Severe Pregnancy Nausea from Copper Deficiency

A friend's post reminded me that I needed to publish this (after keeping it in draft form for months). Here it is!

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Here's something fun from the comment section in the article "The REAL Cause of Morning Sickness":

This comment, which I found extremely interesting, was from a woman who discovered that her HG was caused by copper deficiency:

"Hi  :) I just wanted to leave a comment, just in case it might help someone else figure out what’s going on with their body and pregnancy. I started having severe morning sickness at about 8 weeks pregnancy that lasted until I found out the cause (for me) 9 weeks later. I was COPPER DEFICIENT. I still can’t believe it, but it was absolutely horrendous and even now if I think I can skip a dose of copper with my prenatal I will get paid back for it and the symptoms immediately come back. I am taking Garden of Life’s Prenatal with added chelated copper (2 or 3mg a day; no more than 3 and no less than 2). The results from the added Copper were, for me, absolutely MIRACULOUS and almost instantaneous.

"I am SO SO SO SO thankful that I was a biology major for part of my college career and was so studious (I made all As in the pre-med program at my school, but ended up changing because I ended up knowing that wasn’t the route I was supposed to ultimately take).

"After experiencing nearly all-day morning sickness, having literally everything smell absolutely horrible to me, and then eventually becoming extremely irritable (I had to stop working all of this got so bad… I am lucky that financially my husband and I are able to handle this. I really don’t know how I could have functioned otherwise…) I started experiencing symptoms similar to MS. I would have nerve pain/slight tremors, started developing spider veins/beginning varicose veins (a symptom of copper deficiency) and even slight twitching.

"Once all this happened I woke up one morning absolutely KNOWING I was having damage done to my Myelin Sheaths. It was like the word Myelin Sheath sang itself in a mantra inside my head -yelling at me to get online and do the research I needed to do to fix what was going wrong.

"In between trips to the trash-can and/or toilet (because I was throwing up bile at that point -I would throw up with absolutely nothing in my stomach) I researched online. I KNEW I didn’t have MS. I just knew that was not the case. I knew there was something going on — and all the research I did pointed to Copper Deficiency like a bright and shining arrow.

"I am supplement junky (seriously I am, I have enough herbal/vitamin supplements to fill up a very large kitchen drawer) and found out that I’d bought some copper a while back and decided that this was something I was absolutely going to try. I took about 4mg that day (the upper limit is 10mg, but taking that much is not something I’d advise unless your doctor recommends it, even if your deficient as I was/am).

"The results literally were almost instantaneous. By the end of the day not only did my all day “morning sickness” go away, but I could actually walk around without everything smelling incredibly strong and incredibly disgusting inside my own house and outside in my yard and neighborhood. I started to FEEL different as well. It was like Copper Deficiency affected the way I saw and felt about absolutely everything.

"These days SO MANY vitamins, including the high quality vitamins, have far more Zinc than Copper in them. If you eat a fortefied cereal chances are it contains far more zinc than copper. If you eat eggs (which are AWESOME for your growing baby, lots of good B vitamins, minerals, choline, etc) they contain a lot more zinc than copper.

"Before I conceived (and for the first few weeks) I was taking Megafood’s Women multivitamin. This is a whole food vitamin that is very reputable… After I found out I was pregnant I switched to Garden of Life’s Prenatal. I also took plenty of Magnesium (Natural Calm), Calcium (Swanson’s Coral Calcium), DHA (Garden of Life’s Prenatal DHA) and a small amount of Organic Spirulina to help chelate some of heavy metals that seem so prevalant in our food.

"I really thought I was doing everything so perfectly… But I really believe taking vitamins that have zinc/copper imbalances (more zinc than copper) for years probably contributed to my copper deficiency. Finding out what exactly it was causing my morning sickness has been an absolute MIRACLE. And I still believe I am somewhat copper deficient because I absolutely cannot take my prenatal (GoL’s prenatal is 3 pills a day) without Copper. I have small 2mg pills that I usually break in half and take that way. If I think I can get away with less copper my morning sickness and all the symptoms immediately start coming back.

"I’ve written a book here it feels like! But I seriously hope I can help someone else. If you are experiencing what I’ve experienced the conventional advice will NOT help you. Taking vitamin B6 (as recommended by my OB) only made my morning sickness Worse, which makes sense because taking B6 will only exacerbate a Copper Deficiency. Copper Deficiency can also cause problems for your baby. I am thankful that I caught mine when I did and believe part of my severe symptoms were because my body was giving all the copper in my prenatal (not very much) to my baby instead of to me (which of course I am glad of!).

"If you are experiencing traditional morning sickness with depression like symptoms, irritability, and then experience ANY kind of nerve pain or tremors you could be Copper Deficient, as I was. I stumbled on this page in googling the connection between mineral deficiencies and “morning sickness” and definitely am living proof that a mineral deficiency can cause severe morning sickness. I’m not sure what prompted me to write all of this, but I sure hope it ends up helping someone! My baby (boy) has been nothing but active and healthy in my only two ultrasounds, so I’m thinking my body gave all my dietary and prenatal copper to him, leaving me with the severe morning sickness and eventual more serious symptoms."

Of course, when I Googled it, I found other articles saying that copper toxicity (overdoing it with copper) can cause morning sickness.

Ah, pregnancy nausea. It loves to baffle us.