Page 22 - Fall2020

The Naviaux group’s insight is that in the face of modern stressors, the stores at high intake” and “there is no regulated
CDR can get “stuck” in M1, meaning that “cellular equilibrium is altered, iron excretion in overload.” In short, when you
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preventing completion of the healing cycle and permanently changing the need more iron, the body can upregulate, but
way the cell responds to the world.” Even when the threat has passed, when you put too much in, the body is not very
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“cells behave as if they are still injured or in imminent danger.” And good at downregulating, and you will end up
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when free radicals run wild, they can damage the cell membrane, mu- with excess iron.
tate DNA and wreak all kinds of havoc. When the natural healing cycle As already mentioned, 80 percent of our
escalates into and gets stuck in this type of oxidative stress storm, we iron is in the red blood cells. A red blood
get epidemic levels of chronic disease (see below). cell lives about ninety to one hundred twenty
Another way to understand the CDR is to think of the mitochondria days and then dies. When red blood cells die,
as the carburetor. A carburetor needs fuel (glucose or fat) plus oxygen the body is able to recycle twenty-four of the
from what we breathe plus minerals that act as the spark plug (mostly twenty-five milligrams (mg) of daily iron that
magnesium and copper) to produce energy (ATP), but in the process, it the red blood cells need. We need only about
also produces “exhaust” (free radicals). If you think of a cell as needing one mg per day in dietary intake to replace the
to be able to clear out this “exhaust,” we might say that when the CDR minimal amount lost in the stools, urine and
is stuck in M1, it’s because something is “gunking up” the carburetor. through sweating. Without a mechanism for
the active excretion of iron, ongoing uptake of
MINERAL IMBALANCES AND METABOLIC DYSFUNCTION excessive iron will result in iron deposition in
The next pivotal phase of my learning curve came when one of my the brain, joints, liver and various tissues. 18
patients whose healing had reached a plateau experienced improvement It’s a problem, therefore, when you throw a
after implementing some of the elements of Morley Robbins’ Root Cause bunch of iron-fortified foods into the diet (see
Protocol (see sidebar, next page). I was so interested in this patient’s Table 1). Consider an iron-fortified product like
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outcome that I called Morley to learn more about the protocol, and I Cheerios, which contains seventeen milligrams
have been using it ever since. Morley’s perspective, compatible with the of iron in just one cup. (And who eats just one
CDR, is, “There’s no such thing as disease, there’s only metabolic dys- cup of Cheerios?) In a 1993 book called Iron
function caused by mineral imbalance”—and specifically, iron, copper Deficiency Anemia, the authors described
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and magnesium. how most dry infant cereals are fortified with
There are several types of iron. Heme iron, in animal meat, is more a “metallic iron powder”—iron filings—and a
easily absorbed than the non-heme iron in dairy, eggs or plants. However, Chinese study published in 2016 showed that
when you eat heme and non-heme iron and you have the right mineral this excess iron in baby food increases inflam-
balance otherwise, things tend to be in balance. A 2001 study address- mation. When poor rural toddlers in China were
ing the safety of iron in our food showed that “homeostatic mechanisms fed either an iron-fortified cereal, a non-fortified
increase intestinal iron absorption in iron deficiency.” What that means cereal or meat, the iron-fortified group expe-
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is if you’re low in iron, your body has the amazing intelligence to absorb rienced a high rate of systemic inflammation
more. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true: iron’s “down-regulation at “likely to impair their growth.” 20
high intake levels seems insufficient to prevent accumulation of high iron The Chinese authors claimed that the forti-
fied cereal improved the toddlers’ anemia, but
their indicator for anemia (ferritin) was not an
appropriate measure. Ferritin is an intracellular
storage compartment for iron, and—accord-
ing to Sir Douglas Kell, the world’s foremost
authority on ferritin—it should be in the cell,
not the blood; if it is in the blood, then it’s been
extruded out of the cell because the cell is full. 21

IRON OVERLOAD AND DISEASE
In 2010, a researcher pointed out that iron
levels “must be tightly regulated to provide an
essential nutrient that is involved in oxygen
delivery, metabolism and redox regulation
20 Wise Traditions FALL 2020