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Copper Toxicity and Hair Loss

kauaigirlkauaigirl Raw Newbie

I think I've finally uncovered my hair loss problem and I know there are a lot of others out there suffering too so here is what I've found:

The ratio of zinc:copper should be about 8:1 and zinc is hard to find in a vegan diet while loads of copper is in CACAO, avocados, seeds (especially sunflower) and nuts. These have been staples in my diet since I went raw. Add to this problem, is my history of 10 years of Birth Control Pills of which a main ingredient is copper (same with IUD)

Excess copper apparently also causes estrogen dominance, fatigue, depression, ear ringing, spaciness, as well as hair loss. These were all symptoms for me.

http://www.drlwilson.com/articles/copper_toxicity_syndrome.htm

I'm still trying to figure out my strategy for this imbalance and am mourning the loss of cacao, nuts and avocados, at least for awhile.

Pumpkin seeds are high in zinc but everything else seems to be animal products. Not sure what to do... any thoughts?

Comments

  • vegan2rawvegan2raw Raw Newbie

    Wow

    I have always thoguht avocado was good for hair?>

    Good luck to you it sounds like you are figuring out what you need

  • kauaigirlkauaigirl Raw Newbie

    Me too, I think it definitely still would be for someone without excess copper.

  • ginger has a lot of zinc. i often throw a nubbin of ginger in my green smoothies.

    oh, and dulse. dulse has zinc and is such a tasty snack. great for hair in general, actually.

    collards have zinc, as do kale and dandelion greens.

    how is your thyroid, by the way? hair loss and fatigue can be symptoms of a thyroid disorder. i've heard, too, that too much raw flax seed can mess with your iodine absorption which in turn adversely affects the thyroid gland. dulse has tons of iodine too, so it's a good addition all around.

  • internettouristinternettourist Raw Newbie

    Everyone is learning what is best for their body. Sometimes I would think one thing was the culprit for zits, and then later I'd find it is something else.

    You didn't blame dairy. So I guess you hopefully are not eating dairy. If you are, I would say that would cause the hormonal imbalance. My mother has very very very thin hair. She eats a lot of dairy. She won't listen to me.

    My NO, NO list is

    Nuts (its o.k., if they are in something I am eating; but I won't deliberately eat them to increase Omega 3 or calories like I was doing before)

    Tomatoes--night shade family.

    Dairy (read China Study)

    Meats

    My zits have gone away. But what I found since I was raw was that there was discoloration on my nose and what would be my mustache area if I were a man. I now believe that the discoloration was from the tomatoes I had been eating.

    We are all learning.

  • My sister raided out grandpa's tomato patch one summer when we were little and ate about six or seven a day until, in a weeks time, the entire area around her mouth and neck broke out in a rash from the acidity of the tomatoes. She cut back to one or two a day and it cleared up. Needless to say, she looked like RedBeard for awhile there...lol

  • Raw_OrleansRaw_Orleans Raw Newbie

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  • PamPam

    Kauaigirl, thank you, thank you, thank you for putting this out here! This is very interesting information. I read about this years ago but had all but forgotten about the copper-zinc connection.

    I have Graves Disease (the source of my initial hyperthyroidism and now medically induced hypothyroidism). Your link mentions Graves Disease early on in the article as a symptom of copper imbalance. During my second serious attempt at raw (during 2007 and the early part of 2008, I suffered from extreme hair loss, nearly translucent nails, and trouble concentrating, among other things. (This hair loss was completely different from what I experienced in my first attempt at raw, both for at least a year, by the way.) With an apparent predisposition toward copper imbablance, maybe now I can understand what was going on with me. I felt that I had SOME of the answers but I knew I was somehow missing a key nutritional piece of the puzzle. (I kept going back and forth with protein, yet I KNEW that wasn't it.) Reading through the article, so much of it makes sense.

    I, too, will be looking for good sources of zinc. Apparently, plant sources are not as bioavailable as animal sources, though it is also true that zinc is destoyed in cooking.

    Nutritional yeast appears to be a good source. Not sure if it's fortified or naturally so. And, of course, it's not raw. But I've already incorporated it, and will increase inclusion in my diet.

    I think it's good to keep an open mind and not be too quick to blame failure to thrive on detox and "user error"... ;o)

  • I know it's been a while since your post, but I just wanted to say that I stumbled across the same article last night after realizing my diet was super high in copper and was probably responsible for my fatigue and depression-like symptoms. (I'm vegan and starting to transition from a cooked vegan diet to a primarily raw/living diet) Be careful about completely giving up certain foods, though. Although you want to limit your copper intake, you don't want to eliminate it. Also, make sure you are getting enough Vitamin C, manganese, zinc, and Vitamin B6, as these will conduct copper out of your system and/or increase the absorption of zinc.

    Here are a couple other links you might want to check out, if you haven't already done so: http://www.gicare.com/Diets/Copper-Restriction.aspx

    I also use nutritiondata.com to obtain the nutrition info for what I eat, and I use fitday.com to analyze my diet on a daily basis (to see what I'm lacking, what I am eating too much, etc). It takes some time to enter the data in, but I find that it's been invaluable for helping me maintain a low-copper, well-balanced diet. You can also check out individual veggies at nutritiondata.com to get a sense of what minerals and vitamins that particular veggie does or does not have and in what amounts.

    Foods that are low in copper (

  • That's very interesting. What I do know is that there are a lot of hair loss scams out there so be careful. I got suckered into buying Nioxin. What a rip off! In my case I'm pretty sure in just a matter of genetics and there is very little that can be done. I've come to accept it unfortunately.

  • emtpdmomemtpdmom Raw Newbie

    Mikfizzle I realize this is an older thread and brought back to the front page by what may be a spammer . . . but the copper issue is not one I have seen mentioned in your hair loss thread. There may be something here worth investigating.

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