Expert Interview: The Role of Copper and Adrenal Function in Supporting Oral Health

NUTRITIONAL COACH, AUTHOR OF 'ADDICTION, THE HIDDEN EPIDEMIC'

Pam Killeen

Nutritional expert Pam Killeen goes deep into the nutritional aspects of what causes imbalance in the body which shows up as tooth decay and gum disease.

With her clear ability to articulate the complex world of mineral balance, Pam explains how disease is not only caused by a lack of nutrition but also by an over accumulation of toxic materials in the body as well!

Drawing from her experience coaching clients to greater health, Pam shares how the role of adrenal function plays an integral part in whether we experience a life of disease or vitality.

Loaded with gems!

Watch

Downloads

Interview Transcript

Healthy Mouth World Summit
Guest: Pam Killeen
The Role of Copper and Adrenal Function in Oral Health

Will: The next expert to share their knowledge with us here at the Healthy Mouth World Summit is Pam Killeen. Pam is the author of Addiction: The Hidden Epidemic and co-author of the New York Times best-selling book The Great Bird Flu Hoax.

She has been independently studying nutrition and natural health for over twenty years. Her interest in nutrition and natural health stems from overcoming a lengthy battle with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and multiple chemical sensitivities. As a nutritional consultant, she offers her clients a very comprehensive program which focuses on restoring their biochemical imbalances. She’s also a dynamic and diverse public speaker and radio personality. Her website is PamKilleen.com.

Today, Pay will be discussing the roles of adrenal health and copper in oral health. Pam has chosen to give her presentation to us without questions.

Pam Killeen, welcome to the Healthy Mouth World Summit!

Pam: Thanks so much for having me on your Summit, Will. I really appreciate being here. And, I’m really excited to talk about one of my favorite subjects, actually, and that is the subject of copper. Typically, I address the role of copper in mental health. But, actually copper also plays a very key role in dental health. And that’s what I’m going to be addressing today.

In my overview slide here on slide number 2, I’m going to be talking about the work of some very critical pioneers that have led up to this discovery between copper and dental health. Dr. Weston A. Price, many of you are probably already very familiar with his work. And Dr. Melvin Page, as well, I’m going to be talking about his work and how he discovered Dr. Weston A. Price’s work and was able to discover the importance of the mineral ratios, in particular, in his case the calcium and phosphorus.

Same thing with Dr. Nancy Appleton. And I’ll also be talking about the work of Dr. Paul X. So, all of these individuals basically led up to us learning about the importance of minerals and their ratios, and how they not just influence our overall health, but also our dental health.

I’m also going to be talking about the role of the adrenal glands, minerals, and the gall bladder, and how all of these systems are all interrelated. I’m going to be talking about the consequences of a low-fat diet on our overall health, including our dental health. And I’m also going to be talking about foods that best support the adrenal glands, mineral balance, digestion, and our dental health.

So, the next slide is slide number 3. One of the key things I must do in order to help an individual get their health back is to rebuild the strength of the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands, as many of you know, sit on the top of the kidneys. They have several important functions. One of their main functions includes balancing our minerals. And under that umbrella of balancing our minerals, that also includes not just the levels, but includes the ratio of the minerals.

And that’s one of the key components that I think is missing in many people’s education around nutrition and natural health. It’s not just that we need enough zinc, for example, in our diets. We also need the zinc in it’s healthy relationship to things like copper. And that’s just a simplification. But that’s sort of where I’m going with this talk. And they are also, as many of you know, an important source of sex steroids such as estrogen and testosterone. So, there’s many, many different roles of the adrenal glands.

And, as we stretch the adrenal glands beyond their capacity, they can and do become nutritionally depleted. And when the adrenal glands weaken over time, essentially what happens is the minerals will fall out of place. As the minerals fall out of place, then that leads to the toxic metals being able to move in and take over their receptor sites, for example.

So, what’s happening is the healthy minerals get displaced by the toxic metals. And that just confuses so many different systems in the body, everything from the neurotransmitters in the brain to the hormones, enzymes. It just carries a huge burden on our body.

And, so, what we need to do in order to heal the adrenal glands is we have to come up with different strategies in order to make sure that they’re resting. I always tell people when they work with me that I want people to imagine that the adrenal glands are in a cast and that they must heal. And there are several important steps that must take place in order for those adrenal glands to be able to bounce back so that they can do that very critical job of balancing the minerals and also keeping the toxic metals at bay.

So the minerals have a very intricate relationship in and among themselves. So, when people are supplementing with minerals, what I find is they can actually displace other healthy minerals. So, when I see people taking zinc, for example, or I see people taking magnesium, unfortunately, there’s a downside to doing that. And that is that they can displace other minerals with which they have relationships.

It’s a very, very complicated concept to fully understand. But, in a nutshell, this image on slide 5 shows the mineral wheel and some of the relationships that go on between the minerals. And essentially, the minerals are catalysts or spark plugs. They are triggers for thousands of essential enzyme reactions in the body. So, without a trigger, there’s no reaction.

And, without enzyme reactions, caloric intake is meaningless, and the same for fat and protein and carbohydrate intake. Minerals trigger the vitamins and enzymes to act, and that also includes influencing your digestion. So, there’s a lot of things going on with regards to the activity of minerals in your body. And we can’t take this for granted. We must make sure that these minerals are in their healthy levels and ratios.

And so the next slide, slide number 6, I just want to show you a very complicated report that I might get from any one of my clients. And I put a red dot beside the calcium just to show you an example of what it can look like when calcium, for example, falls out of place. And this is going to happen in relationship to sodium and potassium falling out of place.

So, the first four minerals on this bar chart — calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium — are the most crucial minerals to keep, both in their correct levels and in the correct ratios.

And what we see here is we see some very, very serious stress on this individual, so much stress that the sodium and potassium has essentially crashed rock bottom. So, this individual has severe adrenal burnout. And in relationship to the sodium and potassium crashing, calcium and magnesium have to skyrocket high in order to compensate for the low sodium and potassium.

Now, in this individual’s case, magnesium isn’t quite keeping up with the calcium. But that’s just a reflection, essentially, of extra stress. This person is under a tremendous amount of stress, so the magnesium can’t even keep up with the calcium.

But, when we look at the calcium, we see that it’s basically off the chart. And I do see calcium levels up as high as 400 or 500. And when they get up very, very high, of course, this is basically a reflection of the calcium trying to compensate for the low sodium and potassium. But, also that when it gets that high, the calcium becomes bio-unavailable. So, on the one hand we have toxic calcium building up in the body. But on the other hand, we have a deficiency at the same time because when calcium reaches these high, high levels, the body sees a red flag and says, “Uh-oh, this excess calcium is going to potentially kill the host.” And of course, nature designed it so that wouldn’t happen.

So, what ends up happening is the calcium becomes bio-unavailable. And so this is when I see, when I’m working with people who have all sorts of health problems is they tend to not be able to relax, feel joy, feel peace, feel calm. And it’s because they don’t have bioavailable calcium in order to help them feel those wonderful feelings. And, so, this is just an example of a relationship that can go awry. And this is one of the key relationships that can go awry with regards to the minerals.

And it has implications on other ratios. One of the ratios that I’ll be talking about is the relationship of calcium and phosphorus. And that’s what Dr. Melvin Page and Dr. Nancy Appleton have noticed in terms of even dental health, that the calcium and magnesium must be in a correct ratio for us to have good dental health.

We can’t see very clearly on this particular chart. And I think I have it on my next one, yes. The chart on page number 7, I have a little bit of a close-up there where you can see on another individual the calcium/phosphorus ratio is sitting where that red dot is, and the current ratio. And this individual is in excess of 10. And so, for this individual to get their health back, yes, all of the ratios need to be put into balance. But in terms of their dental health, what we want is we want that calcium and phosphorus at a ratio of 2.5:1. So, that’s just an example there.

And, on slide number 8, I included this example because I also wanted to point out this individual is very toxic in lead. This individual happens to be a smoker, so they could be getting lead from the cigarettes. It’s possible it could be coming from other sources, as well. But, at any rate, lead actually can interfere with the body’s ability to use calcium. So, there’s another interference that could come into play when it comes to even our dental health. Of course, lead is extremely toxic. But, it also can interfere with your body’s ability to use calcium. So, we want to make sure that a lot of toxic metals are being addressed in terms of getting our dental health back, as well.

To finish reading the transcript, download the PDF file