01/20/2026
COPPER DEFICIENCY MAY BE A LEADING CAUSE OF HEART DISEASE
If you watched the Olympics in 2016, then you may remember the commercial that said we all have a little bit of gold inside of us (0.02 mg to be exact); with most of that gold being contained in our heart, "There's (Literally) a Little Gold in Everyone".
But there’s a more precious metal when it comes to this vital organ...and that metal is copper.
When we think of copper we normally think of a penny, cookware, or perhaps even jewelry, but copper is actually an essential trace metal that we need to consume in our diets or else we would perish (hence the word ‘essential’).
Another thing that you maybe didn’t know about copper, and your cardiologist probably doesn’t know either, is that a lack of copper in the diet produces almost every single risk factor for heart disease. Indeed, a lack of copper in the diet can lead to elevated blood glucose, lipids (total and LDL cholesterol), uric acid, blood pressure and abnormal electrocardiograms, which has been known since at least 1987.
Importantly, some of these changes have occurred even at intakes that are considered “adequate”. A lack of copper also increases the susceptibility of lipoproteins and tissues to oxidize, and oxidized lipids are now thought to be one of the biggest drivers of heart disease. In other words, if your diet is lacking in copper, the so-called “bad LDL-cholesterol” in your body is more likely to oxidize, leading to atherosclerotic plaque formation and heart disease.
That’s a scary thought!
But why does any of this matter? Surely most of us aren’t copper deficient or we would all know about it. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to diagnose copper deficiency since blood levels are inaccurate for measuring true copper deficiency. This is because inflammation increases copper levels in the blood (serum copper levels likely become elevated in the blood to help fight inflammation).
In other words, blood levels of copper only diagnose severe copper deficiency but miss subclinical copper deficiency and normal copper levels in the blood are essentially meaningless (hence the issue).
So, are we getting enough copper in our diet?
The most shocking fact about the copper-heart disease story is that the safe and adequate intake of copper (originally established in 1980) was set between 2 and 3 mg per day. However, it was discovered that very few people in the United States consumed this amount of copper and that posed a problem (i.e., necessitating copper supplementation to meet the adequate intake for almost everyone in the United States). That is likely why the adequate intake for copper was subsequently lowered to just 0.9 mg/day. And this was primarily based on one small study looking at just eleven healthy young men. However, other studies suggested that we needed at least 1.3 mg/day of copper to meet our requirements. And yet most Americans (and most people around the world) may not even be consuming this amount of copper each day.
So why is copper deficiency virtually unknown? Perhaps because we have been so focused on obesity (over-eating) that we have totally neglected the harms of under-eating (in this case, a lack of dietary copper).
Even if we did consume the “adequate intake” of copper each day (which is still a matter of debate), we are now living in a society that predisposes us to copper deficiency. As a colleague and I published in an previous New York Times Op-Ed, the average American now consumes over 100 pounds or more of the sweet stuff per year. Furthermore, overconsuming sugar leads to copper deficiency as it reduces the absorption of copper in the intestine.
Additionally, numerous disease states predispose to copper deficit, such as kidney disease, celiac disease and even bariatric surgery (with over 200,000 of these operations being performed in the United States alone each year). Zinc-containing denture creams also put the elderly at risk for copper deficiency. Any way you slice it, copper deficiency is likely an under-diagnosed problem.
So, what does the evidence in the literature say about copper supplementation? One study in 16 healthy young women supplemented the diet with 3-6 mg of copper per day and noted, “we found that the young female volunteers who participated in this study appeared to be marginally copper deficient when consuming their habitual diet.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16115357/
The authors also noted that supplementing with 6 mg of copper/day reduced a substance in the blood that inhibits the breakdown of blood clots. In other words, a lack of copper in the diet may predispose to more blood clots, whereas ensuring adequate copper intake may have the reverse effect.
Another study, this time in 60 patients with high blood pressure, found that 62% of study participants were marginally copper deficient and that supplementing these individuals with 5 mg/day of copper significantly reduced their blood pressure https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14694810/.
Another study in 73 patients with high lipid levels noted that 38% of the study participants were marginally copper deficient and found that supplementing with 5 mg of copper/day decreased total cholesterol, the bad (LDL)-cholesterol and triglycerides and increased the good (HDL) cholesterol. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15969266/
In other words, if you take a group of individuals, around 1/3rd to 2/3rds have marginal copper deficiency and supplementing their diet with copper improves many health parameters.
Importantly, good dietary sources of copper (such as liver, oysters, lobster, crab and avocados) are not dietary staples for most Americans.
Moreover, eating a diet high in muscle meat without consuming organs increases the risk of copper deficiency as muscle meat contains a zinc to copper ratio of 50:1 (zinc inhibits the absorption of copper), whereas organ meats (liver for example) have a zinc to copper ratio of just 1.7:1.
Thus, our current dietary pattern is undoubtedly contributing to the problem of copper deficiency.
The optimal intake of copper per day for most people seems to be somewhere between 2.5 to 6 mg per day.
So, if we want to win the gold when it comes to our heart health; it may depend on a different metal...a metal all of us should have a greater appreciation for... copper!
How do I get copper?
1. I consume organ blends from NorthStar Bison https://northstarbison.com/collections/ground-beef-patties-100-grass-fed-and-finished/products/beef-old-world-ground-blend?rfsn=6160609.f40c9d. DRJAMES = 10% off.
2. A copper supplement https://t.co/GBVDCTadXP. Autofill saves 15% and my Fullscript accepts HSA/FSA.
If you want to learn about copper and 23 total minerals check out my book The Mineral Fix https://amzn.to/3aHoeu9ript
