Episode 27: Are You Really Low in Iron? With Morley Robbins
There are a lot of misconceptions floating around about iron. Morley Robbins is the founder of The Root Cause Protocol and has helped thousands of people find the same healing he has found through understanding minerals. We devote the majority of this discussion to iron and copper, two minerals that are largely misunderstood by the allopathic and even functional medicine spheres. The point we keep coming back to is how beautiful and intelligent the human design is. Join us as we explore how we can best support our physiology through a greater understanding of these important minerals.
In this episode, we cover:
Morley’s personal journey of finding healing through nutrition and minerals
The impact of copper deprivation on the body and its connection to oxidative stress
The role of critical thinking in taking responsibility for our own health
What factors in our modern world have lead to pervasive iron overload
How our bodies actually store iron and why blood tests fall short in measuring iron
The flaw of iron supplementation in pregnancy
How copper and iron move from mother to baby during pregnancy
The impact of mineral deficiencies in the postpartum period
Advocating for a safe and healthy birth even in the face of opposition from practitioners
How the birth landscape has become highly medicalized over the years
Taking a proactive instead of reactive approach to health and nourishment in pregnancy
Making the choice to trust your body in pregnancy and birth
Forgoing prenatal vitamins and pursuing whole food nutrition instead
Exploring the reasons for the high rate of babies diagnosed with anemia
Individualized mineral needs based on melanin
About Morley
Morley Robbins is the creator and founder of The Root Cause Protocol and the Magnesium Advocacy Group. Morley received his BA in Biology from Denison University in Ohio and holds an MBA from George Washington University in healthcare administration. Morley has trained in wellness coaching, nutritional counseling, and functional diagnostic nutrition.
He is also known as the Magnesium Man due to his extensive research into and understanding of magnesium’s role in the body. Morley’s research saw him deciphering the intricate relationship between magnesium, iron, copper, and calcium as a way to free ourselves from illness and dis-ease. As a certified health coach with an expertise in Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA), Morley has performed thousands of RCP one-on-one consultations, helping people feel better by getting to the root cause of their symptoms.
Resources mentioned
The Magnesium Miracle by Carolyn Dean
Maternal hemoglobin study by Philip Steer
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
Cure Your Fatigue by Morley Robbins
Morley’s Recuperate IQ copper supplement
Connect
Morley Robbins | Website | Facebook Group
“You have to decide what side of nature you are going to come down on. To what extent do you believe in your body’s ability to take care of itself?”
Transcript
Kori Meloy Welcome to The Freely Rooted Podcast, where we are passionate about helping women reclaim their metabolisms, restore their youthful vitality, and rediscover God's original design for motherhood and wellness.
Fallon Lee We are your hosts, Fallon and Kori, and we're so glad you're joining us for season four. If you're new here, be sure to listen to our previous episodes where we talk through many of our favorite foundational topics. Now grab your favorite nourishing drink, and join us as we continue discussing simple, attainable and life-changing approaches to wellness.
Kori Meloy Welcome, Morley. We are so excited to have you on. Fallon and I have been looking forward to this episode for quite a while now, and maybe some of our audience actually knows you as the Magnesium Man. I love that that's one of your little nicknames, and I don't know if a lot of people actually know that before you got into the world you're in now, you actually were pretty deep into more of the Western medicine world. And I would love to hear about your transition from that to where you got here now. Because I feel like that just switches on this whole paradigm and this transition to be able to kind of see the world differently once you make just that one transition. So, yeah. Tell us about it.
Morley Robbins Yeah, absolutely. So I was born into a very sickly family. My mom was an alcoholic and had all sorts of heart issues. Dad was a manic depressive, schizophrenic tendencies. And just all sorts of other relatives that were sickly and spent a lot of time in hospitals. My older sister became a nurse, so I was supposed to become a doctor, right? Till I got to college and realized, oh my gosh, there's a lot of work involved. And that was not my strong suit. So I still went ahead with my pre-med program, but I was only rejected by 18 medical schools.
Kori Meloy Oh my gosh.
Fallon Lee That's hard to believe.
Morley Robbins Yeah. Twelve in one day. So that was an experience. But it was actually a blessing. And as one of my dear friends now—Ben Edwards, who's an internist over in Lubbock, Texas—said, "Morley, it's actually a blessing that you didn't get into medical school." And I said, "Why is that?" He said, "Because you didn't get 'in-doctor-nated'."
Kori Meloy Absolutely.
Morley Robbins And he's absolutely right. And so if you don't get into medical school, well, you go to business school and you become a hospital executive so you can boss the doctors around. And I did that. That's exactly what I did. And I never ran the hospitals, but I was always a senior executive thinking about, "How are we going to grow this thing? How are we going to make it bigger and better?" And I did that for 12 years, then decided that wasn't challenging enough. Let me become a consultant. So I'm going to become a hospital consultant for 20 years and fly around on these little silver tubes all over the country. And it's a very stressful way of living. And I did that. So I spent 32 years working on kind of the allopathic hospital side. I never worked on the pharmaceutical side. And for many years I knew there was something else I wanted to do. I just wasn't sure what it was. And I developed— so, again, picture 20 years of pulling a suitcase behind your back. That has a decided effect on your body's physiology. And so I developed frozen shoulder. I couldn't take my hand above my waist. And so I went to see a health food store that I had frequented for many, many years. Lived in the Evanston area for about 20 some years. And explained my plight, and they said, "Well, you need to go see Dr. Liz." And I went, "Eh, I don't do witchcraft." Because I knew doctor and first name meant chiropractor. And I'm like, "Don't go there."
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins And so I said, "You must have some supplements. And supplements didn't do anything. So a couple of months later, I came back and I was in agony. I mean, I wasn't sleeping. I was really— it was a very uncomfortable situation. So I went to the owner and I said, "Look, you must have something stronger." Then she looks me in the eyes and she says, "Morley, we love you. Go see Dr. Liz." So with my tail between my legs, I went to see Dr. Liz. And in two sessions, I had complete motility. It was as close to a miracle as I ever want to get to. But what was important about the encounter— and this was back in 2009— she made a comment about the innate healer. I had worked in healthcare for 32 years; I had never heard that phrase before. And I didn't say anything to her at the time, but I thought to myself, well, if there's an innate healer, why do we have millions of doctors around the world? It made no sense to me. So I quietly decided I was going to discover who the innate healer is. And that's basically the quest I've been on for the last now almost 15 years, is who is this innate healer? Long story short, folks, it's bioavailable copper. And we'll talk more about that. But there really is an incredible mechanism of recovery and energy production and immune system regulation that has been very artfully suppressed. And it's in the literature. You just have to really dig for it. But it's been just an amazing journey of discovery to see how all of these different pieces of the puzzle fit together. And when you-know-what hit a couple of years ago, I thought, well, that's the end of this whole concept, when in fact it's become the springboard for greater demand, greater awareness, greater desire. And it's absolutely been a fascinating exploration and journey. I would never have imagined. In a couple of months, I'm going to be 70 years old. And I have more energy now than I did when I was in my fifties. And I'm excited to get up every day and say, "Where are we headed today?" I never know where the universe is going to take me. And it's just been an amazing process of discovery.
Kori Meloy So cool.
Morley Robbins That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Fallon Lee Thank you so much for sharing that. I hopped on the call a bit later than, Kori, you and Morley did, so I didn't get a chance to fully fawn over this call and appreciate you being here. I won't make us dive into this topic, but I did have to throw in something you probably don't remember, Morley. My dear friend, Meg Langston, is someone that I'm working with currently, and she was on a phone call with you one night when she was looking at my Full Monty. And so, in a roundabout way, you interpreted my Full Monty, and I'm so grateful for that.
Morley Robbins Okay. All right.
Fallon Lee And it sounds like Meg had the same thought for us. She's wonderful, but I just had to throw that in that I'm so grateful for your insight on my Full Monty, so maybe we can come back to that testing in a bit. But I would love to keep talking about sort of the lack that we find in mainstream medicine. And we know that you have put just such an importance on the education of minerals. And so we'd love to hear what inspired your own research in the world of minerals, especially honing in on magnesium, iron, and copper. And if you have a bit, too, I would love to hear how you prefer to prioritize those because I know personally, whenever I bring up the subject of copper in particular, everyone says, "Well, how can I supplement that?" And I'm like, "Well, let's step back." So I'd love to hear your presentation of how you got into this research and then how you prefer to provide your own body with those nutrients.
Morley Robbins Yeah. Well, there really is a divine hand. There's no question. I mean, how that I happened upon Dr. Liz— you know, she's now my wife, and it's just an amazing, amazing journey. And she had a very switched on clientele. And one of her clients was a clinical psychologist. And as I got into the research, she said, "You know what? I can't help but think you need to share what you're learning." I said, "Okay, that's a great idea." I said, "What would you recommend?" She said, "Well, I think you should use paradoxical intention." I went, "Huh? What are you talking about?" She said, "Reverse psychology." And so I went, "Oh, that's a great idea." And so I developed— I'm just looking to see if I can find it. My very first book is just this little tiny— it's called Let's Get Fat. It's a ten-step plan on how to get fat. And then I have an article on Let's Break Bones.
Kori Meloy That's so great.
Morley Robbins And the signature article was— yeah, it was a ten-step plan on let's make a heart attack. Don't wait for a heart attack. Come on, let's go on offense, and let's make it happen. And so seven of the ten steps, though, came from the American Heart Association.
Fallon Lee Wow.
Kori Meloy Wow.
Morley Robbins And I used their research against them. And what was really funny is I put together this article, Let's Make a Heart Attack, and then given it to a couple of people to review, and a very high-profile physician said, "This is really good." I said, "Great. I appreciate your saying that." And then this other person said—she read it, she was another practitioner—she said, "Morley, I can't help but think that step number eight isn't more important than you realize. Well, step number eight was eliminate magnesium from your diet." And so I thought, yeah, maybe you're right. So I just started digging a little bit and—bingo bongo—I'm reading Carolyn Dean's Magnesium Miracle, and it was reading like a murder mystery.
Kori Meloy Wow.
Morley Robbins Because, you know, I'd spent 32 years working in hospitals. Everyone's horizontal. Well, everyone's magnesium deficient. And so when you learn some of the basics, then you're convinced that all anyone needs is more magnesium, and they'll come back. Right? And that's wrong. And so what some practitioners said, "Morley, if it were that simple, we would have figured it out." And in my arrogance and my youth, I thought, "Well, you don't understand the way I do." And I was wrong, and they were right. And it's more complicated, but it's not a whole lot more complicated. But it did take me a number of years to get from— when people lose magnesium, it's because they're under stress. That's easy. That's not rocket science. But what you have to understand is what's the biggest source of stress on the planet? Well, it's iron stress. Too much iron. Too much oxygen. Oxygen and iron create what's called oxidative stress. Well, that's a fancy term for rust. And so I started to realize that the magnesium burn rate was a function of iron and oxygen weren't being regulated, only to find out, oh my gosh, there's this thing called copper. And it goes back a long time in our planet's history that basically allows us to work with iron and oxygen and keep them from causing rust. And that took me about six years to figure that out. This isn't just like, well, you do a Google search and it's right there. It takes a lot of pieces of the puzzle to begin to talk to different people, read thousands of articles, begin to muse about it. And then you come to realize, wow, it really is that straightforward. And so though the real exciting part was to find out that in the 1920s—1928, to be exact—some very important research was done at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And basically what they did was they took rodents and they denied them copper in their diet. Seems simple enough, right? They didn't know what was going to happen. And what happened was iron accumulated in the little rodent livers like that.
Kori Meloy Wow.
Morley Robbins And so that was 1928. And it was a very monumental discovery that should have earned a Nobel Prize.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins But it never would. But there is a brass plaque. It's about three feet by three feet outside of the biochemistry hall where this research took place. And I think it's funny. Brass. Get it? Copper, right? And so that's as close as they're going to get to a Nobel Prize. And what's important is in 2021, a team of scientists decided to update the study. Kim and Gonzalez. No one's ever heard of these folks, but they're absolutely brilliant. Again, working with rodents. Again, denying them copper. Right? But they're doing something that they couldn't do back in the 1920s. They're studying 13 genes. And they're studying genes that relate to iron, genes that relate to zinc, and genes that relate to copper. And they want to see are any of these 13 genes going to change expression as a result of copper deprivation in the diet. And boom. One gene. One gene changed. And it's called ferritin light chain gene. And it's the gene that loads iron in the liver. Ding, ding, ding.
Kori Meloy Whoa.
Morley Robbins And so it became this sterling moment of truth, that Hartstein... back in 1928 were spot on. And here we have Kim and Gonzalez proving genetically that this is the mechanism. When you withhold copper in an animal's diet—and unfortunately, we're all animals. Sorry. Sorry to break it to you. But when you withhold copper from an animal's diet, iron is going to accumulate in the liver. And it's a fact. And it doesn't just stop at the liver. It's going to go into the heart. It's going to go into the neuroendocrine system. It's going to go into the brain. And this is the dirty little secret that people don't know about. And it's unfortunately not taught in doctor school. I don't care what the modality of training is. And so, Fallon, to your point, I mean, I've studied— you know, there's 80-some minerals. You could easily get lost in all 80 of them—84 or whatever the exact number is—but what I came to realize is that there's only a few that really matter. And again, if you understand the dynamics between copper and iron, and then if those don't go well, you're going to lose magnesium. And once you start to accelerate the magnesium loss, then you've changed the oxidative stress dynamics in the body. You've changed energy dynamics. And so what I would have elected to do is focus on the critical few to have this significant metabolic impact. And it seems to be helping folks. Is it perfect? No, but it's pretty darn good. And it really gives people a workable game plan that allows them to take control of their lives. And I think that's what's been missing. What I really wanted to do— what I really sought to do in this process was I wanted to democratize healing. I wanted to transcend. Why do we need practitioners? We're smart boys and girls. We should be able to understand what to eat, how to support our nutrient needs. And that isn't to downplay the importance that the practitioners play, because they're the wonderful people. But I think a lot of our problems should be self-correcting. And again, if we can manage our stress, if we can manage our diet, if we can manage our magnesium burn rate, I think we can go a long way to helping each other get through our lives.
Kori Meloy That is so good. There's so many pieces of gold that you touch on, even that last little bit about if our bodies are actually capable of self-healing, self-correcting with the right tools, what kind of paradigm would we live in? And how much less would be outsourced constantly to authority figures or other people in order to just like go through this life and thrive? And one thing I've really picked up about you, Morley, is your ability to think critically. And my mentor, Michale Chatham, she was the first person that kind of talked to me about this idea of critical thinking. If someone is not able to critically think, it's their pursuit of an answer, needing an answer like right away, like one single answer, and they need that answer right away. But if you're able to think critically, you are able to kind of ponder and think and see what comes up. And that's exactly what has happened in your own trajectory. And so I would love to talk about just this idea of the iron story. You've brought up iron and just how pivotal the role is of copper in our body's ability to use iron. But what is the story of iron on our planet right now? And how did we get to a place where we are more overloaded with iron than maybe we used to be?
Morley Robbins Yeah. No, I'm happy to speak to that. And let me just comment real quick. You know, I wasn't always a critical thinker. You think, "Oh, gosh, he came out of the womb challenging his mom from day one." That was not my nature. I mean, I've been a rabble rouser. I'm a second born, so I don't follow rules very well. But I wouldn't say that in my youth, especially like in my collegiate years, I don't know that I was a really critical thinker. That evolved over time, and I think it's really exploded in the last probably 10 to 12 years. And I don't know that I know exactly what happened. Was it... I don't know what I was doing, but something changed. And I think I sort of know what it is. When I realized the magnitude of the problem, I realized I couldn't back away from it. Right? Let me rephrase it: I chose not to back away from it. And one of my one of my clients— 30-something individual with Lyme couldn't work, so he taught himself astrology. And so the consult started. And I'm going to get to your question about iron, Kori, don't worry, but let my mind wander for a bit. But he started the conversation, he said, "Morley, what what's your birthday?" I said, "Well, no one's ever asked for that, but it's the middle of November." He said, "I knew it." I said, "What did you know?" He said, "I knew you were a Scorpio." I said, "Well, how did you know I was a Scorpio?" He said, "Only a Scorpio would dig, dig, dig the way you have." He said, "But only a true Scorpio would take on the entire medical establishment and not back down." And that's basically what I've done. And that really gets to your question, Kori, about this iron issue. What we're supposed to believe— according to the World Health Organization most recent publication being 2012, where iron deficiency anemia is the number one nutrient deficiency on planet Earth. Right? We're supposed to believe that, right? Has the W.H.O. lost a little bit of an edge? Yeah, maybe in the last couple of years. But the thing is, it's a very well recognized nutrient deficiency. Iron deficiency. And the meme that runs medicine and nutrition is you're anemic and you're copper toxic. Right? We've heard that. It's so embedded in our psyche, we don't even question it.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins I questioned it because what's the number one element on planet Earth? It's called iron. 34% of the Earth's composition is iron. That's a lot of iron, folks.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins And prior to 2020, I would have argued that humans were the most evolved species. Now I'm not so sure. But for us to accept that iron deficiency anemia is legit, it means that the most evolved species on the planet has lost the ability to metabolize the number one element on the planet. That doesn't make any sense at all. And so I began to—at the very macro level—begin to question that. Then as I got into the research— and I can't tell you exactly— well, actually I do know what happened. I was a real student of stress because I was focusing on magnesium loss. And then I became obsessed with stress. And I was reading an article by an Italian iron researcher. And if you really want to understand iron, go to Italy. They understand it better than anybody else on the planet. But this Italian researcher said the greatest stress on planet earth is iron stress. I went, "Oh, my gosh. That's what's causing the magnesium burn rate is the iron is not being managed." Well, then I had to back in and find out who's in charge of iron? Only to find out that it's copper. And again, it gets into some very subtle nuances because in the world of traditional Chinese medicine, copper is the general and iron is the foot soldier. Well you don't have to be in the military to know there's a difference between a general and foot soldier. Right? And so then we get into the numbers. There's 100 milligrams of copper, ideally, in the human body. 100 milligrams fits on the head of a one inch stick pin. It's a really tiny little tiny bit of copper. And what are we supposed to have? Like 5,000 milligrams of iron. So it's 50-fold more iron. And it's like, oh my gosh. This little speck of copper is running this big phalanx of iron. And you start to really get into the nuance of it and you start to realize, wait a minute, there's another statistic that's running out there. It isn't just that iron deficiency is the number one nutrient deficiency. Turns out that for the last eight years, it turns out that copper deficiency has been the number one nutrient deficiency on the farm. Oh, wow. So that begins to change things. So if we don't have copper in the soil, it doesn't get in the plant, doesn't get in the animal, doesn't get in the human. And so then it begins to really change the whole dynamic. And then just to really make it more exciting— you guys want it exciting, right? So, Kori wanted to talk about iron. Oh, we're going to talk about iron. Every second of every day, every second—and we've been talking now for about 40 minutes. Every second of every day, we have to replace two and a half million red blood cells. Every second. It's 200 billion red blood cells in 24 hours. And that's 1%. So it's 200 billion times 100 is a really big number. But we have to replace over the course of 100 days. But there's this constant process of turning over red blood cells. Two and a half million per second. Click, click, click, click. Think of the sophistication of our physiology that it can keep track of that. Now, here's the part that's mind numbing. Two and a half million red blood cells a second. 200 billion every 24 hours. And the amount of iron needed to replace 200 billion red blood cells is 25 milligrams of iron. 25. Now there's a catch. There's a catch. Wait, there's more. 24 of those 25 milligrams come from a recycling system. And the formal name is called the reticulo endothelial system. Yes. It took me two years to figure out what reticuloendothelial is. It means recycling. And so I'm not slow. It's just that cleverly hidden. Maybe I am that slow. But the thing is 24 milligrams needs to be recycled. Only one milligram a day is needed from our diet. Now, this is not me making this stuff up. This is the greatest iron biologists on the planet: Robert Crichton, Douglas Kell, Gutteridge and Halliwell, Ed Weinberg. I mean, these are the top of the pecking order of iron biologists. All agree on we just need one milligram of iron a day. And trust me, we get way more than that on a daily basis.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins I mean, I was born in 1952. I would be embarrassed to tell you what I ate growing up. I mean, just staggering amounts of cereal and sugars and things like that. And so the thing is if we don't know about the recycling system—and most people do not and most practitioners do not—then they're led to believe, oh, we got to keep pounding down this iron, when in fact, it's not working. And so if we're pounding down iron, it means we're suppressing copper, which means we're building iron in the liver, which means we're building iron in our tissue. And that's the swirling insanity of iron metabolism in the human body. And no one's thinking about this. And one of the most important things for folks to keep track of is the fact that we use blood tests. Right? So iron will show low in the blood work. But blood work is not tissue. We've been led to believe it's the same, but it's not. And so a very important scientist named Bruce Ames— world renowned biochemist. At one point during his career— he was at Berkeley for decades, but at the peak of his career, he was the most quoted scientist on planet Earth. So when E.F. Hutton speaks, let's listen. And so in 2004, Bruce Ames and David Killilea, his principal investigator, did a study. And what they found—2004—is that there's ten times more iron in the tissue than there is in the blood. Ten times.
Kori Meloy Wow.
Morley Robbins Yeah, there is a wow to it. And so what are all decisions made based on anemia? Based on blood tests? There's no blood test that measures tissue levels of iron. Now I've got some colleagues in Florida who are now using Tesla 2 MRIs to begin to score livers, pancreas, heart, brain. And they can begin to identify the amount of iron toxicity there is in these organs, which is a wonderful breakthrough. But it'll be decades before that's adopted. But the point is, people have been trained like circus bears to believe that they are, in fact, anemic, that they are in fact copper toxic. And they don't know what foods have copper, much less whether they should be eating them. And they do know that they're supposed to be eating more iron. And to me, there's no more vulnerable population than pregnant women and their fetuses. I don't lose sleep, but if I were, that would be a group that I would be worried about. But the misunderstandings about iron fortification, iron supplementation is a crime. It's a crime against humanity. And we can go into some of the details as you wish. But the whole confusion about iron is global. And I think it's— I so appreciate having conversations like this, because yet a new audience gets introduced to these pearls of truth that have been glossed over for almost a century now. And I think it's time to dust off the truth and let people know what's really going on. So hopefully, Kori, that gives you more to work with from your question.
Kori Meloy Yeah. And I think we'll even go into detail later in the podcast as we talk more about pregnancy, but I just can't even tell you how many messages I received. I posted that we were going to interview you on the podcast, and so many people reached out saying, "Oh my gosh, I've been waiting for this conversation. Back when I was pregnant, I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia, got put on iron supplements, iron pills, and then ended up hemorrhaging or bleeding a profuse amount." And so there's clearly more to the story. And I'm so excited to talk about it.
Morley Robbins Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, the tragedy is people don't know about the research of Philip Steer. He's a UK obstetrician and absolute genius. And he did a study in 1995 that looked at 150,000 live births. I would have been impressed if you'd done 1,500. 150,000 live births. And what he wanted to correlate was what is the hemoglobin level of the mom upon delivery of the child correlated with APGAR scores. Healthy weight babies. They wanted to see what's the sweet spot. That's a really basic question to ask. And in the world of iron biology, a woman who's not pregnant, her hemoglobin should be around 12.5 to 13.5. That's considered normal. When a woman gets pregnant, first half of the pregnancy, not a lot changes. It's going to stay probably in the low 12s. But then as the pregnancy progresses, Mother Nature has a plan. She really does. I think Mother Nature's pretty smart. And it's called chemo dilution is the term that was coined back in the 1920s. But basically what happens is the hemoglobin level drops in the mom's body. Where is it going? It's going over to the baby. It's not complicated. And so what did Dr. Steer discover? He discovered that the healthiest babies were born to moms whose hemoglobin was between 8.5 and 9.5. That's considered heretical in the conventional era because when it gets below 12, birthing practitioners get nervous. When it gets below ten, they become unglued. And they're very quick to advise their clients to not just take supplements. I've had two clients—a week before they delivered—get iron infusions. Both women almost died and both babies almost died.
Kori Meloy Wow. Oh, my gosh.
Morley Robbins And this is happening all the time now. This is a crisis around the globe, and not enough people know to question. Wait a minute. What does Mother Nature think about this? And there's all sorts of flexing of muscles of the practitioners. And they're just doing what they've been trained to do. But that doesn't mean— I think what's happened is practitioners have confused their training with the truth, and they're not the same. And so I think people need to be asking better questions and demanding better answers. And if the practitioner does not know about Philip Steer and 1995 research, then that would be a great starting point for dialogue to say, "Well, let's talk about what was learned in England during that pivotal study." And this idea that you need more iron to prevent hemorrhaging, it's like, no. That is just— I don't know where those conclusions have been drawn, but they're not supported by the research. And it's an uncomfortable conversation to have with clients. It's an even more uncomfortable conversation to have with practitioners, but it needs to take place because we need to challenge this mindset, this mindless adoption of certain standards that are not serving the public well. So it really needs to be challenged.
Kori Meloy Yeah, I mean, I'd love to go even into more detail about that and then come back later to some other questions. But what's interesting is this study that you referenced, Steer— we'll link that in the show notes, too, but it's so interesting because I've sent that resource to quite a few people and the typical response— and I'm sure you hear this all the time and this is where it comes down to like what are we really doing during pregnancy with who we are outsourcing our power to? Because a lot of moms feel so anxious and uncomfortable about talking to their midwife about this and even just showing them the study that they're like, "I'm just going to maybe just take the iron supplements." It's almost more uncomfortable to challenge someone who's holistic. And a lot of our audience are home birthing and kind of like midwifery care kind of women. And there's also a ton of people who listen to our podcast who are more in the obstetric, I guess— I don't even know the word. You guys get what I'm saying. But you would think like, okay, maybe it would be better talking to a midwife than maybe your OB about this information and people would feel a little less threatened. But you, Morley, you know more than anybody probably how there's still kind of a flex of authority. And there's an interesting response that I've seen midwives take when they're challenged on this. They're like, "Oh don't you dare challenge my—
Morley Robbins They get very defensive.
Kori Meloy Yeah it's interesting to watch the emotional reaction and then just even that power play between mom and midwife when you would think that would be such a more supportive environment.
Morley Robbins Yeah, well let's take it down a notch. Let's go into the mother's womb. Let's talk about the forgotten organ, the placenta.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins And a really important researcher for your followers to know about is a guy named Harry McArdle. Absolute genius. He's based in Scotland. Aberdeen, Scotland. Doesn't get more Scottish than Aberdeen. And the guy is brilliant, but he's the guy—Harry McArdle—he's the guy that discovered a very important protein that nobody talks about. And so people who may have heard me talk before have certainly heard me talk about ceruloplasmin. It's a very important protein. It's a beast of a protein. Plays many different functions in our body. Well, it turns out that there's three proteins that are found in the placenta of the mother's womb. One of them is ceruloplasmin. The other one is called hephaestin like Hephaestus from the— you know, the iron lord. Hephaestin. And there's a third one called zyklopen. These three proteins all express the ability to move copper and iron between the mom and the fetus. There's nothing more important than that because we live on a planet with oxygen in the air. And 21% of the air we breathe is oxygen. Guess what? It's a poison. Oxygen is not our friend. And what's really important for the moms-to-be to understand is that there's nothing more vulnerable than the developing fetus. And my two favorite quotations around pregnancy— one is by Mildred Seelig, who is a world renowned physician who was an expert in magnesium. And her famous signature statement was, "Pregnancy is a magnesium deficient state from stem to stern." The other quotation that I absolutely love is by a famous Alpine physiologist, his name was Sir Joseph Barcroft who cut his teeth in the thirties studying mountain climbers. And then in his sixties and seventies, he decided to turn his attention to pregnancy. His famous saying is, "Pregnancy is Mt. Everest in utero." It's a great statement. It's like, what is he talking about? Well, it turns out that the amount of oxygen in the womb in the first trimester is between 1-3%. It's an aerobic environment. Turns out that the fetus is a parasite. It's an anaerobic parasite feeding on an aerobic mom. And that's the truth. Well, here's the catch. How do you make energy anaerobically? You've got to have ten enzymes. And of those ten enzymes, eight of them require magnesium. That's what Dr. Seelig was talking about. The reason why pregnancy is a magnesium deficiency is because you're making energy anaerobically because it's in this low oxygen environment. It's like, oh my gosh, this is getting fascinating now. And is any of this taught in practitioner school? No, no. You would think that they would be giving the doctors and the midwives these spikes and cleats and things to know how to help the mom through this pregnancy. But they don't do that. And so there's total confusion about this and so the— why is iron and copper so important on a planet with oxygen? Well, iron is a waiter. It carries oxygen. 70% of the iron in our body is in hemoglobin carrying oxygen. Another 10% is in our muscles, myoglobin. So 80% of our iron—enormous amount of our iron—is a waiter. But no one ever talks about the chef, do they? And who's the chef? Who's slicing and dicing the oxygen, turning it into water to release the energy so we can exist? It's copper. I call it the cuisine artist. And so the world has been trained to focus on the optics of iron, but they don't know about the chef. They don't realize that it's copper that's enabling energy production. And in the placenta, the movement of iron and copper between the mother and the baby is absolutely pivotal for the health and well-being of both. And yet no one's talking about it. And what's the focus? Well, what's your vitamin D status? Or what's your iron status? It's like, well, that's— okay, I understand you're concerned about that, but why don't we focus on the energy side of the equation. And there just is not enough attention being given to the energetics of producing babies and the energetics of recovery for the mom and the postpartum depression. Anybody wonder where that's coming from? It's not coming from Mars. It's coming from a mom who probably didn't have enough copper to begin with, donates this enormous download of copper in the third trimester. So the three of us have livers that have about seven milligrams of copper. When we were born to healthy moms, our livers had 70 milligrams of copper. It's an enormous difference. It's a tenfold difference. And so in the modern era, I don't think women have that. I don't think they have the mineral capacity that they're supposed to have. No offense. Again, they're the fourth or fifth generation in their family to be minerally depleted. And they give whatever they've got. Again, the myth on the planet is babies are born perfect. No. Babies take whatever they can get. And so the baby takes whatever it can get and the mom gives up all the copper she's got and she gets depressed because of it, because she doesn't have enough for energy production. And what is depression? It's not an emotional state. It's an energetic state. She can't make energy to respond to her environment. And so it just— unfortunately, it isn't rocket science.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins I mean, there's some very basic principles that need to be understood. And again, this is the work of Weston A. Price is instrumental. I mean, he was a man and his wife, she was way ahead of their time in terms of their research, what they were able to document. And I think if Dr. Price had lived a little bit longer, he probably would have discovered the importance of copper. I really believe that because he was all over retinol. Retinol and copper are just magical together. And so I think there needs to be more awareness about the copper retinol dynamic and maybe not so much concern about the iron vitamin D side. And that's a bitter pill for some people because they're just convinced that that's where the sun rises and sets. But I think when you really study healthy fetal development, when you really study healthy maternal development, you're going to see a lot of research around copper and retinol. It's inescapable. And that's not necessarily adopted in the modern era.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins And I'm such an expert. I've given birth to so many children, right?
Fallon Lee In fairness, we still consider you an expert, childbirth ability or not. Well, it's fascinating to me. I mean, I've had three children now, but two— well, actually, three children were born when I was kind of a consumer in the functional medicine sphere. And not once did someone address or bring up my copper levels or mineral status at all, despite the fact that I was in and out of physician's offices all the time. And I love that you brought up Dr. Price because I was thinking of a story from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I think it was a community in the Swiss Alps or somewhere in Switzerland— their nutrients in their dairy were just astronomically higher than what we would see today. And turns out, the hay that the cows were feeding off of was very green and very high in chlorophyll, which is a source of copper. And so that just was so fascinating to me that you mentioned, Morley, that you really think Dr. Price would have been kind of a spearheader of copper prioritization had he had his mind wrapped around that. But it's almost like he did it without knowing it, which is what's so interesting.
Morley Robbins Oh, he did. Absolutely.
Fallon Lee Yeah. So I love that story. I always think about that and gosh, it's just cool to see how nature plays out. And we do want to keep talking about the pregnancy conversation. And I know we kind of touched on these women that have "low iron" at the end of pregnancy and then they are either told they are too risky for a home birth or they're encouraged by a provider to take X-Y-Z steps. And I'd love to hear, how would you encourage women that are in that scenario that really want to stand up for themselves and for their preferences, especially when it comes to home birth and isolation. How do you encourage a woman to advocate for herself regardless of her birthing location? How do pregnant women take on the confidence to sometimes help educate their caregivers and stand by what they foresee as a healthy, safe birth?
Morley Robbins No, it's a wonderful question. And it takes a certain amount of resolve to stand up to authority, but I think what's important for people to realize is that there is compelling research to challenge the status quo. Just because the midwife says it or just because the obstetrician says it, doesn't mean it's an absolute lock. It just means that's an opinion. That's what they were taught. One of our friends is— they're Amish, and they were having their ninth child, and they're just a lovely couple. And the most recent baby was what you would call an "RCP baby". They've been following the philosophy of the Root Cause Protocol. And what the dad was sharing with me was he said number nine was completely different. He said it was like he had butter all over his body. He'd never seen that before. Again, that was from the mom was really taking the cod liver oil and being very careful about it. And at one point, the dad asked the midwife, "Well, aren't you going to bathe the baby?" Because it's covered with this butter? And the midwife, who apparently was pretty switched on, she said, "You know, you probably didn't need my help producing this baby, did you?" He said, "No." She says, "You probably don't need my help then getting ready for his life." And he was like, he said, "You mean we're going to leave him alone?" She said, "Yeah, let's leave him alone." And he was so ecstatic because that's not the rigor necessarily in the Amish community. But I think, to your point about what is it that the women need to do? I think what's really missing is I don't think there's enough communication with our parents and grandparents to find out what was the standard of care? What did we do? I think within our— certainly within the last 75 years, having a baby is becoming a medical event. It's not. It's called natural. It's a very natural process. It's been taking place on the planet for a long time. Are there complications that can take place? Of course there are. But this idea that we need to be in a sterile setting and— Dr. Liz and I have enjoyed the Netflix series Call the Midwife. And it's a fascinating— and I'm sure you're familiar with it, but it starts in the mid-fifties. And where we got to is like early sixties, mid-sixties. The progression, how midwifery changed in that decade is striking where they went from just showing up in their uniforms and, "I just need a bucket of hot water and things like that." And now they're showing up in their gowns and they've got all this stuff and it's a very sterile environment. Now they're in an institution. That's all within a ten year period. And so I think we need to really question is that necessary? And I think there really needs to be a wholesale— I think the birthing community—of which I'm sure you all are actively a part of—needs to begin to really challenge some of these assumptions that have been made about what— to your point, Fallon, why doesn't anyone measure my copper status? When was the last time someone measured your magnesium status when you were pregnant? Again, if it's a magnesium deficient state from stem to stern, it would be a good thing to know what's the magnesium RBC as soon as we find out the woman's pregnant all the way to the delivery? That would be a really good thing to know? And what do we do? Oh, we wait for the mom to go into pre-eclampsia and then we come riding in with our white horse, hoping to give an IV and save the day. Seriously, do people really believe that that's the way to do this? And what is preeclampsia, anyway? It's oxidative stress on steroids. Why is the oxidative stress building? Well maybe because oxygen is not being managed right? Maybe because serotonin is building inside the mother's womb? Why isn't serotonin being turned off? Because there's not enough available copper and da da da da da. And again, these basic principles apparently are not being taught in practitioner school. And I think that's unfortunate. And we're left with these types of switched on conversations. But people need to know that if they challenge the status quo, they're not going to die. It's a little uncomfortable. It is a little uncomfortable. But you stand your ground and you say, "Well, why don't you show me the research that backs up your position? I'd just like to see it. I'd like to read it. I'd like to understand it." And if the practitioner gets defensive, well, that's a real chink in the armor, because I think if they are really well trained and confident, they should be happy to share their information. I mean, don't you think? I think what's happened, though, is we now know— you know, two years into the psychodrama of the world, we know that there's more to the story. Now we know to ask more questions, and I can't think of a better question to ask than—at the point of producing a baby—what's the right diet? What's the right nutrient focus? What are the right priorities? What kind of testing should we really be doing? Maybe this copper thing is important, but I'd love to know what my ceruloplasmin is, Doctor, could you tell me? I think it would be really good for people to know that. And again, it's not to be a provocateur. I'm sharing basic research. And when you find out that people like Harry McArdle have been talking about this for 30 years, it's like, wow, where does that knowledge go? And I think that the women and their partners who are having these families, I think they want to be empowered. I think they want to know, "What's the waterfront of knowledge that I need to know? I don't need to be an obstetrician, but I need to know the basics." And you know, the article that I sent out to Kori and Fallon—I'll get it out to you as well—it's a fascinating article about oxytocin. I'm not going to talk about it, but it's like it's like, oh my gosh, oxy- oxytocin. It maybe has something to do with this oxygen thing. It has everything to do with the oxygen thing, especially inside the womb. And it's like, I didn't know that. And it was just this amazing article that began to introduce the delicacy of oxygen becoming water to produce energy to support the birthing process. And it's like we don't need to turn everyone into obstetrical physiologists, but I think we need to turn the parents into mineralists who understand that there is a dynamic here, that there is an energy process that needs to be supported, that there may be more to the story than just vitamin D and iron. And to feel comfortable and confident. If we can't even have dialogue about it, then there's something wrong. But what's the other side of the story? Why can't we talk about this retinol copper thing? Why can't we talk about magnesium? And I think it's important for people to feel at ease with trying to better understand more of the dynamic because at the end of the day, who doesn't want a healthy baby? Who doesn't want a healthy recovery? Who doesn't want to get back to sleep and start producing breast milk? And what's the bulk of the breast milk? It's retinol. That's really what breast milk is. And so the baby gets this enormous download of copper in the third trimester— big bolus, 70 milligrams. That's a lot of copper, folks. What's the other download? Retinol for mom in the breast milk. But I mean we don't talk about it in those terms. But that retinol and that copper form the backbone of the infant's immune system for the first two years of life. Well, that's beautiful.
Kori Meloy Wow.
Morley Robbins And I think there's a certain grace that we should all understand those dynamics so that— it's not to minimize the involvement of the practitioners. It's to support them with your own understanding of what's going on and to enhance their understanding of what's taking place. I think that's a very reasonable approach to take to this miracle called life.
Kori Meloy Totally. And also just this idea of not waiting, not even living out this paradigm where you're waiting for this test and then this emergency of like, "Oh, what do we gotta do depending on these test results?" Like these lab values. As opposed to, "What can we proactively be doing?" Number one, conversations. Number two, speaking with our provider or midwife about what we're eating. And just like I know my own personal experience with my midwife, we just had a conversation in the beginning of just like, hey, what does my what does my nutrition look like right now? And I told her I wasn't taking prenatals. I told her I'm really prioritizing animal-based and I was taking raw beef liver. I explained to her like, "Hey, this is what I'm getting." And so when the conversation came up where she was like, "Do you want to go get these tests done?" I was like, "No. I don't feel a need to get those tests done because they don't resonate with what I know I value as far as what my pregnancy expresses." And so we just omitted those tests and it was never even an issue because she trusted that my body is doing what it's supposed to do because she knew that I was laying the foundation. And that is just a really important conversation to have. And also, I love that you talked about breast milk and then just this conversation of prenatal nutrition in general. How much smarter nature is in being able to show us what is the optimal way that we can be providing our body with the foundational pieces so we can just trust our body to do the rest. And so I wonder what you would say as far as proactively in the beginning—or even better, before pregnancy—preparing our body to be able to have those tools— do you have some favorite foods? You have some— you have plenty of resources on this, of course, that we're going to link in the show notes as well. But like is a prenatal something that you recommend that women are taking? And beef liver— is that pretty high on the priority list? I'd love to hear you talk about food during pregnancy.
Morley Robbins Again, I think the tenets of the Weston A. Price community are very solid. And so I think that, again, in the research that Dr. Price did, they were able to identify the lengths that these communities went to to prepare their young adults for having children. Again, nutrient dense foods. So I think that's very, very important to the process. Again, there really are babies out there called the RCP babies, and it's very comical. But these women say the pregnancies are completely different. They don't have the kinds of challenges. They don't have the food cravings. The deliveries go differently. And that's not to say anything about the RCP; it's Mother Nature is really what we're talking about. And it's just making sure that the nutrient dense foods are given a priority. And I can't explain peanut butter and pickles— that's a side of pregnancy I've never understood. But again, the mom does need real solid nutrition in order to provide the nutrients for the offspring. I think the issue about the prenatals— I don't think the run-of-the-mill prenatal makes sense. Again, there is— the B vitamins are too synthetic. There's usually too much calcium. There's usually way too much iron relative to the copper that's there. The calcium to magnesium ratio is usually off. I think it's North American Spice. I think they have something that a number of people have found to be helpful.
Kori Meloy I love that brand.
Morley Robbins Yeah. Potent pak. Potent pak. That is one that a number of people that I've heard over the years have found that to be very, very helpful. But again, I think people need to be really sensitive to this iron issue more so than they realize. And one of my friends is a lactation consultant, and I was surprised when she schooled me up and said that if you want to increase milk production, do a blood donation. And I went, "Wow." And think about it. Think about the logistics. So if we've got this hemodilution taking place— hemoglobin's leaving mom, going to the baby, right? What's Mother Nature trying to do? Trying to get iron out of the mom to allow for more milk, the production of milk. And again, it sounds almost heretical, but to do a blood donation to increase milk production, it's like, that's genius. And so what's really interesting is there's a fundamental decision that needs to be made inside our body everyday, and it's actually made in the bone marrow of our long bones. And there are these cells there that are called nurse cells— that's really their name. They're called nurse cells. And they have to make a fundamental decision. Are we going to make bone? Are we going to make blood? Bone, blood, bone, blood. And we think, "Wait a minute. They're already keeping track of two and a half million red blood cells a second. But they've got to keep track of this bone thing." But it's like, oh, lactation or blood... It's absolutely amazing when you think about it. And so I think the body is easily overwhelmed when you start giving it too much iron and it starts to dull the wisdom of the body. So what's important for the listeners to understand is that people have heard the term "you're copper toxic", and that's based on a blood test. Well, it turns out that 1% of the copper in our body is in our blood. 1%. Where's 47%? 47% of the copper in the human body is in the bone marrow, hanging out with nurse cells. Another 27% is with the muscles. So 74% of our copper is bone and muscle trying to figure out what to do. And no one's talking about that. And so I think it's really important for the listeners out there to really step back and say, "Wow, I've got some things I need to learn, and I need to take the time to listen to these types of conversations." You know, by all means, get the book Cure Your Fatigue so you get a better foundational understanding of how does somebody actually make energy? And where is copper in that whole equation? And really begin to create a backdrop of understanding so that you can ask better questions, so you can have better dialogue with your birthing practitioner. And again, it's not to be combative. It's really meant to be— it's a discovery. I really want to understand what the tradeoffs are. I want to be relaxed about it, and I want you to be relaxed about it. But I think we need to have dialogue about this. Because I think what's happening—and I've seen it many, many times—couples are all prepared for this beautiful home experience only to find out that, "Well, you know, hemoglobin is not 12. You can't do it at home." Like what? And where these edicts come from— I just think people need to begin to challenge that. And then if they're— and again, this is easier said than done, but if you're really committed to home birth, well, then you follow through with a home birth, whether you have a practitioner there or not. And that's a bold thing to say. And again, it's not meant to be critical of practitioners. It's just you have to decide what side of nature are you going to come down on? And to what extent do you believe in your body's ability to take care of itself? And I think that's where there's a lot of vulnerability now is people are so doubtful about their natural ability to stay in homeostasis. It's like, well, it's actually pretty straightforward. Once you understand an ancestral diet, once you understand what minerals do, once you understand what fat does in the diet, it gets a lot easier. But again, we've got to work our way through those transitions.
Kori Meloy I was just to share a not personal story of what happened to me, but my friend, who I'll keep anonymous was going through this situation a few months ago where her iron on a lab test—in my opinion as far as what we can see—was kind of reflecting normal physiology. And the midwife, of course, had her standards that she wanted to answer to or maybe had to answer to, and so my friend actually got on the phone with Morley himself, and he was just incredibly encouraging to her. And it really came down to him asking her, "Do you trust your body?" as maybe one of the top priority questions to ask yourself. Which is so funny because that's not typically a question you're asking yourself when it's all heightened and your amygdala is firing and there's all these rules and things. And when you asked her that, it was just really impactful. And what she ended up doing was they, I guess, ended up terminating the care with that midwife or vice versa. And she ended up having her home birth and it was perfect and beautiful and baby was so healthy. And yeah, she just went back and asked herself like, "Have I been nourishing and taking care of myself during this pregnancy and do I know that my body is going to do what it was created and innately designed to do?" And she did. She decided to take that leap towards trust, and that was so impactful for me to watch as a friend of mine. And I just so appreciate that you got on the phone with her and just kind of put the power back in her hands, is what you did. You didn't even say, “Well, this is what I would do." Like you literally you literally put the power back in her hands so she could make an informed decision on her own. Really cool.
Morley Robbins And I really think that's what everyone needs to do is face that same decision. And again, are there complications? Of course there are. We know that happens. But I think it's— we're at a point where we need to take a bolder stance to step in your own greatness and be willing to take the actions to support that.
Fallon Lee I would love to hear, just as a kind of functional answer, because I know a lot of women who sort of stumble into this realm and sort of start to realize that prenatals may not be the best approach, and they want to prioritize whole food nutrition, what would you encourage them to prioritize? So this conversation is fresh to me. I have a really dear friend who's pregnant and she is kind of dabbling in this idea of switching from synthetic to whole food supplementation. And so I kind of sat down and was looking at the nutritional profile of prenatals versus just like beef liver, even dessicated. And honestly, you're not missing a ton. And, really, once I started kind of breaking it down, it almost seems like you could replace a prenatal with beef liver, vitamin E, magnesium, maybe cod liver oil, and like a vitamin C supplement. And that would almost give you really everything that you need. I'd love to hear if you have anything to add to that, because I think— my fear is that women will hear this, that a prenatal may not be the most supportive thing, and they go, "Okay, well, I won't do that." But then they don't look for that other nourishment. So I really want to make sure that we're giving very just attainable advice. And I get that each woman—to an extent—will have some bio-individual needs. But as a whole, what would you encourage women to prioritize if they do want to make the shift away from prenatals?
Morley Robbins I think it's important to to think like your ancestors. It sounds glib, but it's important. Are you eating food that your great grandmother would recognize? That's a good place to start. And we would never advocate eliminating something without replacing it with something more natural. And that's really what—when we talk about the RCP, the protocol itself—it's really making sure that people are getting nutrient dense support in their diet. And again, the importance of the minerals, the importance of the B vitamins, the importance of retinol— I mean, it's hard to emphasize how important retinol is, particularly in light of the preoccupation with vitamin D. Again, we take the stance that there's a difference between real vitamin C and ascorbic acid. That's a day-long debate that we can have. But the point is that there are very specific food choices that people can make to get these nutrients. And again, when you're talking about eating oysters or beef liver or other organ meats, or you're making bone broth and things of that nature, you're going to expose the body to a very nutrient intense array of vittles, as we call them. And I think that's important. And again, we don't think about how refined and dumbed down our food system is. It's a very different world than what our ancestors grew up with. And again, we don't have the luxury of each one of us having a homestead and having five acres that we can grow our food on. We don't have that luxury. But what we've got to do is take advantage of the farmers who are very devoted to this and make sure we know what they're doing to feed their soil, to feed their crop, to feed their animals. And here's an example: eating eggs that are produced by chickens that are eating organic corn and soy— well, that's not progress. Chickens are not supposed to be eating organic corn and soy. They're supposed to be eating grass and bugs. That's really what chickens are designed to do. So we have to kind of go through this reprogramming about what is real food. And I well remember the debate with my oldest daughter around this very topic. And finally, in a moment of desperation, she said, "Well, what's the label look like on real food?" I said, "Okay, now we can solve this problem. There is no label on real food." She went, "I get it. I understand now." And again, it was a very sincere desire on her part to really understand what this real food thing is. Now it's like, okay, so now she's got this beautiful urban garden. Herbs, get it? "Herb-an" garden. She's in the middle of Boston and just thriving and doing great. So it's just allowing people the discovery of what is real food and allowing their body to recognize what real food is. And does it take more time? Yes. And does it get frustrating finding real food? Yes. You know, there are some pundits out there who won't even eat out now. I'm not going to name them by name, but there are luminaries in the field of nutrition and medicine who they simply will not eat food in a restaurant anymore. Well, that's a bold stance to take. Dr. Liz and I aren't quite at that point, but we recognize that we're compromising our physiology because, again, we don't want to know the corners that have been cut in the restaurants and your listeners don't either. But they have been cut, and it's just— we live in challenging times and the beauty of conversations like this is people get a waterfront of understanding about what's going on and then they've got to decide what they're really committed to, because 100% of your listeners are not going to do 100% of what we're saying. It's just not going to happen. And at some level, I don't blame them. But I think if the focus is about producing healthy babies, then I would put a lot of emphasis on making sure you're eating real food and you're being real careful about the process of preparing that. So, again, it's all choice. It's all our choice.
Kori Meloy I love that you call it choice. That's something that— that conversation comes up a lot, actually, in just the online space as we see a lot of victim mindset. And I get it, I've been there. I can see my old self and go, oh, that was a victim state of believing that life is happening to me and there's not really anything I can do about it. But what can we do to take full advantage of— yes, these are my life circumstances and how can I make choices—life is a series of choices—where I can support my body best? And provide a— create and curate and nurture a healthier generation? And that brings me to the conversation of babies being born and then growing up life outside of the womb. One of our most common questions was why we are also seeing this kind of epidemic of anemic babies. And I wonder if that is also just mom not being able to have enough copper in her diet and then just being— is that just kind of history repeating itself, basically?
Morley Robbins If we really wanted to geek out, we could take one of Dr. McArdle's diagrams and just show people—just in the placenta—the activity of the ceruloplasmin, hephaestin, and zyklopen. And it's like three different subway systems that are needed to manage the movement of these metals. And what we don't really know, because I don't think the testing is there, is— what's important for the listeners to understand that when we're working with copper enzymes, there's something called level. And there's something called activity. So think of level is like someone's height. I'm six feet tall. That's my level. But you can't tell by looking at me how intelligent I am. Right? And the thing is, in a lot of the testing that's done in the world of copper metabolism, all the optics are on height. And not about IQ. And what we don't know is what is the IQ of ceruloplasmin, the IQ of hephaestin, the IQ of zyklopen. And not just the mom, but the baby. It's a big deal. Call me crazy. I think it's maybe one of the most important series of enzyme functions to understand. If we're really seeking to optimize the production of healthy babies, I'd like to know how iron and copper is being regulated by those three enzymes just because they're of paramount importance. And if we're now facing a crisis with children being born who are deemed anemic, what that tells me is that they're copper deficient. They didn't get the download. They didn't get the download from mom maybe because she didn't have it. I don't know. Or is it because there's so much iron in her system from the prenatals that she's been taking that that's affecting? And these are very uncomfortable questions to be asking. But the thing is, as soon as we use the phrase, "that person is anemic", that means in the blood. And we need to think back, what's going on in the tissue level? What's the recycling program? How is the recycling program working in this fetus or this newborn baby? Do we even know? Do they ever even do a basic blood test to find out what the different levels of copper are? Copper, the ceruloplasmin. Do we know what hemoglobin is versus serum iron versus ferritin? Do we know what vitamin A versus vitamin D is in the newborn? Boy, those are basic parameters that would be really helpful to have a working knowledge of what's the context? What's the rationale for why there might be anemia in this child? And again, it's anemia in the blood. Let's pull back and say, "Could there, in fact, be an overload in the tissue?" And that's what I would argue, is that that's probably what the crisis is, is that the child is, in fact, overloaded with iron. And my working hypothesis around autism is that the child is— their liver is full of iron. There's not enough copper there, not adequate levels of copper. The child gets exposed to a shot, which has a lot of chemicals in it. A liver full of iron can't clear the chemicals. And then you've got oxidative stress. And it's not rocket science to Google autism, oxidative stress. And that's not a criticism. It's just a statement of fact that these children are being produced and they have a disproportionate representation of metals in their body, but especially in their liver. And I think there needs to be more focus on that and more awareness about these other enzymes that are meant to manage and regulate the flow of metals and gasses in the body.
Kori Meloy You've probably already thought of this, but it just dawned on me that in— back in my research of jabs or shots, learning the statistic that the highest population of autism is an African-American boys. And so it makes me wonder if—in especially firstborns—and so it makes me wonder with African African-American skin, darker skin needing more copper, if that would make them even more vulnerable to being iron overloaded as babies, and then they get the jab and then— that makes a lot of sense. Is that something you've thought about?
Morley Robbins I haven't thought about it, but it certainly intuitively makes sense. And I think that that's the kind of higher order thinking that we need to be doing is saying it isn't necessarily a disease; it's that maybe we don't have a proper working knowledge of what the mineral requirements are, the nutrient requirements. And think about it from that standpoint as well.
Kori Meloy Yeah. And speaking of the skin thing, I've heard you talk about melanin. And what is it— the needs for copper goes up? What did you tell me?
Morley Robbins Well, one of my Amish friends encouraged me to read these books by Pat Coleby. She's a famous Australian animal farmer. She wrote four books. Natural Good Care, Natural Sheep Care, Natural Cattle Care, Natural Horse Care. And they are four of the most important books I've ever read, because they really helped me understand what was going on. But in each of the books, she talks about the fact that any animal that is copper deficient has parasites. Any animal that has parasites is copper deficient. She goes on further in the book to talk about research that was done in Japan during the 1960s— I've not found the original research. One of these days I will; I'm a pretty persistent guy. In this research, they were studying the copper requirements for animals with black hair. Black cat. Black dog. Black sheep. Right? Black Angus. Black horse. Gorillas. And any human that had black hair: Asians, Malaysians, Africans. And the melanin requirement to support the black hair is enormous. What they discovered is that any animal with black hair needs six times more copper in their diet than an animal that doesn't have black hair. That's an enormous difference. Six times more copper. Which comes back, Kori, to your comment about the African-American children. Again, is there legitimacy to that? I don't know, but it's raising some pretty powerful and provocative questions. And the thing is that the copper is M.I.A. It's not in the farming system the way it used to be. And so we're really bumping up against some stark reality here. And again, our ancestors grew up knowing that nuts and seeds and sea fish and organ meats, things like that— yeah, they've got copper. We don't need to worry about it. Well, you need to worry about it now because the food system has changed. It isn't what it was. The food system today is not what our great great grandparents knew it to be. So I think the whole dynamic of melanin is profoundly important, and again, it's playing in the background. Who knew? And we don't think about that when we're ordering our latte. You know, what color is my hair? But it's important to realize that we have biological requirements. And so then if you're working with people who do have black hair—regardless of their ethnicity—then you know they have a biological need for copper that supersedes anything you've ever seen before. And it's just so central to our physiology, but we haven't been trained to think that way. And so that's what these types of conversations do is help to really spark that awareness.
Fallon Lee Morley, this has been a fantastic conversation, and I have confidence we could talk for another several hours, but we do want to honor your time, and we just so appreciate you just sharing your wisdom with us. For those listening, you may have heard us reference RCP or Root Cause Protocol. Please go look that up. Morley created this protocol, and I'm actually currently dabbling in it a bit after getting my Full Monty back. And I mean, goodness, I can't say enough good things. And in truth, a lot of you listeners are probably doing about half of the protocol without even knowing it, because the principles are very much relevant to what Kori and I teach and talk about in her course and my resources. But Morley, we just want to thank you so much for coming on. We will absolutely link all of your books, the protocol. I mean, goodness, there's so many things that we need to share with our audience that you have just created and brought to this space. So we just want to thank you so much for sharing your time, your wisdom with us, and we're just so honored to have had you on today, so we appreciate that.
Morley Robbins Well, absolutely. And really, time flies, right? And certainly if there's value in continuing the dialogue, happy to do that. What I find is that there are many situations where maybe it's important to have a chance to have a Q&A because I know this type of discussion will generate questions. I guarantee that. And if that would be of benefit to your community, happy to do that, because I think we've covered a lot of ground, but in some respects, it feels like we're just getting started.
Fallon Lee Absolutely. Yes, we will pocket that idea. Actually after this episode launches, potentially coming back with sort of a part two to break down in more detail a lot of the concepts that we just kind of scratched the surface of today. So thank you so much for suggesting that because again, we do appreciate your time and we would love to have you on, I mean, as frequently as we can make work because this has been a great conversation.
Morley Robbins I think I think your listeners might get a little tired, but I've never met a question I didn't enjoy. And I want to make sure people feel that they're at liberty to ask the tough questions because if they can ask—in this dialogue—some tough questions, they're going to feel more comfortable to do it when they're working with the practitioners. So that's really one of the values of that kind of exchange.
Kori Meloy Totally.
Morley Robbins It's been an absolute delight, and you guys are very easy to chat with. Appreciate that very much. And hopefully this will have been a benefit to your community.
Kori Meloy Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on and we will see you guys in the next episode.