WHAT IS COPPER TOXICITY?
What is Copper Toxicity?
Copper is an essential mineral and necessary for many functions within the body, however, despite being a completely natural mineral the body requires, it can be very unhealthy and detrimental at substantial levels. Rick Fischer is one of the leading experts on Copper Toxicity and he educates on the importance of the HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) testing for understanding and identifying Copper Toxicity. He defines Copper Toxicity as, “a build-up of stored bio-unavailable copper inside the body. The liver is the primary storage location, the brain, secondary”.
CAUSES OF COPPER TOXICITY?
There are so many different causes that can lead to Copper Toxicity such as birth control pills, copper IUDs, vegetarian diets, copper piping, and estrogen, just to name a few. All of these contributing factors, with many people having constant exposure, have made Copper Toxicity the epidemic that all of us in the HTMA world are seeing today. Women are not being educated as to the long-term effects of birth control pills and IUDs, which can be devastating. I personally have suffered the debilitating symptoms of Copper Toxicity and what I call the roller coaster of detoxing copper for over 18 months. The ups and downs are common as the body attempts to shed toxins, especially ones that have been stored in the cells, tissues, and organs for decades. When we look at the toxic load in our environment alone, the body has so much to deal with already that a build-up of deeply rooted toxins quickly becomes overwhelming, hence the extreme symptoms.
There are a variety of symptoms associated with Copper toxicity:
- Brain fog
- Fatigue
- Adrenal dysfunction
- Hypothyroid
- Nausea
- Racing mind (feeling wired but tired)
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Hair loss and/or whitening of hair
- Concentration and memory problems
- High anxiety
- Moodiness
- Yeast/Candida infections
- Irritability
- Emotional numbing… and many more!!
Excess copper can be tightly stored in tissues and trying to use blood testing to determine copper status can be very misleading and utterly unhelpful. The reason being is that blood always wants to be homeostatic; so the blood will make sure that any excess copper it carries is swiftly removed; but this ultimately does not mean it is shuttled out of the body…….Copper needs a transporter protein to bind to, namely ceruloplasmin. If this protein is not present then the copper will become bio-unavailable (ie: unusable by the body), and thus will not enter the cell where it should be, which causes it to accumulate in the tissues.
Many people ask about other forms for testing for specific toxicities, one being urine. Urine will identify the substances being excreted from the body; but it will not show what is being stored in the body. The only testing with the most accurate results for showing us the minerals that are being stored in the tissues is the HTMA test.
CONCLUSION
The HTMA test is a big part of my practice because it changed my life. I suffered from so many extreme symptoms, especially fatigue and even after utilizing all of the diagnostic tests that I had access to, I still did not completely feel like myself……I could not help wonder, “what was I missing?” Then I discovered HTMA and my underlying issues with Copper Toxicity. Had I not been introduced to this and educated on how to understand, deal with and detox copper; I would have never gotten my health back.
“Copper toxicity is one of the most widespread yet misunderstood epidemics of our time and is a major factor in many of today’s most prevalent conditions”. –Rick Fischer, www.coppertoxic.com.
Sources: https://coppertoxic.com/