxygen.
Iron exists in three basic ways in the body. When it comes to the iron numbers you see on a blood test let's think of it as three containers in the body....a tub, a water glass, and a shot glass. Think of the largest container of iron as a tub. That tub is the hemoglobin that is measured on your lab blood work. 70% of the iron in the body is located in the hemoglobin. If we include myoglobin then that number is 80%. Think of the second container of iron as a drinking glass. A drinking glass is much smaller than a tub. Ferritin is the drinking glass. Ferritin is a protein that stores excess iron. The key word here is "excess". You don't want high ferritin levels. It is excess iron that is not needed and can cause problems. High levels of ferritin indicate inflammation often due to excessive iron. A ferritin blood test is a little misleading because iron in the tissue can be 10 times higher than iron in the blood. A low ferritin blood test is not an indicator of iron deficiency. Why? Well, we need about 25mg of iron per day to make the 2.5 million red blood cells that are replaced every second of the day, but 24mg of that iron comes from an iron recycling program in the body called the reticuloendothelial system. So you really only need 1mg of iron per day from diet. It's not as much as you have been told. And most people have about 4,000-5,000mg of iron in storage. The question we will explore is whether or not that stored iron can be made available or not. In other words, is the recycling program working? Think of the third container as a shot glass. This is a relatively small amount of serum iron that is represented on your blood work as Total Iron-Binding Capacity, transferrin saturation, or just iron.
There's more to the story. The body has an iron peptide called hepcidin which has the ability to regulate the recycling program described above. Hepcidin also regulates the entry of iron into circulation. If hepcidin is over-stimulated then it will shut down iron recycling resulting in anemia. In this case there may be plenty of iron but it is just not available. What over-stimulates hepcidin and causes it to shut down iron recycling? It is chronic inflammation. Inflammation means that mitochondria are not making energy efficiently, and hydrogen peroxide is being created instead of water molecules. Hepcidin is not measured by doctors. If hepcidin levels become abnormally high then recycling of iron stops, iron gets trapped in macrophages and liver cells, serum iron levels falls, and this causes anemia because there is not enough circulating iron available to build red blood cells and hemoglobin. On the contrary, if hepcidin levels are too low then too much iron accumulates in the body leading to hemochromatosis. This causes oxidative stress and can lead to organ damage as iron accumulates in those organs. Hepcidin levels need to be just right. Not too high, and not too low. What regulates hepcidin? It's copper. So, it's not usually dietary iron that we need to focus on with anemia (except in cases of severe blood loss), but rather recycled iron that we need to focus on, which is regulated by hepcidin, which is regulated by copper. So, it's really copper that we need to focus on in our diet. Low copper gives the illusion that ferritin and TIBC are low and that iron deficiency is causing anemia. But it's an illusion. Plenty of iron is in the body, but there's not enough copper to let iron through the door. Doctors need to order the correct blood tests to look at anemia caused by chronic inflammation (low copper) as just described. Those tests include serum copper, serum hepcidin, and serum ceruloplasmin (which is a copper-carrying protein/enzyme involved in iron metabolism). You may have tons of stored iron, but if the body cannot recycle it then it is not of much use. The anemia is likely caused by copper deficiency, not iron deficiency. In this day and age it's very unlikely that a person has low iron because iron is fortified in so many food products. It's much more likely that they are copper deficient. When the doctor says that you are anemic, ask them which iron marker is low. Is it the tub, the water glass, or the shot glass?
Too much zinc depletes copper. Glyphosate chelates copper. Isolated ascorbic acid (IAA) denatures ceruloplasmin and the copper leaks out leading to metabolic dysfunction. IAA does not contain tyrosinase, J, K, or P factors, and ascorbigen that come with whole-food vitamin C. Only whole-food vitamin C is complete and not copper depleting. Too much vitamin D shuts down hepcidin and eliminates vitamin A. During Covid, my wife and I gave our daughter zinc, ascorbic acid, and vitamin D supplements, and she was eating non-organic food with glyphosate. After Covid she was diagnosed with severe anemia. Iron supplements did not fix the problem. We started giving her foods with copper like beef and dark chocolate. We stopped giving her zinc, ascorbic acid, and vitamin D. We gave her whole organic foods. We gave her iodine which frees iron from the cell so it can participate in the recycling program. We also gave her foods high in vitamin A. Vitamin A activates ceruloplasmin which activates copper, and vitamin A helps to regulate iron independent of copper. Within a few months her anemia was completely fixed. We've been brainwashed with a story that tells us to supplement with iron, vitamin D, ascorbic acid, and zinc. Centralized standard-of-care medicine tells us that copper and vitamin A are toxic. This is causing a problem. Stop supplementing with iron, vitamin D, ascorbic acid, and zinc, and start eating whole foods with copper and vitamin A. You can read more about vitamin D in my article Secosteroid Hormone D.
If you don't have enough copper and vitamin A then the thyroid will not function properly either. If you can't convert T4 to T3 then you will not have enough T3 in the mitochondria at complex 4 of the electron transport chain to make sure that oxygen becomes water. Copper regulates this relationship with oxygen, and vitamin A facilitates electron transport in the ETC. So, if you have anemia be sure to get your thyroid checked too. There is a high likelihood that your thyroid may be underactive due to the same copper and vitamin A deficiency that is causing anemia. In fact, there would be no life on Earth without copper. It is that important. Copper is the only element on the planet that can regulate iron and oxygen at the exact same time and prevent magnesium loss. Oxygen can be a problem because it is the second most reactive element on the planet, so it is very important to regulate oxygen. Without proper regulation by copper, excess iron will react with oxygen to create oxidative stress that burns up magnesium. Oxidative stress is what causes aging. That means the creation of reactive oxygen species that we talked about in Healing Chronic Disease. That is why copper and antioxidants are so important. Melatonin is the master antioxidant in the mitochondria. Glutathione is the master antioxidant in the cell. And ceruloplasmin is the master antioxidant in the body because it brings the copper to all the places where oxygen regulation is needed. Even cholesterol is used to regulate oxygen, especially if there is not enough copper around to manage oxygen. Cholesterol is made of 11 molecules of oxygen, so if there is too much reactive oxygen the body will sometimes stabilize that oxygen in a cholesterol molecule. High cholesterol can indicate a copper deficiency.
When a patient is diagnosed with anemia most doctors immediately push iron supplementation. As discussed above, there may be plenty of iron but it is just not available. Taking more iron by supplementation will not increase the availability of iron and can lead to lots of problems. Too much iron may end up pushed into organs causing organ damage. You literally get rust in those organs as the iron is not properly regulated in its relationship with oxygen. A paper from 2021 called Iron homeostasis and organismal aging explains that too much iron causes premature aging. Before reaching for the iron supplements take a moment and think through your situation.
Copper is used in large quantity in the mitochondria. There are 50,000 atoms of copper in the matrix of every mitochondria. This is the work of scientist Paul Cobine of Auburn University from 2004 and 2006. You can read much of his work here. He found that copper is absolutely essential at Complex 4 of the mitochondria electron transport chain where oxygen is converted into two molecules of deuterium depleted water. Complex 4 is the color blue which means that it requires red light to function properly. The frequency of red light aligns perfectly with the frequency of copper. The frequency of blue light aligns perfectly with the frequency of iron as we discussed in my article Light, Electrons, and Water For Quantum Health. And it turns out that Complexes 1, 3, 4, and 5 are all copper dependent.
When an animal has too little copper in their diet then iron builds in the liver. This goes back to 1928 in the work of Dr. Edwin Hart. It's not new stuff, yet centralized standard-of-care medicine doesn't recognize it. Also in 1920, Dr. James McCarg of the University of Kentucky showed that if you are copper deficient then iron builds up in the red blood cells. The recurring theme is that if copper is low then iron gets hidden in cells and is not available for use. Iron needs to get recycled through macrophages, but the door must be opened by a copper dependent mechanism called ferroportin. 'Ferro' means iron and 'portin' means door, so copper is literally considered a doorman for iron. Much of this was shown by Giovanni Musci in a 2014 paper.
The human body has 4,700 signaling peptides that are important for many functions within the body. All 4,700 of these signaling peptides are activated by one enzyme called Peptidyl-glycine alpha-amidating monooxygenase (PAM). The PAM enzyme is copper-dependent. Copper has a magnetic attraction to sunlight and uses sunlight to become activated. So, the PAM enzyme is therefore sunlight dependent. This may sound familiar from the article Light, Electrons, and Water for Quantum Health. When the body starts losing copper the whole system falls apart. Perhaps we should pay closer attention to our copper levels rather than hyper-focusing on iron levels as centralized medicine would have us do. It almost seems like they are trying to make us sick on purpose.
Blood Work: Copper expert Morley Robbins explains bloodwork as it relates to anemia, iron, and copper in his Root Cause Protocol. The lab called Ulta Lab Tests also explains a similar set of blood tests. Here is what those numbers look like for optimal health:
Iron: Serum Ferritin 20ng/mL (problematic if over 150ng/mL for women, 300ng/mL for men)
Serum Iron 80ug/dL for women and 100ug/dL for men
TIBC 320ug/dL for women and 333ug/dL for men
Serum Transferrin 3g/L
Hemoglobin 13g/dL for women and 14g/dL for men
For a woman to accurately measure her iron labs it must done on day 15 of her menstrual cycle. This is the middle of the cycle.
Copper: Serum Ceruloplasmin 30mg/dL
Serum Copper 100mg/dL
The ratio of copper to ceruloplasmin should be about 3.33 for comparison. If that ratio is over 3.33 it generally indicates inflammation in the system. If the ratio is below 3.33 is generally means there isn't enough copper in the diet.
Magnesium: Magnesium RBC 6.5mg/dL
Zinc: Plasma Zinc 100ug/dL
Vitamin A: Retinol 65ug/dL
Vitamin D: Storage D (25OH) 21ng/mL in winter, 30ng/mL in summer
Active D (1,25(OH)2) 30-60pg/mL year round
Uric Acid: Uric Acid 5mg/dL
Blood Cells: Red Blood Cell count 4.2-5.4 million/uL for women, and 4.7-6.1 million/uL for men.
If MCH, MCV, or MCHC are on the low side it is a sign of anemia by copper deficiency. If RDW is on the high side it is a sign of anemia by copper deficiency. Hematocrit basically is 3 times hemoglobin, and it's telling us what percent of the blood is iron.
Poor iron management can cause many problems in addition to anemia. In men, for example, too much iron will affect sex hormone binding globulin, which then triggers the aromatase enzyme, which then turns testosterone into estrogen. Men begin to take on more feminine features. Minerals, like copper and iron, run and regulate the body, while hormones, like testosterone, respond to oxidative stress by shuttling minerals. Hormones don't work without the necessary minerals.
This information does NOT mean you should go out and buy copper and vitamin A supplements. Depending on your bloodwork it may be appropriate for you to eat foods that contain copper and vitamin A, or you may be just fine. Copper and vitamin A can also be toxic like iron if too much accumulates in the body. It may be appropriate for you to donate blood in order to lower the iron content in your body. We've been led to believe that we all need more iron and less copper, but this may be very bad advice for a lot of people. Take time to evaluate your personal situation more closely.
Iron exists in three basic ways in the body. When it comes to the iron numbers you see on a blood test let's think of it as three containers in the body....a tub, a water glass, and a shot glass. Think of the largest container of iron as a tub. That tub is the hemoglobin that is measured on your lab blood work. 70% of the iron in the body is located in the hemoglobin. If we include myoglobin then that number is 80%. Think of the second container of iron as a drinking glass. A drinking glass is much smaller than a tub. Ferritin is the drinking glass. Ferritin is a protein that stores excess iron. The key word here is "excess". You don't want high ferritin levels. It is excess iron that is not needed and can cause problems. High levels of ferritin indicate inflammation often due to excessive iron. A ferritin blood test is a little misleading because iron in the tissue can be 10 times higher than iron in the blood. A low ferritin blood test is not an indicator of iron deficiency. Why? Well, we need about 25mg of iron per day to make the 2.5 million red blood cells that are replaced every second of the day, but 24mg of that iron comes from an iron recycling program in the body called the reticuloendothelial system. So you really only need 1mg of iron per day from diet. It's not as much as you have been told. And most people have about 4,000-5,000mg of iron in storage. The question we will explore is whether or not that stored iron can be made available or not. In other words, is the recycling program working? Think of the third container as a shot glass. This is a relatively small amount of serum iron that is represented on your blood work as Total Iron-Binding Capacity, transferrin saturation, or just iron.
There's more to the story. The body has an iron peptide called hepcidin which has the ability to regulate the recycling program described above. Hepcidin also regulates the entry of iron into circulation. If hepcidin is over-stimulated then it will shut down iron recycling resulting in anemia. In this case there may be plenty of iron but it is just not available. What over-stimulates hepcidin and causes it to shut down iron recycling? It is chronic inflammation. Inflammation means that mitochondria are not making energy efficiently, and hydrogen peroxide is being created instead of water molecules. Hepcidin is not measured by doctors. If hepcidin levels become abnormally high then recycling of iron stops, iron gets trapped in macrophages and liver cells, serum iron levels falls, and this causes anemia because there is not enough circulating iron available to build red blood cells and hemoglobin. On the contrary, if hepcidin levels are too low then too much iron accumulates in the body leading to hemochromatosis. This causes oxidative stress and can lead to organ damage as iron accumulates in those organs. Hepcidin levels need to be just right. Not too high, and not too low. What regulates hepcidin? It's copper. So, it's not usually dietary iron that we need to focus on with anemia (except in cases of severe blood loss), but rather recycled iron that we need to focus on, which is regulated by hepcidin, which is regulated by copper. So, it's really copper that we need to focus on in our diet. Low copper gives the illusion that ferritin and TIBC are low and that iron deficiency is causing anemia. But it's an illusion. Plenty of iron is in the body, but there's not enough copper to let iron through the door. Doctors need to order the correct blood tests to look at anemia caused by chronic inflammation (low copper) as just described. Those tests include serum copper, serum hepcidin, and serum ceruloplasmin (which is a copper-carrying protein/enzyme involved in iron metabolism). You may have tons of stored iron, but if the body cannot recycle it then it is not of much use. The anemia is likely caused by copper deficiency, not iron deficiency. In this day and age it's very unlikely that a person has low iron because iron is fortified in so many food products. It's much more likely that they are copper deficient. When the doctor says that you are anemic, ask them which iron marker is low. Is it the tub, the water glass, or the shot glass?
Too much zinc depletes copper. Glyphosate chelates copper. Isolated ascorbic acid (IAA) denatures ceruloplasmin and the copper leaks out leading to metabolic dysfunction. IAA does not contain tyrosinase, J, K, or P factors, and ascorbigen that come with whole-food vitamin C. Only whole-food vitamin C is complete and not copper depleting. Too much vitamin D shuts down hepcidin and eliminates vitamin A. During Covid, my wife and I gave our daughter zinc, ascorbic acid, and vitamin D supplements, and she was eating non-organic food with glyphosate. After Covid she was diagnosed with severe anemia. Iron supplements did not fix the problem. We started giving her foods with copper like beef and dark chocolate. We stopped giving her zinc, ascorbic acid, and vitamin D. We gave her whole organic foods. We gave her iodine which frees iron from the cell so it can participate in the recycling program. We also gave her foods high in vitamin A. Vitamin A activates ceruloplasmin which activates copper, and vitamin A helps to regulate iron independent of copper. Within a few months her anemia was completely fixed. We've been brainwashed with a story that tells us to supplement with iron, vitamin D, ascorbic acid, and zinc. Centralized standard-of-care medicine tells us that copper and vitamin A are toxic. This is causing a problem. Stop supplementing with iron, vitamin D, ascorbic acid, and zinc, and start eating whole foods with copper and vitamin A. You can read more about vitamin D in my article Secosteroid Hormone D.
If you don't have enough copper and vitamin A then the thyroid will not function properly either. If you can't convert T4 to T3 then you will not have enough T3 in the mitochondria at complex 4 of the electron transport chain to make sure that oxygen becomes water. Copper regulates this relationship with oxygen, and vitamin A facilitates electron transport in the ETC. So, if you have anemia be sure to get your thyroid checked too. There is a high likelihood that your thyroid may be underactive due to the same copper and vitamin A deficiency that is causing anemia. In fact, there would be no life on Earth without copper. It is that important. Copper is the only element on the planet that can regulate iron and oxygen at the exact same time and prevent magnesium loss. Oxygen can be a problem because it is the second most reactive element on the planet, so it is very important to regulate oxygen. Without proper regulation by copper, excess iron will react with oxygen to create oxidative stress that burns up magnesium. Oxidative stress is what causes aging. That means the creation of reactive oxygen species that we talked about in Healing Chronic Disease. That is why copper and antioxidants are so important. Melatonin is the master antioxidant in the mitochondria. Glutathione is the master antioxidant in the cell. And ceruloplasmin is the master antioxidant in the body because it brings the copper to all the places where oxygen regulation is needed. Even cholesterol is used to regulate oxygen, especially if there is not enough copper around to manage oxygen. Cholesterol is made of 11 molecules of oxygen, so if there is too much reactive oxygen the body will sometimes stabilize that oxygen in a cholesterol molecule. High cholesterol can indicate a copper deficiency.
When a patient is diagnosed with anemia most doctors immediately push iron supplementation. As discussed above, there may be plenty of iron but it is just not available. Taking more iron by supplementation will not increase the availability of iron and can lead to lots of problems. Too much iron may end up pushed into organs causing organ damage. You literally get rust in those organs as the iron is not properly regulated in its relationship with oxygen. A paper from 2021 called Iron homeostasis and organismal aging explains that too much iron causes premature aging. Before reaching for the iron supplements take a moment and think through your situation.
Copper is used in large quantity in the mitochondria. There are 50,000 atoms of copper in the matrix of every mitochondria. This is the work of scientist Paul Cobine of Auburn University from 2004 and 2006. You can read much of his work here. He found that copper is absolutely essential at Complex 4 of the mitochondria electron transport chain where oxygen is converted into two molecules of deuterium depleted water. Complex 4 is the color blue which means that it requires red light to function properly. The frequency of red light aligns perfectly with the frequency of copper. The frequency of blue light aligns perfectly with the frequency of iron as we discussed in my article Light, Electrons, and Water For Quantum Health. And it turns out that Complexes 1, 3, 4, and 5 are all copper dependent.
When an animal has too little copper in their diet then iron builds in the liver. This goes back to 1928 in the work of Dr. Edwin Hart. It's not new stuff, yet centralized standard-of-care medicine doesn't recognize it. Also in 1920, Dr. James McCarg of the University of Kentucky showed that if you are copper deficient then iron builds up in the red blood cells. The recurring theme is that if copper is low then iron gets hidden in cells and is not available for use. Iron needs to get recycled through macrophages, but the door must be opened by a copper dependent mechanism called ferroportin. 'Ferro' means iron and 'portin' means door, so copper is literally considered a doorman for iron. Much of this was shown by Giovanni Musci in a 2014 paper.
The human body has 4,700 signaling peptides that are important for many functions within the body. All 4,700 of these signaling peptides are activated by one enzyme called Peptidyl-glycine alpha-amidating monooxygenase (PAM). The PAM enzyme is copper-dependent. Copper has a magnetic attraction to sunlight and uses sunlight to become activated. So, the PAM enzyme is therefore sunlight dependent. This may sound familiar from the article Light, Electrons, and Water for Quantum Health. When the body starts losing copper the whole system falls apart. Perhaps we should pay closer attention to our copper levels rather than hyper-focusing on iron levels as centralized medicine would have us do. It almost seems like they are trying to make us sick on purpose.
Blood Work: Copper expert Morley Robbins explains bloodwork as it relates to anemia, iron, and copper in his Root Cause Protocol. The lab called Ulta Lab Tests also explains a similar set of blood tests. Here is what those numbers look like for optimal health:
Iron: Serum Ferritin 20ng/mL (problematic if over 150ng/mL for women, 300ng/mL for men)
Serum Iron 80ug/dL for women and 100ug/dL for men
TIBC 320ug/dL for women and 333ug/dL for men
Serum Transferrin 3g/L
Hemoglobin 13g/dL for women and 14g/dL for men
For a woman to accurately measure her iron labs it must done on day 15 of her menstrual cycle. This is the middle of the cycle.
Copper: Serum Ceruloplasmin 30mg/dL
Serum Copper 100mg/dL
The ratio of copper to ceruloplasmin should be about 3.33 for comparison. If that ratio is over 3.33 it generally indicates inflammation in the system. If the ratio is below 3.33 is generally means there isn't enough copper in the diet.
Magnesium: Magnesium RBC 6.5mg/dL
Zinc: Plasma Zinc 100ug/dL
Vitamin A: Retinol 65ug/dL
Vitamin D: Storage D (25OH) 21ng/mL in winter, 30ng/mL in summer
Active D (1,25(OH)2) 30-60pg/mL year round
Uric Acid: Uric Acid 5mg/dL
Blood Cells: Red Blood Cell count 4.2-5.4 million/uL for women, and 4.7-6.1 million/uL for men.
If MCH, MCV, or MCHC are on the low side it is a sign of anemia by copper deficiency. If RDW is on the high side it is a sign of anemia by copper deficiency. Hematocrit basically is 3 times hemoglobin, and it's telling us what percent of the blood is iron.
Poor iron management can cause many problems in addition to anemia. In men, for example, too much iron will affect sex hormone binding globulin, which then triggers the aromatase enzyme, which then turns testosterone into estrogen. Men begin to take on more feminine features. Minerals, like copper and iron, run and regulate the body, while hormones, like testosterone, respond to oxidative stress by shuttling minerals. Hormones don't work without the necessary minerals.
This information does NOT mean you should go out and buy copper and vitamin A supplements. Depending on your bloodwork it may be appropriate for you to eat foods that contain copper and vitamin A, or you may be just fine. Copper and vitamin A can also be toxic like iron if too much accumulates in the body. It may be appropriate for you to donate blood in order to lower the iron content in your body. We've been led to believe that we all need more iron and less copper, but this may be very bad advice for a lot of people. Take time to evaluate your personal situation more closely.
Additional Resources:
- Copper nutrition during infancy and childhood
- Function of Pituitary-Thyroid Axis in Copper-Deficient Rats
- Magnesium and Thyroid Function in The Rat
- Copper Deficiency Leads to Anemia
- Role of copper in mitochondrial iron metabolism
- Dietary copper deficiency reduces iron absorption and duodenal enterocyte hephaestin protein in male and female rats
- Copper nutrition during infancy and childhood
- Function of Pituitary-Thyroid Axis in Copper-Deficient Rats
- Magnesium and Thyroid Function in The Rat
- Copper Deficiency Leads to Anemia
- Role of copper in mitochondrial iron metabolism
- Dietary copper deficiency reduces iron absorption and duodenal enterocyte hephaestin protein in male and female rats
This article does NOT constitute medical advice.
Consult with your physician before making any changes to your medical plan.
Consult with your physician before making any changes to your medical plan.
