Health & Fitness

Robert Epstein, who received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard in 1981 and served as the former editor in chief at Psychology Today, is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google's manipulative and deceptive practices. In this interview, he explains what got him interested in investigating the internet search monopoly in the first place:

"In 2012, January 1st, I received some emails from Google saying my website contained malware and that they were somehow blocking access. This means I had gotten onto one of Google's blacklists.

My website did contain some malware. It was pretty easy to get rid of, but it turns out it's hard to get off of a Google blacklist. That's a big problem. I started looking at Google just a little bit differently. I wondered, first of all, why they were notifying me about this rather than some government agency or some nonprofit organization? Why was a private company notifying me?

In other words, who made Google sheriff of the internet? Second, I learned they had no customer service department, which seemed very strange, so if you have a problem with Google, then you have a problem because they don't help you solve the problem.

I learned also that although you can get onto a blacklist in a split second, it can take weeks to get off a blacklist. There have been businesses that have gotten onto their blacklists and have gone out of business while they're trying to straighten out the problem.

The thing that really caught my eye — because I've been a programmer my whole life — was I couldn't figure out how they were blocking access to my website, not just through their own products … Google.com, the search engine, or through Chrome, which is their browser, but through Safari, which is an Apple product, through Firefox, which is a browser run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization.

How was Google blocking access through so many different means? The point is I just started to get more curious about the company, and later in 2012, I happened to be looking at a growing literature, which was about the power of search rankings to impact sales.

This was in the marketing field and it just was astonishing. In other words, if you could push yourself up one more notch in their search results, that could make the difference between success or failure for your company; it could mean a lot more income.

It turns out that this initial research was saying that people really trust those higher ranked search results. I simply asked a question. I wondered whether, if people trust those higher rank search results, I could use search results to influence people's opinions, maybe even their votes."

What Epstein discovered through his subsequent research, which began in 2013, is that yes, biased search results can indeed be used to influence public opinion and sway undecided voters. What's more, the strength of that influence was shocking. He also eventually discovered how Google is able to block website access on browsers other than their own. His findings were published in 2016 in U.S. News & World Report.¹

Google's Powers Pose Serious Threats to Society

Google's powers pose three specific threats to society:

While surveillance is Google's primary business, their revenue — which in 2022 exceeds $256 billion a year² — comes almost exclusively from advertising. All that personal information you've provided them through their various products is sold to advertisers looking for a specific target audience.

How Google Can Shift Your Perception Without Your Knowledge

Epstein's controlled, randomized, double-blind and counterbalanced experiments have revealed a number of different ways in which Google can shift public perception. The first effect he discovered is called SEME, which stands for search engine manipulation effect. For a full description of the basic experiment used to identify this effect, please listen to the interview.

In summary, the aim of his experiment was to see whether search results biased toward a particular political candidate would be capable of shifting users' political opinion and leanings.

"I had predicted, when we first did this, that we would get a shift," Epstein says, "because … people do trust higher ranked search results, and of course we had biased the search results so that, if in that first group, someone was clicking on a high-ranking search result, that would connect them to a webpage which made one candidate look much better than the other …

I predicted we could get a shift in voting preferences of 2% to 3%. I was way off. We got … a shift of 48%, which I thought must be an error because that's crazy …

I should note that in almost all of our experiments, especially those early ones, we deliberately used undecided voters. That's the key. You can't easily push the opinions or voting preferences of people who are partisan, who are strongly committed to one party or another, but people who are undecided, those are the people who are very vulnerable. In our experiments, we always find a way to use undecided voters.

In these early experiments, the way we guaranteed that our voters were undecided was by using people from the U.S. as our participants, but the election we chose was the 2010 election for the prime minister of Australia.

They're real candidates, a real election, real search results, real webpages, and of course, because our participants were from the U.S. they were not familiar with the candidates. In fact, that's why, before they do the search, we get this almost perfect 50/50 split regarding who they're going to vote for, because they don't know these candidates. The information they're getting from the search, that, presumably, is why we get a shift."

Simple Trick Effectively Masks Search Bias

Another thing Epstein noticed was that very few seemed to realize they were seeing biased search results. In other words, the manipulation went virtually undetected.

In a second experiment, they were able to achieve a 63% shift in voter preference, and by masking the bias — simply by inserting a pro-opponent result here and there — they were able to hide the bias from almost everyone.

"In other words, we could get enormous shifts in opinions and voting preferences with no one being able to detect the bias in the search results we were showing them," Epstein says. "This is where, again, it starts to get scary. Scarier still is when we moved on to do a national study of more than 2,000 people in all 50 states."

What this large-scale investigation revealed is that the few who actually notice the bias are not protected from its effects. Curiously, they actually shift even further toward the bias, rather than away from it.

As evidenced by other studies, the pattern of clicks is a key factor that makes search bias so powerful: 50% of all search selections go to the top two items and 95% of all clicks go to the first page of search results.

"In other words, people spend most of their time clicking on and reading content that comes from high-ranking search results. If those high-ranking search results favor one candidate, that's pretty much all they see and that impacts their opinions and their voting preferences," Epstein says.

Subsequent experiments revealed that this click pattern is the result of conditioning. Most of the things people search for are simple matters such as local weather or the capital of a country. The most appropriate and correct answer is always at the very top. This conditions them to assume that the best and truest answer is always the most high-ranked listing.

Google May Have Shifted Millions of Votes in 2016 Elections

The ramifications of the search engine manipulation effect can be immense. Of course, having power to shift public opinion is one thing; actually using that power is another. So, Epstein's next target was to determine whether Google is using its power of influence or not.

"Early 2016, I set up the first-ever monitoring system, which allowed me to look over the shoulders of people as they were conducting election-related searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. I had 95 field agents (as we call them), in 24 states.

We kept their identities secret, which took a lot of work. And this is exactly, by the way, what the Nielsen company does to generate ratings for television shows. They have several thousand families. Their identities are secret. They equip the families with special boxes, which allow Nielsen to tabulate what programs they're watching …

Inspired by the Nielsen model, we recruited our field agents, we equipped them with custom passive software. In other words, no one could detect the fact that they have the software in their computers. But that software allowed us to look over their shoulders as they conducted election related searches …

We ended up preserving 13,207 election-related searches and the nearly 100,000 webpages to which the search results linked … After the election, we rated the webpages for bias, either pro-Clinton or pro-Trump … and then we did an analysis to see whether there was any bias in the search results people were seeing.

The results we got were crystal clear, highly significant statistically … at the 0.001 level. What that says is we can be confident the bias we were seeing was real, and it didn't occur because of some random factors. We found a pro-Clinton bias in all 10 search positions on the first page of Google search results, but not on Bing or Yahoo.

That's very important. So, there was a significant pro-Clinton bias on Google. Because of the experiments I had been doing since 2013, I was also able to calculate how many votes could have been shifted with that level of bias… At bare minimum, about 2.6 million [undecided] votes would have shifted to Hillary Clinton."

On the high end, Google's biased search results may have shifted as many as 10.4 million undecided voters toward Clinton, which is no small feat — all without anyone realizing they'd been influenced, and without leaving a trace for the authorities to follow.

According to Epstein's calculations, tech companies, Google being the main one, it was possible to shift 15 million votes leading up to the 2020 election, which means they had the potential to select the next president of United States.

Google Has the Power to Determine 25% of Global Elections

Many who look at Epstein's work end up focusing on Google's ability to influence U.S. politics, but the problem is much bigger than that.

"As I explained when I testified before Congress, the reason why I'm speaking out about these issues is because, first of all, I … think it's important that we preserve democracy and preserve the free and fair election. To me, it's pretty straight forward.

But the problem is much bigger than elections or democracy or the United States. Because I calculated back in 2015 that … Google's search engine — because more than 90% of searches worldwide are conducted on Google — was determining the outcomes of upwards of 25% of the national elections in the world.

How can that be? Well, it's because a lot of elections are very close. And that's the key to understanding this. In other words, we actually looked at the win margins in national elections around the world, which tend to be very close. In that 2010 Australian election, for example, the win margin was something like 0.2% …

If the results they're getting on Google are biased toward one candidate, that shifts a lot of votes among undecided people. And it's very, very simple for them to flip an election or … rig an election … It's very, very simple for Google to do that.

They can do it deliberately, which is kind of scary. In other words, some top executives at Google could decide who they want to win an election in South Africa or the U.K. or anywhere. It could be just a rogue employee at Google who does it. You may think that's impossible … [but] it's incredibly simple …

[A] senior software engineer at Google, Shumeet Baluja, who's been at Google almost since the very beginning, published a novel that no one's ever heard of called 'The Silicon Jungle' … It's fictional, but it's about Google, and the power that individual employees at Google have to make or break any company or any individual.

It's a fantastic novel. I asked Baluja how Google let him get away with publishing it and he said, 'Well, they made me promise I would never promote it.' That's why no one's ever heard of this book."

A Dictator Unlike Anything the World Has Ever Known

Another, and even more frightening possibility, is that Google could allow its biased algorithm to favor one candidate over another without caring about which candidate is being favored.

"That's the scariest possibility," Epstein says, "because now you've got an algorithm, a computer program, which is an idiot … deciding who rules us. It's crazy."

While this sounds like it should be illegal, it's not, because there are no laws or regulations that restrict or dictate how Google must rank its search results. Courts have actually concluded that Google is simply exercising its right to free speech, even if that means destroying the businesses they demote in their search listings or black listings.

The only way to protect ourselves from this kind of hidden influence is by setting up monitoring programs such as Epstein's all over the world. "As a species, it's the only way we can protect ourselves from new types of online technologies that can be used to influence us," he says. "No dictator anywhere has ever had even a tiny fraction of the power that this company has."

Epstein is also pushing for government to make the Google search index a public commons, which would allow other companies to create competing search platforms using Google's database. While Google's search engine cannot be broken up, its monopoly would be thwarted by forcing it to hand over its index to other search platform developers.

The Influence of Search Suggestions

In 2016, Epstein also discovered the remarkable influence of search suggestions — the suggested searches shown in a drop-down menu when you begin to type a search term. This effect is now known as the search suggestion effect or SSE. Epstein explains:

"Initially the idea was they were going to save you time. That's the way they presented this new feature. They were going to anticipate, based on your history, or based on what other people are searching for, what it is you're looking for so you don't have to type the whole thing. Just click on one of the suggestions. But then it changed into something else. It changed into a tool for manipulation.

In June 2016, a small news organization … discovered that it was virtually impossible to get negative search suggestions related to Hillary Clinton, but easy to get them for other people including Donald Trump. They were very concerned about this because maybe that could influence people somehow.

So, I tried this myself, and I have a wonderful image that I preserved showing this. I typed in 'Hillary Clinton is' on Bing and on Yahoo, and I got those long lists, eight and 10 items, saying, 'Hillary Clinton is the devil. Hillary Clinton is sick' … all negative things that people were actually searching for.

How do I know that? Because we checked Google trends. Google trends shows you what people are actually searching for. Sure enough, people were actually searching for all these negative things related to Hillary Clinton. Those [were] the most popular search terms.

So, we tried it on Google and we got, 'Hillary Clinton is winning, Hillary Clinton is awesome.' Now you check those phrases on Google trends and you find no one is searching for 'Hillary Clinton is awesome.' Nobody. Not one. But that's what they're showing you in their search suggestions.

That again got my research gears running. I started doing experiments because I said, 'Wait a minute, why would they do this? What is the point?' Here's what I found in a series of experiments: Just by manipulating search suggestions, I could turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split — with no one having the slightest idea that they've been manipulated."

YouTube's Up Next Algorithm

YouTube, which is owned by Google, also has enormous influence on public opinion. According to Epstein, 70% of the videos people view on YouTube are suggested by Google's top secret Up Next algorithm, which recommends videos for you to view whenever you're watching a video.

Just like the search suggestions, this is a phenomenally effective ephemeral manipulation tool. There's no record of the videos recommended by the algorithm, yet it can take you down the proverbial rabbit hole by feeding you one video after another.

"There are documented cases now in which people have been converted to extreme Islam or to white supremacy, literally because they'd been pulled down a rabbit hole by a sequence of videos on YouTube," Epstein says.

"Think of that power. Again, it's not powerful for people who already have strong opinions. It's powerful for the people who don't, the people who are vulnerable, the people who are undecided or uncommitted. And that's a lot of people."

The Creepy Line

Most people now have Amazon Prime. If you are one of those who do, you can watch the following documentary on Prime. It is well worth your time to do so. Epstein and many other experts provide a very compelling overview of the dangers that we discuss in our interview. In my view, this is a must-watch and one to recommend to your friends and family.

A question Epstein raises is, "Who gave this private company, which is not accountable to any of us, the ability to determine what billions of people around the world will see or will not see?"

That is perhaps one of the biggest issues. Epstein and others attempt to answer this question in this documentary, "The Creepy Line," which is a direct quote from Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

"Traditional media have very serious constraints placed on them, but Google, which is far more penetrating and far more effective at influencing people, has none of these constraints," Epstein says.

"There are lots of good people in ['The Creepy Line'], lots of good data, and it explains my research very clearly, which is wonderful. It explains my research better than I explain my research. 'The Creepy Line' is available on iTunes and on Amazon. I think it costs $3 or $4 to watch … If you're an Amazon Prime Member it's free [from time to time]. It's an excellent film."

Google Runs a Total Surveillance State

In his article³ "Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy," Epstein outlines his recommendations for protecting your privacy while surfing the web, most of which don't cost anything.

"My first sentence is 'I have not received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone since 2014.' Most people are shocked by that because they're bombarded with targeted ads constantly.

More and more people are telling me that they're just having a conversation with someone, so they're not even doing anything online per se, but their phone is nearby — or they're having a conversation in their home and they have Amazon Alexa or Google Home, these personal assistants — and the next thing they know they start getting targeted ads related to what they were talking about.

This is the surveillance problem … The point is that there are ways to use the internet, tablets and mobile phones, to preserve or protect your privacy, but almost no one does that. So, the fact is that we're now being surveilled 24/7, generally speaking, with no awareness that we're even being surveilled.

Maybe some people are aware that when they do searches on Google the search history is preserved forever … But it goes so far beyond that because now we're being surveilled through personal assistants, so that when we speak, we're being [surveilled].

It goes even beyond that, because a few years ago Google bought the Nest company, which makes a smart thermostat. After they bought the company, they put microphones into the smart thermostats, and the latest versions of the smart thermostats have microphones and cameras.

Google has been issued patents in recent years, which give them, basically, ownership rights over ways of analyzing sounds that are picked up by microphones in people's homes.

They can hook you up with dentists, they can hook you up with sex therapists, with mental health services, relationship coaches, et cetera. So, there's that. Location tracking has also gotten completely out of hand. We've learned in recent months that even when you disable location tracking … on your mobile phone, you're still being tracked."

This is one of the reasons I strongly recommend that you use a VPN on your cellphone and computer, as this will prevent virtually anyone from tracking and targeting you. There are many out there but I am using the one Epstein recommends, Nord VPN, which is only about $3 per month and you can use it on up to six devices. In my view, this is a must if you seek to preserve your privacy.

How Google Tracks You Even When You're Offline

You can learn a lot about a person by tracking their movements and whereabouts. Most of us are very naïve about these things. As explained by Epstein, location tracking technology has become incredibly sophisticated and aggressive.

Android cellphones, for example, which are a Google-owned operating system, can track you even when you're not connected to the internet, whether you have geo tracking enabled or not.

"It just gets creepier and creepier," Epstein says. "Let's say you pull out your SIM card. Let's say you disconnect from your mobile service provider, so you're absolutely isolated. You're not connected to the internet. Guess what? Your phone is still tracking everything you do on that phone and it's still tracking your location."

As soon as you reconnect to the internet, all that information stored in your phone is sent to Google. So, even though you may think you've just spent the day incognito, the moment you reconnect, every step you've made is shared (provided you had your phone with you).

In terms of online tracking, it's also important to realize that Google is tracking your movements online even if you're not using their products, because most websites use Google Analytics, which tracks everything you do on that website. And, you have no way of knowing whether a website uses Google Analytics or not.

Steps to Protect Your Online Privacy

To protect your privacy, Epstein recommends taking the following steps, seven of which are outlined in "Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy." The last one, Fitbit, is a more recent concern.

Use a virtual private network (VPN) such as Nord, which is only about $3 per month and can be used on up to six devices. In my view, this is a must if you seek to preserve your privacy. Epstein explains: "When you use your mobile phone, laptop or desktop in the usual way, your identity is very easy for Google and other companies to see. They can see it via your IP address, but more and more, there are much more sophisticated ways now that they know it's you. One is called browser fingerprinting. This is something that is so disturbing. Basically, the kind of browser you have and the way you use your browser is like a fingerprint. You use your browser in a unique way, and just by the way you type, these companies now can instantly identify you. Brave has some protection against a browser fingerprinting, but you really need to be using a VPN. What a VPN does is it routes whatever you're doing through some other computer somewhere else. It can be anywhere in the world, and there are hundreds of companies offering VPN services. The one I like the best right now is called Nord VPN. You download the software, install it, just like you install any software. It's incredibly easy to use. You do not have to be a techie to use Nord, and it shows you a map of the world and you basically just click on a country. The VPN basically makes it appear as though your computer is not your computer. It basically creates a kind of fake identity for you, and that's a good thing. Now, very often I will go through Nord's computers in the United States. Sometimes you have to do that, or you can't get certain things done. PayPal doesn't like you to be in a foreign country for example." Nord, when used on your cellphone, will also mask your identity when using apps like Google Maps.

Do not use Gmail, as every email you write is permanently stored. It becomes part of your profile and is used to build digital models of you, which allows them to make predictions about your line of thinking and every want and desire. Many other older email systems such as AOL and Yahoo are also being used as surveillance platforms in the same way as Gmail. ProtonMail.com, which uses end-to-end encryption, is a great alternative and the basic account is free.

Don't use Google's Chrome browser, as everything you do on there is surveilled, including keystrokes and every web page you've ever visited. Brave is a great alternative that takes privacy seriously. Brave is also faster than Chrome, and suppresses ads. It's based on Chromium, the same software infrastructure that Chrome is based on, so you can easily transfer your extensions, favorites and bookmarks.

Don't use Google as your search engine, or any extension of Google, such as Bing or Yahoo, both of which draw search results from Google. The same goes for the iPhone's personal assistant Siri, which draws all of its answers from Google. Alternative search engines suggested by Epstein include SwissCows and Qwant. He recommends avoiding StartPage, as it was recently bought by an aggressive online marketing company, which, like Google, depends on surveillance.

Don't use an Android cellphone, for all the reasons discussed earlier.

Don't use Google Home devices in your house or apartment — These devices record everything that occurs in your home, both speech and sounds such as brushing your teeth and boiling water, even when they appear to be inactive, and send that information back to Google. Android phones are also always listening and recording, as are Google's home thermostat Nest, and Amazon's Alexa.

Clear your cache and cookies — As Epstein explains in his article:4 "Companies and hackers of all sorts are constantly installing invasive computer code on your computers and mobile devices, mainly to keep an eye on you but sometimes for more nefarious purposes. On a mobile device, you can clear out most of this garbage by going to the settings menu of your browser, selecting the 'privacy and security' option and then clicking on the icon that clears your cache and cookies. With most laptop and desktop browsers, holding down three keys simultaneously — CTRL, SHIFT and DEL — takes you directly to the relevant menu; I use this technique multiple times a day without even thinking about it. You can also configure the Brave and Firefox browsers to erase your cache and cookies automatically every time you close your browser."

Don't use Fitbit, as Google purchased it in 2021, a move that will provide them with all your physiological information and activity levels, in addition to everything else that Google already has on you.

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Morley Robbins, MBA, CHC,¹ a repeat guest, is the founder of the Magnesium Advocacy Group. He’s best known as the Magnesium Man, and is the author of “Cu-RE Your Fatigue: The Root Cause and How to Fix It on Your Own,” in which he explains the roles of magnesium, copper, iron, vitamins A and D and other essential nutrients.

His Root Cause Protocol² is the implementation of that information. We’re currently planning to write a book together, which will focus on the little-understood importance of copper and its interaction with iron.

As explained by Robbins, if copper is lacking in your diet, iron will build up in your liver, which changes its physiology and immunoproperties. Liver metabolism is highly dependent on copper and retinol, and there's not a lot of awareness of that.

“It's a very sophisticated process of interaction between copper and iron, and if that interaction doesn't go well, iron is going to start to accumulate in the tissues. It's going to start in the liver, but it's going to go elsewhere too,” he says.

“I think that is kind of the takeaway of these conversations — to make sure people know that iron does accumulate, and that iron can be reduced through blood donations. Especially as you get into your 50s, 60s, 70s, it needs to be a regular part of your health routine.”

Three Ways to Measure Iron Status

The clinical term for excess iron in the liver is hemosiderosis, and it’s so pervasive as to be near-universal. But where does the excess iron actually come from? And why is it that many with high iron stores have low serum ferritin?

As Robbins explains, oftentimes, low serum ferritin is not at all a sign of iron deficiency, but rather a deficiency in copper and retinol. The deficiency in copper basically locks iron in the liver and prevents it from being recycled as it should:

“It's important for practitioners to not measure iron status with just one marker. I think a lot of practitioners are falling into that trap of just using serum ferritin. There are three key ways to measure iron status: Hemoglobin, serum iron and serum ferritin.

The biggest concentration of iron in the body is in our hemoglobin; 70% of the iron is in our red blood cells ... Hemoglobin is essential to understand what is going on with the biggest bulk of iron.

The second marker that I really focus on is called serum iron. It's less than 1% of the iron, but it's a very important measure of iron because it's really getting at the iron recycling program. Every second of every day, we have to turn over 2.5 million red blood cells. That's a lot of activity. In the course of 24 hours it's 200 billion red blood cells that need to be turned over.

But what's a surprise is to learn that only 25 milligrams (mg) of iron are needed to support that 24-hour cycle, but 24 of those 25 milligrams, 95% of the iron, is coming from this recycling program. So, it’s a very significant understanding that the serum iron only represents a small percent, but it represents the efficiency of the iron recycling.”

Ideally, hemoglobin should be between 12.5 and 13.5 for women, 14.5 to 15.5 for men. Serum iron should ideally be about 100 for women and 120 for men. The closer serum iron is to these, the more efficient your recycling is.

What You Need to Know About Serum Ferritin

The third iron measure is serum ferritin. There are four different types of ferritin in your body, broadly categorized as heavy chain and light chain. Heavy chain ferritin refers to ferritin protein inside cells and mitochondria that require copper to work properly. Serum ferritin refers to ferritin in your plasma, is outside the cell — and also outside the red blood cells, the hemoglobin.

“What is not well-known is that this ferritin that shows up in the blood is very iron-poor. It doesn't have iron in it. The iron has been discharged in the liver and then the protein gets secreted out ... So, serum ferritin is not representative of iron per se. The iron was discharged in the liver ...

I would never use ferritin only as an indication of iron status. You need to see hemoglobin, serum iron, and serum ferritin. You need to see them in relationship to each other ...

[When] serum ferritin starts to get high, it's highly correlated with inflammation or an infection. And again, it makes sense. The liver is taking it on the chin. Iron is not being metabolized properly. Pathogens might be involved. And so, the body starts to secrete the ferritin in a more significant way ...

Serum ferritin should be between 20 and 50. That seems to be a nice sweet spot for people. When the serum ferritin begins to get up in the hundreds, there's a significant likelihood that there's pathology in the liver that's causing that ...

For women, the serum ferritin red flag goes up at 150. For men, the red flag goes up at 300. It can go up into the 5,000s and even higher, with severe chronic disease and inflammation ...

Low ferritin is an indication of metabolic breakdown in the spleen ... it's some kind of parasitic dynamic that's affecting protein production. The ferritin protein is not getting transcribed properly ...

So, low ferritin ... means low recycling. Something in the iron recycling system is out of balance and needs attention. I would argue that, almost without exception, it's a lack of bioavailable copper. The spleen organ is intensely copper dependent. The liver intensely copper dependent. That's not well known in clinical circles.”

So, to summarize, one of the most common errors doctors will make is to prescribe iron pills when serum ferritin is low. More than likely, what’s needed is copper, retinol and other factors to support iron recycling. Unfortunately, articles and textbooks on iron metabolism rarely if ever mention the copper side, even though copper plays a far more important role in the recycling of iron.

Why Blood Donation Is so Important

Most all men and non-menstruating women have excess iron. The reason for this is because many foods are fortified with iron, and your body has no excretory system for iron besides blood loss. So, it accumulates, and if the recycling mechanism doesn’t work properly, the iron gets lodged in tissues.

This is why regular blood donations are so important. Less iron means less oxidative stress, which is going to create less metabolic dysfunction, which results in fewer health problems and less tissue damage.

Every day you’re alive, your body accumulates about 1 mg of iron. Add up 1 mg of iron for every day of your life, and you’ll realize you won’t be able to eliminate all of it even if you tried. When you take out one unit of blood (500 cc), you remove about 250 mg of iron.

If donating a full pint (half a liter, 500 ml or about 8 ounces) of blood three to four times a year is problematic, you can remove blood in smaller amounts once a month on the schedule listed below.

Men	150 ml
Postmenopausal Women	100 ml
Premenopausal Women	50 ml

If you have congestive heart failure or severe COPD, you should discuss this with your doctor, but otherwise this is a fairly appropriate recommendation for most. I personally remove 60 cc or 2 ounces of blood once a week, which is about 7 pints per year. This is a large amount but because it is done slowly it is far better tolerated. Robbins adds:

“I think what's amazing is the sheer simplicity of doing a blood donation, and what it does to revitalize the body. When you have that blood loss, it trips a wire for erythropoietin, a very important hormone that triggers the production of new red blood cells.

And the beauty is it actually has two signals. The second signal is, let go of the iron in the tissue. It has a very powerful effect of releasing the iron to get it back down to the bone marrow, where it's needed to make the new red blood cells.”

Hepcidin and Hemosiderin

To fully understand iron metabolism, you also need to understand the roles of hepcidin and hemosiderin. A ferritin protein can hold as many as 4,500 atoms of iron. Each iron atom has four unpaired electrons, which causes oxidative stress. Hemosiderin, an iron-storage complex composed of partially digested ferritin and lysosomes, can hold 10 times more iron than ferritin.

This also means it holds 10 times more unpaired electrons. When hemosiderin builds up in your tissue, that's when you start having serious issues with iron regulation.

“What's wildly confusing is hepcidin, [which is encoded by] the HAMP gene,” Robbins says. “Hepcidin is an antimicrobial peptide. So, it's got some connection to pathogens. And what's it trying to do? Hepcidin is trying to get iron out of the circulation, to get it away from the pathogens. But it's a bit of a slippery fish because it reacts to iron status. It reacts to inflammation status. It reacts to hormonal status.

Estrogen and testosterone have significant influence over hepcidin. It's reacting to copper status ... Elevated levels of active hormone D [vitamin D] can suppress hepcidin. Retinol deficiency can increase hepcidin ...

The key is understanding that this constant recycling system of the red blood cells, the iron doorway, is being opened by a copper doorman. And if copper isn't doing its job, we're going to have a problem. And what is hepcidin's job?

Hepcidin shuts down the iron doorway. So, we have this significant dynamic between this very important iron egress that needs bioavailable copper, and if bioavailable copper's not there, this hepcidin protein is going to shut it down.

That's where a lot of the confusion is because the true anemia that exists on the planet isn't one of iron deficiency. It's one of copper deficiency not allowing for proper iron recycling. That's a very important nuance.

And the misunderstanding is that iron may look low in the blood, ferritin looks low or hemoglobin looks low, serum iron looks low, but it's high in the tissue. There's no blood test that measures iron status in the tissue.”

Excess Iron Can Cause Dysfunction in Many Organs

A colleague of Robbins in Miami, Florida, has developed a way to measure iron in the liver and brain using a Tesla 2 MRI and a novel scoring technique. This technique was catalyzed by my previous interview with Robbins, because the doctor in question was initially skeptical, but after measuring his own liver iron, he was shocked at the amount stored in there.

But iron is also stored in other organs, including your heart, which can have serious consequences. Robbins explains:

“Jerry Sullivan, a pathologist — his real focus was on cardiology — developed what became known as the iron heart hypothesis. It's not a very popular thesis with cardiologists, but he was able to prove that it was accumulation of iron in the heart muscle cells that were causing the wide spectrum of all the issues, whether it's atrial fibrillation, enlarged heart, any kind of myocardial infarct.

He was able to link it back to the accumulation of iron, and what that was doing to kill energy production in that incredibly important organ in our body. So, the accumulation of iron in our organs is very significant, because these organs are supposed to be producing energy to do their function ...

Too much iron syncs up with the symptoms that are laid out in the Merck Manual. You can trace just almost every one of them back to this iron-copper dysregulation, because copper's supposed to be regulating the iron. And when it doesn't do that, it starts to accumulate ... and then cause dysfunction and dysregulation in the body.”

Food Supply Nearly Devoid of Copper

As mentioned, iron recycling depends on copper and retinol, both of which are lacking in our food supply, thanks to depleted soils. Copper is further eliminated through processing and refining. Making matters worse, our food supply is chockful of iron, sugar and seed oils (which are loaded with linoleic acid) and this triad suppresses copper and retinol function.

For these reasons, copper supplementation can be a good idea, especially if you’re anemic, in addition, of course, to reducing or eliminating iron, sugar and seed oils.

“My new phrase, and I don't know whether it's going to get traction or not, but I'm coming to the opinion that sugar is white iron,” Robbins says. “People don't realize how glucose metabolism influences iron metabolism, especially accumulation of iron, and it's absolutely staggering when you get into it.

So, I think it's important for people to just be aware that sugar isn't just bad, it's really bad. And I think the coupling with the linoleic acid, it's out of control.”

Facts About Retinol

Retinol is vitamin A, which is not the same as beta carotene. They are two different distinct molecules, not to be confused, although nutrition labels get away with conflating beta carotene with vitamin A. Vitamin A also should not be confused with retinyl palmitate.

What people believe is “vitamin A toxicity” is actually a sign of iron toxicity in the liver, caused by copper deficiency. What happens is, when you get vitamin A from your diet, be it cod liver oil, beef liver or free range eggs, the retinol is turned into retinyl palmitate and gets stored in the stellate cells in your liver.

To function properly, the retinyl palmitate then needs to be turned back into retinol, so it can be transported on the transthyretin (TTR) protein, composed of T4 and retinol. Without the retinol, TTR becomes destructive. While Robbins cannot prove it yet, he’s convinced that copper is required for the conversion of retinyl palmitate to retinol.

“And while we're talking about retinol, it's probably important for people to know [that] retinol as a key component of the movement of electrons from complex 3 to complex 4. The electron actually rides the back of the retinol structure. That alone is mind blowing to think about that.

If retinol is not in our diet, then it's not in our electron transport chain, then it's not able to support the optimal generation of energy. So think of retinol as an energy-focused nutrient. It's very unusual, because most of its [known benefits are] around immune system or vision.”

Retinol is best obtained through whole foods, such as cod liver oil, beef liver, free range egg yolks (the deeper orange the yolk, the more retinol it contains), cacao and hot cocoa, and organic grass fed butter, ghee and heavy cream.

More on Copper

Copper also plays an interesting role in energy production. Your mitochondria produce melatonin in response to natural sunlight, and melatonin in turn catalyzes and upregulates glutathione, which is important for energy production, antioxidant protection against free radical damage and more.

As explained by Robbins, glutathione is also the “greeter” of copper in the cell’s cytoplasm. There are two metabolic steps to make glutathione, and one of the steps involve cysteine, which has a very tight relationship with copper.

Furthermore, a copper-dependent enzyme is required to convert serotonin into melatonin. Copper is also instrumental in regulating immune function. All of these functions are yet more reasons to make sure your copper level is optimal.

How to Optimize Your Copper Level

As for raising your copper intake, it’s best to get your copper from food and not a supplement. Good sources include bee pollen, grass fed beef liver and other organ meats. You also want plenty of saturated fats in your diet, as copper is a fat-soluble mineral. If you don't have fat in your diet, your ability to absorb copper plummets.

If you do opt for an oral supplement, Robbins suggests 3 to 4 mg of copper bisglycinate per day, taken with a fatty food (as it’s a fat-soluble mineral). The upper tolerable limit is 10 mg. This is so good because it has no charge on the molecule and readily penetrates cell membranes.

If you’re a farmer or grow your own food, you can put copper back into the soil, to get it into the food, by adding copper sulfate. Before you plant, simply spray the soil with copper sulfate, 10 to 15 pounds per acre. Alternatively, use a copper sulfate foliar spray, which is what I do.

Most farmers merely use NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) fertilizer and NPK actually blocks copper uptake in the plants, which was highlighted by Andre Voisin, Ph.D., in his 1957 classic (which, sadly, is now out of print): “Soil, Grass & Cancer.”

Vitamin C Can Help Augment Copper Level

Whole food vitamin C can also boost your copper level, as vitamin C contains an enzyme called tyrosinase, which has 2 atoms of copper in it. Acerola cherry is one excellent source. A single acerola cherry contains about 80 mg of whole food vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is prooxidant, while vitamin C complex is actually an antioxidant. Anything that has copper is going to be antioxidant.

Do not make the mistake of taking ascorbic acid, however, as it is NOT the same as whole food vitamin C. If you were to compare the two to a car, vitamin C would be the whole car, fully functional, and the engine is an enzyme called tyrosinase, while ascorbic acid is the car frame, with no moving parts.

Importantly, ascorbic acid chelates copper out of tyrosinase, which is exactly what proton pump inhibitors do. It's my view that ascorbic acid is a “pharmacomimetic.” While it’s a natural molecule, it has drug-like effects. It acts differently from vitamin C because it’s been taken out of the vitamin C complex. For example, ascorbic acid does not prevent or treat scurvy. Only whole food vitamin C does.

Ascorbic acid was identified by two scientists who also discovered ceruloplasmin, the major copper-carrying protein in your blood, and ascorbic acid can affect the structure and the copper composition of this crucial copper protein too.

The ideal ratio of copper to ceruloplasmin is copper around 100, and ceruloplasmin at 30, giving us a ratio of 3.33. If that ratio starts to rise or fall, then you likely have some kind of pathology going on.

A ratio in the fours and fives is often indicative of inflammation or an infection of some sort. When it starts to drop precipitously, it's a clear sign that there isn't adequate copper to fuel the function of ceruloplasma protein. So, to summarize the key take-home, if you’re going to take vitamin C, use whole food vitamin C, not ascorbic acid.

More Information

If you missed our last interview, where we went deep into iron metabolism and recycling, you can find it here. You can also learn more on Robbins’ website, RCP123.org, which stands for Root Cause Protocol.

“We have an RCP community that you can join, where every other week we have Q&As. People get to ask questions and we do our best to answer them. And then we offer training through the RCP Institute. We're about halfway through the class now. Historically, we've had 20 or 30 students in each class.

It started to creep up, and this class is 220 students. So, word is getting out. And it's a very switched on group of people. I'm absolutely blown away by the caliber. But we have intakes and the classes are in the beginning of the year and then the second half of the year, for 16 weeks.”

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