Skip to main content

Is your IUD poisoning you?


Could your copper IUD being causing your body to be overloaded and in need of a serious detox?
(This is also a podcast episode on The Tranquility Tribe podcast, if you prefer, listen here.)

Hey Tranquility Tribe! This week, we’re getting educated about a little-known, big problem that affects thousands of women around the world: copper toxicity. HeHe has had a copper IUD for about a year and loves it, but when she started experiencing some funky symptoms, she came across the topic of copper toxicity and knew she needed to do a deeper dive. There’s no one better to educate us about this than someone who has experienced it themselves, so HeHe enlisted the help of Kirby Costa Campos, who has made it her life’s mission to educate herself and others about copper toxicity and help women face the reality that the copper IUD may be playing a big role in occurrences of this poisoning. 

Kirby had been ill on and off for many years and had been given all the diagnoses in the world, from epilepsy, lupus, and even bipolar disorder. However, when she would get treated for these things, she would feel good for a month or two and then crash, with new symptoms coming up. It turns out that was because she was never being treated for the underlying cause of her issues, copper toxicity.

It wasn’t until a gynecologist she saw in the UK mentioned that she had been seeing a lot of patients with copper IUDs experiencing the same things as Kirby whose symptoms would go away once it was taken out that Kirby discovered what had been ailing her all along. Because  the toxicity is passed in utero and she was born in a toxic metal zone in Germany, she realized much of her life’s medical history could be explained by that initial toxicity that was exacerbated by the fact that she grew up drinking water in a home with copper piping and has been vegan/vegetarian, which means her diet was extremely high in copper and low in zinc. 

So how does this copper toxicity come to be? When it comes down to it, our bodies are made up of water and minerals. Copper and estrogen work the same way in the body, so when you use something estrogen-laden like birth control, it can throw off your copper balance and potentially deplete your zinc levels. Zinc and copper are antagonists so when you don’t have enough zinc to balance out copper, your copper levels can continue to rise and you may become toxic. Because of the rise of hormonal birth control and the decrease of zinc levels in our food supply due to industrialization, it is estimated that 80 percent of women are going to have some sort of copper imbalance in their lifetime. 

There are two types of copper out there: bioavailable and unbioavailable. Every living thing needs bioavailable copper, the type found in food, to live. The problems arise when you have too much of that bioavailable copper or if your body has unbioavailable copper, which can be released from the IUD and absorbed when you drink water from copper piping. Unbioavailable copper acts like a “tiny hulk” in our bodies, destroying everything it can touch and causing tons of inflammation and further throwing off your mineral balance. 

Kirby says the most common symptoms are mood swings and hair loss, but other symptoms include reproductive issues like cysts, rashes, fatigue, depression and/or suicidal thoughts, allergies, and anorexia. It can be hard to go to your primary care practitioner with concerns about copper toxicity, as nutritional concerns were not taught in medical school core curriculum until very recently, leading to a lack of knowledge in mainstream medicine. She suggests seeing a nutritionist or naturopath rather than your primary care practitioner if you’re concerned. If you think you could be copper toxic, Kirby highly recommends getting a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis test, which can tell you a lot more than any blood test can. This is especially important if you’re planning on getting pregnant, as the test can help you catch copper toxicity before it it spread in utero to your child. There’s even a theory that postpartum depression is just copper toxicity that isn’t diagnosed in the right matter. When you’re pregnant, you’re not processing out minerals as everything is getting stored in the body for your baby, so when you have your baby and don’t do a proper detox, it could lead to the psychological effects associated with postpartum depression.

Kirby suggests consuming a maximum of 1.5-3 mg of copper each day, but it all depends on your body’s ability to detox. For a copper toxic person, she recommends completely avoiding copper until their body can detox and then slowly introducing low levels back. 

While copper toxicity sounds frightening, the good news is that it is both preventable and treatable! Copper toxicity is not a life sentence, but the healing process can be long and hard. Besides symptoms of the actual toxicity, there are symptoms during the detox and even during the healing that can be worse than the symptoms of the toxicity themselves. However, with an open mind and perseverance, copper toxicity can absolutely be overcome.




If you want to get in touch with Kirby, you can find her at https://www.kirbyamour.com/.



Tranquility by HeHe, A Maternity Concierge, Birthing and Doula Service in Boston, Ma.
"We can't wait to pamper you."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Vagina Whispering: Everyone's Doing It

Meet The Vagina Whisperer [This is also an episode of Friday Free Talk on The Tranquility Tribe Podcast on iTunes. Listen  here .] Hey Tranquility Tribe!  I’m so excited to bring you this episode of the Tranquility Tribe podcast!  Today, Hehe talked to Sara Reardon, also known as the Vagina Whisperer.  As you may be able to guess from her nickname, Sara is an expert in all things vagina, which means that this episode is full of super essential and often understated topics! Who is the Vagina Whisperer? Sara Reardon is a physical therapist who currently practices in New Orleans.   She specializes in men and women’s pelvic floor health, and she is passionate about speaking up when it comes to treatment and prevention of pelvic health issues.   By bringing humor to the often sensitive topic of staying healthy “down there,” Sara helps to unpack countless vagina-related topics that many women have experience with but few are comfortable talking about.   In addition t

Sexual Wellness with Rebecca Alvarez Part 1 of 2

Sexual Wellness Products with Rebecca Alvarez (Part 1 of 2 of our interview derived from The Birth Lounge Podcast Episode 130 ) You GUYS. I am SO excited to bring this interview to life here on the blog. Did you know that 98% of all feminine care products has at least 1 toxic ingredient? That's scary! Rebecca Alvarez earned her BA in Women’s Health & Sexuality from UC Berkeley and her MA in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State and is the founder of The Bloomi. She is joining me to dive deep into what’s wrong with traditional sexual wellness products, how to spot harmful ingredients and false labeling, and what you need to know about long term effects of these issues in sexual wellness and women’s health! So Let's have Rebecca introduce herself! Rebecca : I consider myself a sexual wellness expert. I'm also an entrepreneur and my passion is bringing clean intimate care products to women and femmes. I'm sure we'll talk about why that's important and wha

Do Inductions Really Rise Around the Holidays?

Do Inductions Really Rise Around the Holidays? As long as I can remember in my doula career, I have been told, both seriously and sarcastically, that inductions rise around the holidays because doctors want to control the births they will have to deliver on..let’s say Thanksgiving day or Christmas Day.  I have to be honest in that I never really paid much attention to it because our team typically takes off the end of the year! It has been an intentional decision in years past to not take births in the months of December and January. This provided us with the time to disconnect, visit family and friends, and wrap up one year + dive into the next with a solid foundation. As you well know, 2020 has changed so much of what we knew and, for us, this meant not having the space to disconnect without leaving birthing people vulnerable in a global crisis and not traveling for this holidays. With this, we decided to work straight through 2020 into the start of 2021. And in this moment, the enti