Re: What happens when all of the biounavailable copper is gone?!

To answer all questions/statements...

feo, why don't Cushings sufferers have severe collagen loss if cortisol is the main culprit? - that's not correct about cortisol because Cushings sufferers have buffalo hump, stretch marks etc. When your collagen loss is severe like mine, it's either just copper or a combo of copper deficiency and cortisol.

I started taking zinc in small doses (5mg) throughout the day with up to 20mg/day.

I noticed some good copper dumping at first, and I felt calmer. I also noticed my skin was nice and oily like it hasn't been for a good long while.

I was hesitant to do zinc because I wasn't sure exactly how the antagonism worked and if it affected bioavailable as well as biounavailable copper.

Anyway, I'd been taking zinc, bile agents and then a little moly and manganese each day, although I noticed that the copper dumps seemed to lessen.

I was also wondering if with the zinc etc. my collagen was suffering even more. I'd sometimes take zinc not long before bed and I'd wake up in the morning with a painful vein in my arm or something. I've noticed that some of my knobby veins have become more bulging.

I can't figure out if zinc is depriving me more of copper or not. I realise that everyone's on a copper-restricted diet to clear their stores of copper, but I really wonder what's in the available pool of copper for me.

If I take copper chelate, I don't notice much, but if I eat liver (a little each day), I notice copper dumps too - crazy considering liver is a massive copper source.

I really wonder about the idea of restricting copper though...I mean how is the pool of bioavailable copper maintained each day - by liberating unbound copper with zinc-dependent metallothionein or something?

It's a big puzzler...

There is one fact though...Not long before all this happened, I was drinking water from a copper cup left overnight for about two weeks (my TDS meter shows 8ppm when distilled water is left overnight in the copper cup and it tastes strongly metallic - surely a massive overdose of copper for me at the time, which I know was making my eyes bloodshot, so harming me liver). Also, I took a soil-based probiotic, which seemed to have a devastating effect on my gut ecology and endocrine system.

I think my problem is complex interaction between severe copper imbalance and severe gut infection with endocrine disturbance.

The idea may be to clear the infection and clear the copper, but how to make an inroad into a safe starting place is the mission impossible I'm faced with.

Maybe it is just massive copper toxicity from that copper cup and my condition is more unique because of the metallic copper that I directly ingested (rather than copper from food forms)? Tweet