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Copper issues with Vitamin A toxicity
Hi everyone! That's a copy-paste from my thread on the Ray Peat's forum, hope to find some advice here, thanks!
I've been on a low vitamin A detox diet for several months due to severe overdose and carotenemia in the past. I've been eating eggs (ditched them recently), some seeds/nuts, some chicken/turkey/beef (not too much due to hemochromatosis/heterozygous c282y), bananas and grains, including buckwheat. And I mean lots of buckwheat, almost with every meal. Buckwheat with rice, buckwheat with seeds, plain buckwheat - you name it. That went on for several months in a row. I even think I could easily average around 500-1000 grams of cooked buckwheat on some days.
I can't understand why I have extreme fatigue, agitation, anxiety, overheating after eating, which are not due to blood sugar fluctuations as I can recognize those. Those symptoms are often much worse after a high-zinc meal with meat, for instance, even when my iron and saturation are okay. I thought that might be due to the high vitamin E content in the seeds causing vit A dumping. However, even a meal consisting solely of rice/buckwheat/noodles will make me feel not too good.
The only thing that comes to mind is copper overdose. I did a blood test 3 hours after breakfast (3 bananas, then after a while - rice/buckwheat porridge/a handful of pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds, water), the results are below:
Iron - 21.6 (reference 12.5 - 32.2)
TIBC - 54.8 (44.7 - 76.1)
Copper - 18.4 (10.99 - 21.98)
Zinc - 17.3 (11.1 - 19.5)
I did it after breakfast deliberately in order to catch a high reading, but those are all normal, albeit close to the high end.
Should I do a ceruloplasmin test as well? If so, I think of doing it tomorrow after the same breakfast so that not to redo my serum copper test.
Can it be that I have accumulated high copper stores in the liver and zinc only leads to dumping it into the bloodstream?
Hey @viktor!
I think @jiri suggested getting a ceruloplasmin test too, yeah.
When you say you have buckwheat at every meal, oxalate toxicity also comes to mind:
https://sallyknorton.com/symptoms/
Here’s a list comparing the oxalate content of foods (buckwheat is quite high):
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/oxalate-content-grains-legumes-nuts-and-seeds/
Seems to be a bigger issue for some of us with chronic hypervitaminosis A problems than others, but worth considering if it affects you.
@viktor person with heatlhy liver and good bile production and flow should eliminate any copper excess without any issues, but if you have cholestasis. Your main pathway how to eliminate this excess copper is blocked and you just store everything in the liver.. I like buckwheat as well, but they are very high in oxalate and 100g has 1mg of copper, which is also decent amount.. I would use cronometer.com to see how much zinc/copper you have daily.. THis ratio of zinc/copper should be ideally around 10:1 which meas for every 1mg of copper 10mg of zinc.. Most people will be ok with 20mg of zinc and 2mg of copper. I would stop eating buckwheat for sure. Eat oats instead. It has beta glucan which is good type of soluble fiber. Buckwheat doesn't have that.. When you test you always want to test on empty stomach and always test ceruloplasmin with copper at the same time. So you can see if you don't have high copper and low ceruloplasmin which means a lot of toxic free copper in the blood.. Like I said use cronometer.com and stay around 2mg of copper a day and at least 20mg of zinc. You can also take vit C like 500mg a day + some molybdenum small dose like 100mcg a day or 400mcg 2 times a every 7 days.. This should balance trace minerals in the body.. People are eating crazy amounts of copper and are deficient in zinc, molybdenum...
Thanks! Would it still be useful if I test my ceruloplasmin tomorrow (not on an empty stomach as I can't get off work in the morning)? Presumably my serum copper is okay, and I don't think it would've changed too much from two days ago.
Quote from puddleduck on March 28, 2022, 9:21 amWhen you say you have buckwheat at every meal, oxalate toxicity also comes to mind:
Hi! As a matter of fact, when I only ate a couple bananas and a hefty handful of seeds for breakfast, I also felt lousy. Pumpkin and sunflower seeds and low in oxalates, and I definitely feel worse after eating some offending foods and usually recover in a matter of hours. It's not just that "foo coma/hard to digest feeling", more like toxicity.
Quote from Jiří on March 28, 2022, 11:26 am@viktor just ceruloplasmin without copper will tell you nothing. I wouldn't worry about tests.. Just stop eating crazy amounts of buckwheat and make sure that your minerals are more in balance like I said..
Actually, I was planning to retest copper and ceruloplasmin today if you could then help me interpret the results :)) Please understand that doctors usually don't go further then telling me I may have allergies (which I don't and never have), that vitamin A toxicity from food is totally bs, and so on... It's only on forums such as this that I find it possible to at least start to understand the issues that might be happening with my health.
@viktor In lab where I test they calculate free copper from ceruloplasmin and copper serum numbers.. If your lab doesn't do this you can calculte it by yourself, but I don't know the formula for it.. But I am pretty sure that it is in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRRyShB0LK8&t=3s
Hi! got me results back, and I'm glad I did the test. It was not on an empty stomach, though, but around 4 hours after eating (bananas, some rice with beef and seeds, water).
Total copper: 13.00 (range 10.99-21.98) ummol/L (which is 82.59 ug/dL)
Ceruloplasmin: 168 (range 200-600) mg/L
I calculated free copper:
82.59 - 16.8x3 = 32,19 (google says range is 10-15μg/dL)
Free copper percentage = 39%, which is quite a lot.
@viktor yeah your ceruloplasmin is low. Your liver has probably issues making systemic proteins like ceruloplasmin.. Why you eat seeds? It's horrible food.. Full of antinutrients and pufa... I would eat mostly meats, rice, some oats, apples and bananas are ok.. Keep copper low and eat more protein that will give you zinc and B vitamins and take some molybdenum..