Copper is key in burning fat | Hacker News Reader

Copper is key in burning fat

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205 pointsupen173 comments

Unless you suffer from a disease that prevents the absorption of copper, I would be very careful with supplements or copper-heavy diets. I made the mistake of (accidentally) following a diet that had a high copper content and would definitely not recommend having a copper overload. Two years later and I'm far from done from the recovery. Once copper goes up, it's hard to reduce it because it weakens the adrenals and impairs digestion and you end up with a chicken egg situation where you need the adrenals to reduce copper and you can't because you don't have them. Just follow a normal diet. The chances of having low copper levels are small, while the opposite happens more often.

It's surprising how specific such a thing can be;

I read a great article (maybe it was on HN?) about a man who had a bowel disease who suddenly developed heart disease. He was getting worse by the day and was about to get a transplant.

A new doctor had a look and took into account the man's disease which caused poor absorption of nutrients. It turns out the man had no selenium and it was causing his heart disease.

After an urgent rapid replenishment of selenium and careful diet he's OK. It's amazing how a small amount of what seems like an obscure nutrient/mineral can cause such harm.

I agree a normal healthy diet is best.

What comprises a "normal healthy diet?"

It's insane that we can't even be sure. Across my RSS feed, in back to back entries:

- Intermittent fasting a great boost to fat burning and weight maintenance

- Skipping breakfast makes you gain weight

Now, I know the gist of why intermittent fasting can work. And if you read into the skipping breakfast article with a lot of background info they don't provide you can pretty much tell their measure group was people who skipped breakfast and probably had a shitty habits around diet and excercise as well.

But if I'm just casually trying to figure out what normal and healthy are, here are two articles that present research that come to conclusions that (on the surface) are completely opposed, but neither is technically wrong.

Fat was the cause of all problems. Sugar is the new tobacco. Tobacco was recommended by doctors for energy. Sitting is the new smoking. Standing will kill you. Red meat will give you a heart attack. Omega 3 is essential for a million things. Fish oil pills are, well, snake oil. MCT is the new fish oil. Coconut and palm harvesting contribute to global warming. Brown rice is healthier than white. White rice has a lower glycemic index.

What the heck are we supposed to do?

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

"Don't eat too much" is a tautology, and "mostly plants" has been debunked.

Pithy quotes require charitable readers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

But you're right to be skeptical in general. Nutrition research is in such scientific wilderness that it's hard to consider any guidance at all reputable in any way.

So it's tough to filter through a wide variety of literature to find the reputable material. I try to focus on meta-analyses that cover a lot of ground by authors I consider reputable (and aren't selling a diet themselves).

There's a meta-analysis from 2014, examining a wide variety of studies of diets (ranging from fad to institutionally recommended). It concluded:

"A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention."

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publhe...

Original study:

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publhe...

I take your logical point about how "don't overeat" begs the question, but this is where Davidson's charity is helpful. The best way to read "not too much"--if you follow Davidson's advice and assume Pollan is rational--would be to read it as a shorthand for something like the following recommendation:

Calibrate how much you eat to avoid obesity, because obesity is correlated with significantly lower health outcomes over the long term.

Caveat, some people should shoot for a BMI < 35, some should shoot for a BMI < 27.5, so precise general advice is probably impossible.

Can you provide sources?

Tautology or not, it's actually pretty easy not to eat too much, considering that our bodies are pretty good at telling us when we've had enough.

All you have to do is eat a moderate amount, wait twenty or thirty minutes (for your stomach to start digestion, send signals to your brain, etc), see if you are still hungry, and eat a bit more if you are. If you reach the point where you feel 'full' you've probably overeaten. Not complicated, although many people, myself included, don't always take the time to listen to their bodies or have the self control to stop eating when they are chowing down on something delicious, even though know they've probably had enough.

[citation needed]

variety is probably the most important criteria...

Not really when you look at the Maasai or the Inuit...

A normal healthy diet contains all the macronutrients(Protein, Carbohydrates & Fat), Vitamins(A, B, C, D, E, K) and Minerals(Calcium, Copper, Iron, Zinc etc) in the right amount. The right amount depends on your weight, height, age etc. You can use tools like Cron-O-Meter to track your meals and figure out what you are getting enough of and what not. You also need plenty of water along with balanced diet.

Soylent released Powder 1.7 a month ago. http://blog.soylent.com/post/154513593367/powder-17-now-ship...

1 for 3 ain't bad.

From the article: "According to the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, an adult’s estimated average dietary requirement for copper is about 700 micrograms per day. The Food and Nutrition Board also found that only 25 percent of the U.S. population gets enough copper daily."

Not to put down your experience or the difficulty of your recovery, but the notion that "copper deficiency is rare" doesn't seem to be supported by the article. Have you got better sources? What are they?

Being clinically deficient in something (scurvy, say, for vitamin C) versus mildly deficient are two entirely different things.

Looking at a bottle of Centrum Mens Multivitamins, they list that it includes 900 mcg of copper and that this is only 45% of the recommended daily value (presumably because too much is bad and folks get some in their diet already). However, this also suggests that the recommended daily value is 2000 mcg, rather than the 700 mcg listed in the article.

The FDA's Reference Daily Intake (on which nutrition labeling is based) is 2mg [1]. That number differs from the National Academies number [2] (that's the 700 μg referenced in the article, for non-pregnant, non-lactating adults); why, I don't know.

[1] http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments...

[2] http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%...

Probably because the methodologies used to determine the proper intake are very rudimentary. For example, for some nutrients the RDA is whatever it takes to start seeing it excreted in urine. The analogy would be like a cup overflowing. How you get from that to recommending the "proper" intake requires making a significant number of unproven assumptions.

So there's usually quite significant room for disagreement, especially as new evidence ever so slowly emerges. It doesn't help that trying to pinpoint a single number for each specific nutrient is a rather arbitrary goal.

Which is why the "balanced diet" approaches makes the most sense as a general recommendation--it's an affirmation not of what we do know, but of what we don't know.

It's true, determining a) what's required to prevent deficiency and b) what's optimum for health are subject to interpretation of available (and often incomplete) data, hence lots of controversy.

I'm familiar with these issues surrounding vitamin D. There's no doubt it's essential, but the optimum intake and blood levels remains uncertain. Nonetheless no shortage of opinions are out there despite the uncertainty of findings backing up any particular stance.

IMO the problem in pinning it down is the wide range of effects of nutritional factors like vitamin D. Body systems are in constant flux, and need for vitamin D and optimum amount in circulation varies accordingly. The situation with trace minerals is somewhat similar when the mineral is an essential cofactor in specific enzyme-mediated processes--effects of low intake of the mineral element may not be easily observed from a whole-body perspective, and attribution of particular body manifestations to a mineral deficiency can be hard to establish.

I think that's the case with copper and other trace minerals and I don't expect the questions to be unequivocally resolved any time soon. Your idea of a "balanced", intake of diverse good quality foods is the only sensible recommendation we can make, especially since there's quite a bit of research showing merit of that approach.

How often are you supposed to take that vitamin?

My bottle of Bayer mens one a day says 2mg 100%

I think you are right. In fact, I would go further and say that we don't take enough minerals overall because the food we eat has been processed too much, so we are probably deficient in a lot of other minerals. I guess what I wanted to say is that you will find more people with high dangerous copper levels than low, especially among women because of the copper they add in birth control products.

Could you explain what you mean by "processed" food?

Grinding up wheat is processing it, but it does nothing to remove minerals.

It seems like "processed" is a catch all and now means "bad".

Processing absolutely does remove minerals, along with vitamins and fiber, such as when you make white flour by removing the "bran and germ" of the wheat grain. Most often, one particular part of a food is extracted, potentially subjected to high heats and/or chemical processes in order to alter the taste, consistency, shelf life, or other properties of the substance, and then combined with other such substances.

For example, a cracker might consist of flour, soybean oil (i.e. fat extracted from soybeans by soaking them in chemicals called hexanes and hydrogenated), corn syrup (sugar extracted from corn), and corn starch. The human body needs dozens of micronutrients that are easily found in a bite of a naturally-occurring food but easily absent from an artificial food, especially when the necessary sugars, fats, and starches have been sourced as cheaply and conveniently as possible for manufacturing. This isn't a value judgment, and I love eating processed foods.

Its an imprecise and catchall term, but not entirely untrue. A good example of "processed food" is refined grain (non-whole-wheat bread, etc); there, various outer layers and components of each grain are milled out, leaving just the tasty starchy inner bit. Different parts of the grain will have different vitamin content, if you take only one part you may well end up with a smaller set of vitamins overall. Its not the only reason that that's bad (whole wheat is generally recommended mostly on the basis of glycemic index), but its not necessarily trivial, either.

I would say it's not necessarily the processing, but genral lack of diversity of ingredients in mainstream food outlets and home diets. The mainstream notion of "meat and three veg" as a comprehensive meal means many don't do anything but that. Three meals a day as well, is antiquated advice. I imagine most people simply don't eat enough variety of good foods.

A fast food burger is not unhealthy just because it has bad ingredients in it, but because it lacks so much else.

Getting too much copper is virtually impossible unless you have a rare genetic disorder. The excess copper is excreted in bile. The defficiency on the other hand is widespread, it doesn't show in the blood tests and the symptoms are both vague and insidious. (Chiefly a constant lack of energy, brain fog and incurable anemia)

Do you have any sources for those claims? I'm sure many of us are, like me, trying to figure out which of all these conflicting claims are backed by science.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222312/#ddd00333

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/cop...

Would you mind going into some of the specifics of the diet and how you were impaired during your recovering?

Surely =)

I made the mistake of pretty much removing the consumption of meat and fish and increasing that of lentils, beans, garbanzos, avocado, etc., which are usually quite high in copper. In fact, I didn't even eat egg. So you end up with no animal protein, which usually has zinc (antagonist of copper) and with an excess of copper. So at that point it was a pretty vegetarian (almost vegan diet). if you are careful enough and take zinc, I suppose you could make it work, but I obviously had no idea about this. I also ate more fruit than I should have, which has quite some sugar in it, which also is bad for the absorption of zinc. So yeah, some mistakes here and there :D

How were you impaired though? I'm not doubting you, but I've been a vegetarian for almost 4 years and the diet you describe is basically my diet (minus high amount of fruit). What negative impact did this have that lasted for so long?

My copper went through the roof, and the worst of all is that you barely notice it going up. It slowly builds and you think that you are doing fine, although I had started noticing that I had trouble focusing and had bad temper, which I had never had before (and a million other symptoms). I'm quite confident the source is this diet. Copper overload is actually more common than it seems, but a lot of people that suffer it never get diagnosed, because it doesn't appear in the blood and more often than not people blame their job or the stress for those symptoms. I'm not blaming the diet, because I made that choice and I didn't read enough about the possible downsides, but I think people should be careful when switching to certain diets (keto, vegan, etc.). You get overloaded (pun intended) by information about meat, cancer, GMO, and all that crap going around that tries to convince you that what you are doing is wrong. I should have been more careful, but I learned my lesson.

Right, this sounds like every vegan diet I've seen, and I'd never heard of copper overdose as a risk for vegans. Was there some preexisting adrenal condition?

Apparently zinc supplementation can be dangerous as well except on a short term basis (like for a cold), so I'm not sure I wanna start warnjng my vegan friends yet.

Copper overdose is one of the most common imbalances among vegetarians/vegans; it's just not easy to diagnose, because it doesn't appear in the blood, but you need to get a tissue metal test, and those tests are not too common. Furthermore, they tend to take at least 5 years to appear. I'm not sure if there was a preexisting adrenal condition, but I wouldn't discard that as an option. If you have vegan friends, let them know that they are at higher risk of copper overloading. You could save them a lot of pain in the future (I'm not the only one with this, sadly).

Nonsense. It only happens after prolonged massive intakes (A man who intentionally took 60mg/day for a year and 30mg for several years before that is one of the few examples found in literature.) and the signs are liver and kidney failure. It's completely unrealistic you could get that much from anything resembling normal food, vegan or otherwise.

It's perfectly realistic and more common than you think. There's plenty of evidence around which you can find with a simple google search.

http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-diseases/copper-zinc-imba...

As far as my knowledge goes, that seems to be completely made up.

And what actually are the symptoms?

In my case: pretty bad brain fog (especially when trying to bring the copper down), bad mood, sleep and digestive issues, no energy whatsoever, and depression. It depends on whether you are actively trying to bring it down or not (you could call it detox, but this word has gotten a bad press, so I would rather not use it).

Those are the signs of deficiency, not overdose. What made you think you suffered from copper overload?

I do suffer from overload and have been tested. It's common to suffer the same symptoms as someone who has a deficiency when trying to bring those levels down.

That's nonsense. Please get tested by a real doctor.

For a list of symptoms associated with too much copper, just look up Wilson's Disease. These people have dysfunctional copper excretion mechanisms and need to take drugs that chelate the copper so the body can excrete it.[1]

Looks like it's mainly liver toxicity and neurological symptoms.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson's_disease

There must be something other than the vegetarian diet you've mentioned because that's essentially one entire side of family, and quite a few of them are hale and healthy in their 70s/80s.

Yeah I'm not sure that all those vegans are aware that they should take zinc supplements.

I ate a vegan diet for many years. Zinc was one of the things I was very conscious of (I tracked my diet fairly carefully). One of the things I noticed was that if I ate a traditional (i.e. from a culture that ate that way historically) vegan diet, that getting the nutrients I needed was not nearly as difficult. I think a lot of people simply cut out animal products from a traditional meat based diet and end up with problems. Potato chips are usually vegan, but a diet consisting of only potato chips is not healthy ;-)

My own personal take on this kind of thing is that there traditional diets where people have eaten a certain way for hundreds of years. While we may not have good studies on these diets, there is a kind of evolutionary effect. As people get a lot more choice in how they eat, we're running into problems where people think they can design a healthy diet. Sometimes they get it quite wrong.

I've also spent a good part of my free time over the last 20 years reading papers on nutrition. Another big thing that I notice is that a huge proportion of these papers are terrible - poor sampling techniques, inadequate reporting of conditions, insanely small trial sizes (sometime less than 10 people!!!), statistics that are plain wrong, etc. People with particular agendas often push their point of view, backing up impressive arguments with mountains of really poor research. It is hard/impossible for the average person to adequately judge the validity of the arguments and they end up making poor dietary choices as a result. Even with the amount of time I spend, I have no idea if my current biases are reasonable or not.

Diet is hard :-( Usually I suggest that people pick a traditional diet that appeals to them, study it carefully and try to adopt it. Then they should track their health carefully and make sure to get frequent health checks.

The same thing can happen with copper IUDs.

What comprises "normal diet"?

At last, an argument I can use to justify buying a copper bowl to whip egg whites for desserts.

Doesn't have to be a very good argument, just has to succeed.

I have the same compulsion to buy certain materials for certain tasks in the kitchen. When I was a child I just had to eat beans from a wooden bowl with a wooden spoon because of The Good the Bad and the Ugly.

Why copper for eggs?

"(...) egg whites whipped in a copper bowl stay glossy and firm without as much risk of becoming overwhipped or grainy."

Longer version in the link: http://www.thekitchn.com/the-science-behind-whipping-egg-whi...

http://www.thekitchn.com/the-science-behind-whipping-egg-whi...

Tuco? Blondie? or Angel Eyes?

All I was thinking was "copper bowl" and somehow I am now queued up to watch a classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.

Damn you, HN.

I think it's one of the other characters. Tuco's brother maybe?

It was "The Bad" whomever that was at the beginning eating from the mans table whom he was sent to kill.

That's Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef)

Careful, cooking with copper tends to destroy stuff like vitamin C.

Only ascorbic acid, or ascorbate in general?

Neither.

> Copper is not something the body can make, so we need to get it through our diet

Does the body make any elements?

Obviously the answer is no, but the average reader likely doesn't know which minerals are elements and which are molecules. The statement seems redundant to you and I, but it is a key fact and likely not obvious to anyone with minimal chemistry/physics training.

"The statement seems redundant to you and I"

As long as we're on the subject of pedantry, and with your kind leave, may I humbly point out that the above statement should read "The statement seems redundant to you and me"? If in doubt, drop the words "you and" then see how the sentence works:

"The statement seems redundant to I"

"The statement seems redundant to me"

http://www.betterwritingskills.com/tip-w026.html

If you really want to go there, "you and I" is never correct by the rules of English grammar. It's only when we apply the foreign rules of Latin grammar to English that we wind up with things like "you and I", which needs to be taught. It has, however, become a marker of education and good manners, so even though it is manifestly incorrect, it is often a better choice to use it in subject position in formal circumstances. Expectations outweigh correctness in this case.

That's a pretty interesting point. Never knew that.

What's even more interesting about this particular mistake (at least to me) is that it often shows up as hypercorrection[1] by educated, fluent speakers of English who've been socialized to recognize "You and me" as the subject of a sentence as wrong, and perhaps as ignorant-sounding, but have formed a too-aggressive (wrong) representation of the underlying rule.

Basically, I know a bunch of people who've been to college and would jump right down your throat if they hear you say "You and me should grab coffee some time," but will walk around all day saying things like "Hey, let's see if Fred wants to grab coffee with you and I."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection#Personal_prono...

There are no hard rules with grammar. Just conventions. If we understood what the person meant, then they succeeded at their goal of communicating.

By all means! At the same time, there may be something to be said for writing well. I was reminded of this thread:

Rare is the leader who can actually write well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429298

and especially part of a comment by Alex3917[1], quoting 37signals's Getting Real[2]:

"If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429352

[2] http://gettingreal.37signals.com

That's true, but the convention for educated English speakers has it that it should be "you and me", or "us". They may have succeeded at communicating facts but they also conveyed some slight ignorance to some subset of people reading it.

Definitely wouldn't have taken the time to point it out, though.

except he was specifically being pedantic. You can't combat pedantic criticism with "But grammar is just conventions". Grammatical pedantry deals with exactly those conventional nuances.

It wasn't pedantry about grammar, it was pedantry about meaning. If a Russian with bad English grammar tried to correct your code, would you try to correct his use of "was" rather than "were"?

No, it was grammar. Because the grammar shaped the meaning. But when you are dealing specifically with meaning or context and not formal conventions, it is considered a semantic, not pedantic. I don't generally correct people's grammar mistakes these days because I myself have laxed quite a bit in favor of "progressing" my language a bit. But I especially wouldn't correct a foreigner just because, only if I felt they would be receptive to the advice. I would certainly appreciate the same when using a language I'm not familiar with.

It was simply a factually incorrect statement. It was about grammar as much as "fish ride bicycles" is about grammar.

edit: It actually wasn't incorrect at all... I'd lost track of the original statement:) It was just something that would be obvious to people who understood basic chemistry. Either way, it wouldn't be a question of grammar (any more than "some fish swim in the ocean.")

>There are no hard rules with grammar. Just conventions. If we understood what the person meant, then they succeeded at their goal of communicating.

If I have to put a lot of effort at decoding what someone says, it's less likely that I'll bother. I'm sure we could all decode l33tspeak but that doesn't mean someone who uses it "succeeded".

Only because it's called the Geneva Convention that doesn't mean that you shouldn't follow it.

Touché.

All the dietary minerals are chemical elements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_(nutrient)

While the body cannot make Copper or other Elements, it can build some organic chemical compounds. This process is called anabolism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolism

I think where this is confusing on what are considered nutrients. Some nutrients can be built by the body, while others cannot. Essential Nutrients are those that cannot be built by human bodies. The Wikipedia page for Nutrients is pretty accessible and interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient

>Does the body make any elements?

That wouldn't be possible unless the body somehow did nuclear fusion or fission.

That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A2t%C3%A9_de_Foie_Gras_(s...

With enough volume you might be able to harness cosmic rays.

Standing next to an unshielded nuclear reactor should get you a bit of nucleosynthesis from all the neutrons. There is the unfortunate side effect of dying painfully, but everything has tradeoffs.

At least you lose the weight?

It can synthesize many organic compounds, so you don't have to eat every compound the body needs.

But yes, nuclear transmutation is nit supported.

In short, no.

Pedantically, though, some radioactive elements decay in your body, so there are nuclei in your body right now that are different from when you ate, touched, or breathed them in.

For example, the milligram or two of potassium-40 present in your body will, over a billion years or so, become calcium-40.

Well, half of it will. The half life of potassium-40 is ~1.25 billion years. It decays to calcium-40 about 89% of the time and argon-40 11%. When using potassium-40 decay for dating, the usual method is determining the ratio of K-40 to radiogenic Ar-40 [1]. This is not easy and involves irradiating samples in a nuclear reactor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon%E2%80%93argon_dating

There was the case of the goose that somehow synthesized gold, and excreted it in its eggs.

I'd say it's more plausible that it drank a lot of ocean water, and acquired the gold that way...

No, and I chuckled at wording as well. And I also thought it funny how too much copper unbalanced your zinc levels, which as anyone knows who has made a battery out of a potato, if you don't have copper and zinc you are a pretty lousy battery :-).

No.

But there are also some more complex molecules that the human body doesn't make either.

Sure, quite a few--vitamins, essential amino acids, essential fats are well-known. The body uses these as "raw ingredients" to produce a huge range of necessary compounds.

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/406bio_alchemy....

Food rich in copper:

Cooked Oyster

Leafy greens (kale, spinach, etc)

Mushrooms

Seeds (flax, sesame, etc)

Nuts (pistachio, cashew, walnuts, etc)

Avocado

Liver

I'm sure there's more.

Cooked oysters but not raw ones? Does the cooking impart copper somehow?

There could be bioavailablility issues with raw oysters. I have zero idea of whether or not that is true, but it's certainly possible.

It could also just be a general policy to not endorse eating raw shellfish.

Cooking foods actually decreases the bioavailability of a lot of minerals, copper included.

Another reason oysters are great is because of their zinc content, which helps ensure your copper-zinc ratio is in balance and you don't overdo it on copper.

> Cooking foods actually decreases the bioavailability of a lot of minerals, copper included.

Don't you mean "copper not included" if cooked oyster imparts more copper?

I don't believe that cooking oysters imparts more copper.

Or the bio-availability of it. Since "raw oysters" is listed, but not cooked, it implies that the copper in oysters becomes non-bio-available as a result of cooking?

I was aware of heat-sensitive vitamins/vitamers but not minerals, TIL!

Wild guess on my part, but I suppose it could be possible that cooking the oyster makes more of its copper available for absorption. No idea if that's true, just making up a theory to support the conclusion.

I did know that oysters are high in zinc. Interesting that zinc and copper are antagonists. Another great reason to eat more!

Anecdote: be careful with metal supplements. A doctor suggested that I try a larger than usual dose of Zinc (with Copper) to see if it would help with my psoriasis. Worst headache of my life, metallic taste in my mouth, felt like death for about 12 hours

Heh, yes: be careful with supplements. Iodine is what I screwed myself with.

""" According to the ATA, such supplements may "contain iodine in amounts that are up to several thousand times higher than the daily Tolerable Upper Limits for iodine." """ Not sure why anyone is allow to sell such things as "supplements" legally in the US. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/2...

Despite the unwanted effects, did it make any difference to the psoriasis?

The headache and death feeling greatly reduces awareness of psoriasis

Ah, the good old "chop off your leg so your foot will stop hurting" method that my dad would propose when I was a kid.

We need a like button (not really, but your comment was +1 funny)

I didn't give it a second chance! Most of these things only have an impact over the longer term. Next time I have a blood panel done I'll reconsider supplements

Taking large doses of anything is never a good idea, normal doses of zinc over a long period is excellent starting advice for many dermatological conditions.

Zinc in general is one of the few supplements shown to actually have benefit for the average human.

fwiw, vitamin K2 helped with my psoriasis at an ordinary supplementary dose, and has no known toxicity at high doses.

Did you take it with food? I get very nauseous when taking zinc on an empty stomach.

My recollection is that I took it immediately after a delicious lunch

Interesting...100 or more years back, indians would regularly eat and drink from copper dishes & cups

http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/ayurveda/why-copper-was-use...

Reminds me of the Physician and the Priest:

http://www.jhuger.com/the-physician-and-the-priest

This particular story is new to me but when I was in high school, a teacher once presented me with the idea that this is the origin of many if not most cultural/religious taboos.

It made perfect sense to me.

Don't eat pork. They didn't know about trichinosis but they did notice that people who ate pork got sick and sometimes died.

Don't sleep around. They didn't understand what syphilis was but they did notice that people who had lots of indiscriminate sex got sick and sometimes died.

This was also discussed in a sub-thread of this article from 2 days ago if anyone wants to dive a bit deeper into this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549173

I personally find it fascinating when cultural wisdom turns out to have a scientific explanation which reveals the real [lost] truth to that lore.

Wasn't syphilis acquired from the Americas?

But yeah, there are many other illnesses that can explain sex taboos.

I don't think it has been definitively proven but it could have been.

I'd be careful with the content that site. It has a pretty transparently religious-nationalist agenda.

But to the content of the article, 100 years ago obesity wasn't a significant problem in India, and India was not the only society that used copper cookware. If anything, it was probably used for its ductility (hence ease of forming), and its pleasing reddish color.

Sure some of it may be out of context and religious propaganda but sometimes these traditions became traditions for a reason. They must have seen benefits of using copper for such use, they also have lots of gold and silver yet they used copper.

I don't doubt that they saw benefits to its use, but the most obvious reason to use copper instead of gold and silver is that it's far, far less expensive.

Beware that TOO much copper is toxic on the body and causes ill effects.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/01/10/copper-toxicity/

Now I finally have some good use for that old pile of twisted-pair copper cable sitting at home!

The catch with the green revolution in agriculture is that many foods have fewer minerals than they used to. Basically plants have been bred to grow fast and have more mass (more carbs than minerals).

Less nutritious than before does not mean that the food is not good for you. You say "more carbs than minerals"... I'd argue that plants have ALWAYS been more "carbs" than minerals, otherwise we would be eating rocks. Why put "carbs" in quotes? Because that is a misnomer for the "more mass" argument you make. Plants are made of many different substances that include carbs but also a large amount of fiber. This is highly variable based on the plant.

Should we be doing more to promote restorative practices for soil in agriculture? Yes! Are fresh fruits and vegetables not good for you just because their mineral levels are lower than historical numbers? No! Eat colorful foods from people who practice the farming practices that you deem important. The market will force a movement in practices on a larger scale.

Eat well :)

It sounds silly, but if you don't like typical American salads, try picking up some leafy greens from Asian supermarkets. I've found that I'm really into Tong Ho (chrysanthemum coronarium), green onion salad with a bit of soy sauce, Bok Choy with lots of garlic, and raw spinach + arugula....but I can't stand iceberg lettuce or really any vinegar on vegetables like almost all American restaurants have on menus. Because of my tastes, it wasn't until I had an Asian girlfriend with a great cook of a mother that I actually started enjoying veggies. Hopefully this helps at least one other person out there who has had bad taste experiences with salads and doesn't eat enough greens because of it.

Whole Foods and other places also have some quite good-tasting protein/smoothie powders which have lots of green content. I've also found that aside from not minding the taste of wheat grass (when mixed with citrus flavors), it makes me feel noticeably "fresh" and "well" for a few hours after ingestion. Try it!

Interesting, thanks for the info about the greens. Had not heard of Tong Ho. Just googled it and it seems the scientific name has changed, also the article has some pros and cons of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebionis_coronaria

The wheat grass symptoms you had might be due to it having vitamin E - just guessing here.

Well, carbohydrate is a broad term. Fiber is good for you, and also a carbohydrate, just one you can't digest. If you're talking about plants having more carbohydrate mass, a lot of that could (potentially) be fiber. I'm not really arguing, I guess I'm just saying, even like modified kale or broccoli or something is still a pretty good thing to eat.

Just to support your claim:

http://soils.wisc.edu/facstaff/barak/poster_gallery/minneapo...

(The link doesn't mention copper in particular)

Likely, if agro-scientists and farmers focused mainly on the macro nutrients like NPK, which I have seen anecdotal evidence of. Heck, not even humus, maybe, for a long time.

Source: some early background in ag (in India).

This study suggests that dietary copper may help convert fat to energy. A while ago copper's antiseptic role in hospital environments was revealed and may result in the wholesale replacement of stainless steel with copper and bronze surfaces such as doorknobs and tabletops (stainless steel became ubiquitous in hospitals based on its appearance, resistance to rust, and ease of cleaning).

It's my hope that these new findings didn't result from a sneaky plot by a mining conglomerate to increase demand for copper.

Millions of tonnes of copper are mined every year. Dietary copper is on the scale of micrograms.

Your conspiracy has a problem of many magnitudes.

> Millions of tonnes of copper are mined every year. Dietary copper is on the scale of micrograms.

Imagine every stainless steel surface in every hospital being replaced with copper or bronze (which seems likely over time). Imagine that this subsequently becomes fashionable in private homes for the same reason.

I have a yacht and its anti-fouling paint has a high percentage of copper, for the same reason that copper seems effective in a hospital operating theater (it's pretty toxic). Imagine that a copper mine operator wants more public acceptance for copper as an everyday material. Both these recent developments produce that outcome, even given the fact that dietary copper is in reality a microscopic volume of the material. For the latter, the effect is more psychological than practical.

I emphasize that I'm not taking this hidden-agenda idea seriously, it's just something to think about.

I feel like the price of copper, due to demand from other industries, would be a huge deterrent to widespread use in hospitals. Is that not a major issue?

See the table on this page: http://www.roymech.co.uk/Useful_Tables/Matter/Costs.html

In one of the tables the cost for bronze (more durable than pure copper but having similar antiseptic properties) is listed as 19.5 versus 10.9 for stainless steel, same units. So bronze costs almost twice as much as stainless, not a ruinous increase given its antiseptic properties.

One could seek an alloy form that would balance a material's antiseptic property versus cost, a project that hasn't yet begun.

In India many people use copper vessels (jugs, pots) to store drinking water and then drink it from them. Supposedly for some health benefits. Don't know if there really are any or not.

Anecdotally, though, I liked to wear a copper ring, and used to imagine as a kid that it keeps the body cool in summer (due to its high conductivity :) [1]

[1] of heat, but must have assumed here that good electrical conductivity implies good heat conductivity, don't think I checked (kid).

Copper kills bacteria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect

Thanks, and to the sibling commenter too. Didn't know this.

As someone else pointed out, copper kills bacteria. That's a part of why we use it for water pipes. It's also a part of why we use brass for doorknobs.

Chris Masterjohn just releases a podcast on managing copper status. https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2017/02/03/manage-copper-stat...

I haven't listened to this one yet but typically his stuff is top notch.

https://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/high-copper-food...

Yeah, so as usual... Eat kale. Eat beans.

Someone deleted the kale taste bad post, so I'll put this here:

Are you making a joke that kale does not taste good? I cook kale the same way I quick cook collards. Sauté garlic in some olive oil until fragrant, then add kale (torn off the big stems), a cup of water, salt and pepper. Cook down the water while stirring occasionally. It's easy and tasty. Instead of garlic and OO, you can always use a chopped up piece of bacon as the base.

I was long a reluctant kale, chard, collard greens consumer.

Had some free time, so started eating like a cave man, aka Troglodiet [tm], modeled after Four Hour Body.

Then got busy, didn't eat as well.

I was VERY surprised when I started craving kale and other big leafy greens. Now I just eat it raw by the fistful.

I figure my body never knew what it was missing, but then got a taste, and didn't want to go back.

what kale tastes like to you is not necessarily what kale tastes like to everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster#Specific_food_sens...

Yes. Old story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandu...

I thought this was a given. Not everyone likes the same thing, but many people have simply never tried something or default to green, leafy vegetables taste bad.

Interesting. For me, the insistence of American cooking to douse all veggies in vinegar concoctions long turned me away from delicious raw leafy greens. Now I love spinach, arugula, mustard greens (which have no relation taste-wise to mustard, but whose name prevented me from trying them), microgreens, sprouts, Tong Ho, bok choy, and a few others :)

I'm also not a fan of the douse leafy greens in vinegar so common in the south. With the right proportions it can be okay, but typically people put too much vinegar.

Any know the difference between Copper Glycinate and Copper Citrate?

Likely higher bioavailability on the glycinate. Realistically shouldn't matter too much unless you have an absorption issue.

Albeit, I am not as versed in copper supplements as I am in magnesium supplements.

A healthy human body is maintained by thousands of biochemical processes and reactions in equilibrium that have evolved over time. As we age, we expose our body to processes that disrupt the equilibrium of these biochemical processes and reactions. The general term used is inflammation. These inflammatory processes can be what or what we don't eat, our environment, and our physical activity or lack of. And when I say "healthy human body" I am excluding genetic influences. But I would recommend that before taking any supplement because you just feel that it may solve a physiological problem I would do the following first: 1. Take a month and log all that you eat or consume. 2. See your doctor and order a complete blood workup to include all your vitamin and mineral levels. 3. Do some research on the below topics:

Antinutrients Anti-inflammatory diets Minerals: http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/minerals.php Vitamins: Water and Fat Soluble - http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/vitamins.php Essential Fatty Acids - http://qualitycounts.com/fpfats.htm

Equilibrium of biochemical processes can be easily upset by upsetting other biochemical processes.

So increasing the concentration of one mineral may adversly affect the concentration of another mineral and just may adversly affect another biochemical process.

I take over 80 different supplements (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, etc..). And yes, I have been told I am crazy.

While it took me several years to get to this point, I am not alone. And I was kind of surprised when I found this out, because I started this effort doing my own research. It did help since I have a Chemistry degree and took a lot of biochemistry in college. Eventually retired as an EE.

Search: Ray Kurzweil - http://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2005/9/report_kurzweil... Rick Rosner - http://www.lef.org/Magazine/2015/4/Rick-Rosner/Page-01?p=1

I don't always agree with some of their points and I don't go to the extreme that they go, it was a pleasant surprise.

I have been told, "just eat a balanced diet!".

There are several reasons that just does not work for me. 1. For minerals, agricultural processes do not deliberately replenish all minerals in the soil. 2. As we get older, our GI system becomes more inefficient in extracting the minerals and vitamins the body requires. 3. Exposure to environmental sources of inflammation cannot be easily avoided. 4. Without a gallbladder, my digestive system has been compromised. 5. Medications I have to take from time to time also have an effect.

And the Super Bowl is around the corner, search on "Tom Brady Diet"

Do note, you will find counter info for everything. It is up to you to decide.

One thing for sure, get a blood test! Consuming something just because it is over the counter doesn't make it a wise idea.

In short, you practice orthomolecular medicine.

Linus Pauling coined the term because the adverse effects are almost next to non existent even in very huge doses compared to almost all of allopathic medicines (except nootropics). I am taking bunch of nutrients in megadozes for last 7 years, some in what others consider extrimes like A (10-100K IU),D(5-50k IU),C(5-100g),B(50-500mg) etc, some occasiionaly and some every day like C. I never had any side effect worth mentioning. Its VERY hard to poison yourself with vitamins and minerals, you really have to take ludicrous amounts. Iron is probably the only one that man do not have to supplement because it accumulates without blood donations.

I typically scan medical journals for adverse effects before experimenting and devise the dose based on what was used in studies and depending on what I try to achieve.

The only thing that got me was 1+ mg of iodine as Lugols solution, but it seems that I am somewhat alergic to it or it starts up some strange metabolic process in me. That does is very safe even in toddlers.

Talking about copper, I wonder why would anyone supplement it - its certain that copper water pipes continually leak copper in the tap water. Unless you drink water from the bottle, chances are probably low that you have copper deficiency. There are many other more probable things that affect lypolisys like Vitamin C, D, Chromium, Choline, Carnitnine, Iodine, Mg, Retynol, K2, CoQ10. I would bet on any of them prior to copper. For each there is known biochemical pathway that influences lipolysis and all people are typically deficient in almost all of them.

How do you determine what dose you should take (of the lipolysis influencing ingredients you mentioned)?

Because they are generally all very safe I usually take median dose used in the studies. At worst, I get no effect and loose some money for the information.

If your micronutrient status is adequate you have no effect. Since its way more expensive or impossible to do status tests then to actually buy the nutrient and give it a chance, I opt for the latter.

The dose also depends on technology used and other potential bioactivators. LET technology, for example is very effective. Pipperine will make a dose lower of anything in general case. Synergy counts too.

start eating more liver!

Just not your own liver, or the liver of others. All other liver is fair game!

Seriously, though, it's amazing what you can do with liver once you learn how to cook it to your own preference.

But what about the eggs?

Why worry? They'll live on the liver.

Edit: Great fleas ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_infinitum

Double-edit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siphonaptera

I use a copper mug for my Moscow Mules, nice. :)

Gonna start eating pennies for breakfast.

Better go with pre-1983 pennies. Pennies minted 1983 to present are 97.5% zinc.

The article mentions that one risk of taking copper supplements is setting your zinc ratio out of whack. This is a clear example of the government taking positive action on public health.

The reverse is also true, if you take too much Zinc, you'll get deficient in Copper.

Yes, but their surface area is 100% copper. You are likely to pass the penny before digesting all the way through to the zincky center.

And 1982 was the year the US penny switched from copper to copper-clad zinc. Some from that year are pure, and others are clad. The pure pennies are heavier. Or you could file a notch in an edge and see if the center reflects whitish or reddish.

This is true, that is why I only eat the "skins" of modern pennies if I don't have any old ones. The inside is where all that nasty zinc comes from.

I wonder if this just ins't a push by the copper industry to build a market before the penny's ultimate demise in the future. Follow the money sheeple! /s

Great, unless you have Wilson's.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, runs in my family. So far no sign in me but one of my brothers had it pretty bad (got new liver - no a prob anymore)

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1744/

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