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Bioavailable Copper & it's link to grey hair reversal and Autism

Copper and autism is a connection most people have never heard of, but the science is building fast.

Copper and autism is a connection most people have never heard of, but the science is building fast. In this episode Lisa Tamati explores copper and autism research with Melissa Atchley from MitoSynergy, whose son's life changed after starting bioavailable copper one. From Dr Richard Frye's groundbreaking work on mitochondrial dysfunction in autistic children to the brand new 2026 Science Advances paper linking copper deficiency directly to ASD-like behaviours, the evidence connecting copper and autism through the mitochondrial pathway is becoming impossible to ignore.

In this episode of Pushing the Limits, I sit down with Melissa Atchley from MitoSynergy to talk about one of the most overlooked minerals in health: copper. But not just any copper. We are talking about bioavailable copper one, the reduced form that your body is actually designed to use, and why it is completely different from the oxidised copper found in every other supplement on the market.

Melissa is not a scientist. She is a mum. Her son was diagnosed with severe autism and at five years old could barely speak. He would say m for bubble and b for mum. He was not sleeping more than two to five hours a night and Melissa was running on two pots of coffee a day just to survive. Then she met Charlie Barker, the founder of MitoSynergy, at an autism conference in 2015. Charlie put her blood under a dark field microscope, provoked it with bioavailable copper, and told her straight that she was not well. He handed her two months of product and within two weeks her fatigue had lifted. A few months later she tried it with her son and the results were extraordinary. One day he stopped spinning on the floor, looked up, and said zero minus five equals five. Negative integer math at five years old that nobody had taught him. That was the moment everything changed.

We go deep into the science behind why this works. Copper one is essential for Complex IV in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, the step responsible for producing approximately 90 percent of your cellular energy. Without adequate bioavailable copper at this enzyme, cells cannot complete aerobic respiration and default to producing lactic acid instead of ATP. Every cell in your body with mitochondria is affected.

We discuss Dr Richard Frye's groundbreaking research on mitochondrial dysfunction in autism. Dr Frye is a paediatric neurologist trained at Harvard and formerly Director of Autism Research at Phoenix Children's Hospital. His 2012 meta-analysis found that mitochondrial disease prevalence in children with autism is around 500 times higher than in the general population. Charlie Barker worked directly with Dr Frye on early copper studies and MitoSynergy has now completed phase one of a four-phase autism cell line study with remarkable preliminary results. The ASD cell lines were working 61 percent harder at baseline just to produce survival-level energy and their proton leak was 101 percent higher. When BioCopper1 was introduced those numbers started normalising.

We also cover the brand new April 2026 paper published in Science Advances by an independent research group showing that copper deficiency in a mouse model produced ASD-like social behaviours through mitochondrial dysfunction and impaired myelination in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. When they restored the affected pathway the social behaviour improved. This raises important questions about copper's role not just in autism but potentially in other nerve and myelin related conditions.

On top of the autism story we talk about the new MitoActivator MAX product which delivers 2.0mg of BioCopper1 per capsule, four times the dose of the standard EX product. We discuss the grey hair reversal angle and why hair greying is actually a canary in the coal mine for mitochondrial health. Copper activates tyrosinase which converts tyrosine into melanin and melanocytes are extremely energy hungry cells. MitoSynergy is also launching a new Grow and Restore product in the coming weeks with a 10mg daily copper dose specifically targeting hair repigmentation.

I share my personal experience on BioCopper1 at 57 years old including improved explosive strength in the gym, better recovery, and more sustained energy. We cover the zinc-copper antagonism and why you need to take them at least four hours apart. We discuss dosing guidance for healthy adults, for chronically ill people, and specifically for autism families where starting low and slow with the LDS product at 0.1mg is critical. We talk about glyphosate stripping copper from soil at a rate a thousand times greater than any other nutrient. And we discuss why you can be copper toxic and copper deficient at the same time.

Charlie Barker passed away in December 2022 at just 55 years old but his legacy lives on. He built a lab in his garage and figured out how to stabilise copper in the reduced Cu1+ state when multiple professional labs could not. He held multiple US patents and achieved FDA New Dietary Ingredient status for the compound. Melissa shares his story and the story of his nephew Tommy whose spinal cord injury started it all.

Whether you are a parent navigating autism, dealing with chronic fatigue, watching your hair go grey, wanting better athletic performance, or simply interested in mitochondrial health, this conversation goes deep into the science and the real-world experience of what bioavailable copper can do.

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Episode Transcript 

Lisa: Well, hi everyone. Welcome in to Pushing the Limits. I have the lovely Melissa Atchley with me. Wonderful to have you. So excited to talk to you today. Melissa is from MitoSynergy and we are going to be talking about MitoSynergy’s bioavailable copper one, which is a really exciting supplement. I’ve actually done a deep dive on my YouTube channel off my own bat about seven or eight months ago because I was so excited about this product when I found it. And Melissa and I have been chatting and we want to give you some updates. We want to bring to your attention a new more powerful version. So we’re going to get into all of that today. But before we dive into the science, Melissa, can you just give us a little bit of background on yourself and also your son because it’s because of your son that you sort of got involved with MitoSynergy.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. So I have been part of MitoSynergy since 2015 and I met the original founder of the company Charlie Barker at an autism conference. He was there talking about bioavailable copper and he had a dark field microscope in his hotel room hooked up to the large screen television and he would bring doctors in and what he would do is he would put a drip of blood under the microscope and do what he would call provoking it with copper, bioavailable copper. And what happens is the bioavailable copper because it’s bioavailable, it gets into the cell very very quickly. And when you have any kind of bacteria inside your cell that all of that just goes ah copper and explodes out of your cells and you can watch it on the TV and it’s really amazing and kind of looks like fireworks. And so when he wasn’t having doctors come in he would take mums, right, it’s a big conference of mums at an autism conference. And so a couple of my friends were walking by and they’re like hey we’re gonna go look at this cool thing. I’m like yeah let’s do it. And so he put my blood under the microscope, provoked it with copper, and he had, I think I was like third, and he had said the faster the bacteria come out the sicker you are. And one of our friends, hers was really bad and mine was actually as bad as hers. And he looked at me and he goes you don’t feel good. And I said no I really don’t. I mean my son was probably four, three or maybe four or five at the time and not sleeping at all, like two to five hours max a night. And it was just taking its toll on me. And I, you know, I said I actually feel like I’m dying. And I was drinking literally two pots of coffee a day just to make it through the entire day. And I just felt terrible.

And so after he did all of our blood and talked to us about it, he handed everybody a box with products that they had at the time, some of which are not the same now. Handed us all like two months worth of products and sent us on our way. And about two weeks later I was like hey I feel great. Like this is weird. I don’t feel like I need to go to bed at six o’clock with my son every night. And at the time the product I was using was called MitoAdvanced and it’s a very expensive product. And I was like man I can’t afford this. And so I called up Charlie and I’m a graphic designer so I was like hey can I do graphic design work for you, free product? He’s like yeah sure let’s do it. So I worked with Charlie for a couple of years.

And after a few months I was like okay I’m ready to try this with my son. And so my son was five going on six. Actually I remember that very specifically. It was maybe a few weeks before his sixth birthday.

Lisa: So your son has autism.

Melissa: Yes, my son has autism and very severe. He was much less so now but very very severe at that age. And at the time he was talking but not making any sense at all. Like he would say m for bubble and b for mum. And he could say numbers but he couldn’t really say any words. And if you said like say ball he’d go, you know, just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say. And I knew he was smart. I knew he knew what was going on. And I knew that he just couldn’t talk. So I started him on the MitoLipos. Did one drop a day and I wasn’t sure what was going on. And one day I was standing there talking to the nanny and he was on the floor spinning around on a spinny thing. You know the autistic kids love their spinning. He’s down there spinning and he stops and he looks up at us and he literally says zero minus five equals five.

Lisa: Wow.

Melissa: And then he starts spinning again and we were like what? And she goes yeah. And she’s like did you teach him how to say that? And I’m like no did you teach him? And so it’s not only the language right? It’s negative integer math at five years old that he just picked up through conversation. It’s like this is insane.

So that was kind of my first oh this MitoSynergy like something’s going on here right? And so I mean we’ve both basically been on it ever since. And I play around with his dose periodically trying to figure out do I need a little more a little less. But it’s a mainstay. It’s a solid for us. I use it all the time. I don’t have to drink coffee anymore in the morning. I take my MitoSynergy if I have a long day. If I know I need to stay up and work I don’t drink coffee I take a couple more.

Lisa: And your son, how is he doing now? Is he speaking?

Melissa: Yeah. Actually he won’t stop talking now. Sometimes it’s like please stop. He can say anything. It’s a lot of scripted language for him. Movies and airplanes and travel scenarios. He loves to travel. So it’s like all these like we’re going to go here and then go there and take the bus and get the rental car. He writes it all out. He’s very very smart and when he does communicate purposefully it’s on the letterboard. So it’s RPM which is Rapid Prompting Method which is a form of communication for our unreliably verbal or non-verbal guys and girls that need an avenue to communicate because spelling out on the letterboard essentially just uses a different part of the brain than spoken language. It’s a lot less complicated motor planning. And we’ve got a big community here where we are of RPM. We got one of our guys served jury duty.

Lisa: Wow.

Melissa: He’s basically non-verbal and just served jury duty. He asked all of his questions on the letterboard and gave his opinion on the letterboard and they approved him to be on the jury and everybody worked with him. It’s amazing. So my son does that. It’s a tough road. He’s really good at it with a couple different people, not so much me.

Lisa: Your mum.

Melissa: Yeah. And parents are usually the last ones to get that fluent communication. But you know I’m waiting and in the meantime we have a pretty good life. He loves to travel. And I always love to travel so he’s easy peasy going anywhere we need to go.

Lisa: That’s great for a child with autism. He’s progressed a long way and part of that is you put down to the MitoSynergy’s bioavailable copper one. Tell me a little bit about Charlie because Charlie was the brains behind this and unfortunately Charlie’s no longer with us. Charlie Barker was born in Phoenix 1967. He had a really powerful story. Do you want to tell Charlie’s story about his nephew?

Melissa: Sure. I know most of it probably. I’m sure I’ll miss something. So Charlie had a nephew that was in a car accident that was paralysed from a car accident and he was also in a lot of pain. And Charlie really was an absolute genius. Scientifically was very weird. He was in timeshare sales and really good at his job but was just very very smart. So he was doing all this research and he saw that people were doing stuff with copper in Egypt and they were actually doing these mega doses of copper one with kids with MD and like some of them would walk on these mega doses. And the problem one of the problems they were having was they couldn’t stabilise it. So you know if you have a shelf life of ten days you can’t really do anything with that.

So he came back to the States and he paid a couple of different scientists or labs to try to figure out how to stabilise copper in the copper one state. So it would be shelf stable and we could have a product and help people with that. And nobody could figure it out. And then he basically built a lab in his garage and figured it out himself.

Lisa: Worked out how to chelate niacin to copper to make it in the reduced form and not the normal what we get as the oxidised form.

Melissa: Correct. Yes exactly. And it just has so much benefit. The oxidised form, for listeners who are unfamiliar, copper is 29 on the periodic table, 29 electrons and protons. And if it has 28 electrons it’s copper one which is what MitoSynergy makes. And if it has 27 electrons it’s copper two. And that’s the oxidised copper like the blue copper that you see on corroded pipes. And that copper is what every other supplement manufacturer puts in their supplements because it’s cheap and easy but it’s not good for your body. It’s very toxic and you do not want to be taking it. And copper one is bioavailable. It’s what your body is made to receive. And in food all your copper is copper one. So we’re kind of replicating nature and giving it to you in the form that your body was made to take it. And so it’s got the transporters for it. It readily gets into cells where copper two has to be reduced into copper one in order to get into the cell and it’s very inefficient. Doesn’t happen very much. And so it just kind of floats around going okay I’m here but I can’t get in. And the body’s like we don’t want you but we don’t know how to get rid of you. And so you get lots of people with copper toxicity. We see it all the time when we do testing that people are copper toxic.

Lisa: It’s very different. It’s bioavailable. It’s totally different. Your body uses it differently.

Melissa: And so you can be copper toxic and copper deficient at the same time. So you’re toxic in copper two but you’re deficient in copper one which is what your body really needs. We’ve had quite a few people, and this is anecdotal, but we’ve had quite a few people who have been copper toxic and then they take ours and that toxicity goes away because they’re finally getting what they need and then their body has the energy to start excreting things and working to clean up things it doesn’t need. Because if your body doesn’t have enough copper it really is functioning at a level that is not optimal and your body will figure out what are the important things to do right? Like keep your heart beating. And the other things will go by the wayside. And so once you get those levels up to where they need to be it can start working on things like getting rid of things from your body that are in there that don’t need to be in there like natural detox pathways which can shut down if you don’t have enough energy.

Lisa: And this copper, this bioavailable copper, it gets in, it goes through the Complex IV in the electron transport chain. So for the listeners who don’t know, we have an electron transport chain in our mitochondria and there’s like four complexes in there and we pass the electrons along and we produce at the end of that ATP which is our energy currency, putting it very simply, our energy currency for that cell to do its job whatever that job is whether it’s a hair cell or a skin cell or a liver cell or whatever it is. Every cell in your body that’s got mitochondria in it. So mitochondria are at the basis of many diseases when you have dysfunctional mitochondria. It leads to all sorts of chaos in the body. And this can come from genetic things, mutations in certain pathways. This can come from toxins. This can come from viruses, bacteria that can cause damage to the mitochondria. Aging is another thing, as we age we just have more dysfunctional mitochondria. So when we give the MitoSynergy’s bioavailable copper to Complex IV, we take it, it hits the Complex IV in the mitochondria, it helps the mitochondria produce ATP and then do its job. So this is a really fundamental step and it’s part of like I have a hyperbaric oxygen clinic. I have a red light therapy clinic. These are all oxidative medicine family. And they all sort of work like red light for example again in the Complex IV. So when we add in this bioavailable copper one to that Complex IV on the electron transport chain we can improve the mitochondrial efficiency and therefore your energy production for all of the processes in the body. And this is probably why you saw improvements with your son and with yourself.

Melissa: Yeah. I think something that’s really critical. Complex IV is not just step four in the process. It’s the step that creates 90% of the energy that your body needs. And it needs copper. It needs bioavailable copper. And so if you’re not getting enough bioavailable copper, 90% of the energy that your body needs is going to be less. You’re not going to make as much of it. And that’s a big hit. It’s an enormous amount of energy. And one of the reasons why we’re not getting copper anymore and people are like well I get it in food. Glyphosate has been studied and it strips the soil of copper. And I wish I had the exact stat in my head but it strips the soil of copper like a thousand times more than any other nutrient.

Lisa: Wow. I didn’t know that. So the glyphosate that’s ubiquitous in New Zealand and in America unfortunately, thanks Monsanto, is stripping out not only many other things, destroying your microbiome as well, but it also affects the copper. That’s really exponentially more than other minerals. So it’s a big deal and you need it. Your body needs it back and it doesn’t need a whole lot on a normal basis but if you’re deficient you need a little bit more than the FDA recommended amount. And that actually brings us to Dr Frye’s work. He is a paediatric neurologist trained at Harvard. He focuses on mitochondrial function and specifically on autism research in children. And what is his take? He’s done a lot of research over time on mitochondrial function and how bioavailable copper actually affects the mitochondria in autistic children. Can you share a little bit of his research and what he’s done lately?

Melissa: Yeah. So Charlie worked with him on a study quite a few years ago looking at copper one versus copper two and what it’s doing and the effect of that and it was very promising. Definitely copper one was far better in what they were measuring at the time. And then Charlie didn’t have a chance to continue doing any studies and he passed away. So we reached back out to Dr Frye like hey we want to do some more work in this and he said yeah let’s do it because this is great. Now he works with a lot of different patients with mitochondrial disease but he has said to us, you know, when he has a patient that tests for the fourth complex disorder he always gives them our bioavailable copper. It’s his go-to or one of his go-tos for that.

So what we did was we were like okay we want to know is this working in autism cell lines? This is very specific to autism cell line study with him and we have completed phase one of a four-phase study with really great preliminary results. The first two phases were looking at cell lines, autism cell lines versus typical cell lines, and measuring lots of mitochondrial function and oxidative stress and cellular respiration and all that kind of stuff. And in the first phase we figured out what the best dose was and what the best time frame was for measurement. Now we’re taking that data and going to the next phase which they’re working on right now which is we’re doing that one dose in that specific timeline in a bunch of different cell lines both ASD and typical.

And so what they found is that it’s really helping to regulate the ASD cell lines. And by that I mean when our kids have mitochondrial disorder it’s not that their mitochondria aren’t working. It’s more of a case of them being hyperactive. Like they’re just constantly making energy constantly constantly. And the problem is the body doesn’t know how to utilise it properly. And so a lot of it leaks out. It’s called proton leak. So it’s like heating up a house with the windows open. You’re making all this energy but it’s just leaking out. And then their bodies don’t have the capacity for what they call reserve capacity which is when your body is not at rest then your mitochondria need to make even more energy but they can’t because they’re working so hard to make energy just to survive at the baseline.

And I’ll give you some interesting numbers. The ASD cell lines are working 61% harder to achieve that survival rate. That resting basal energy production is 61% higher. And then the proton leak is 101% more. So they’re leaking twice as much of the energy out and not using it. And so you can imagine if you’re working 61% harder to make survival mode energy you don’t have reserve capacity. So you need a burst of energy because of stress or exercise or anything you don’t have it. And what we’re seeing in this preliminary data is that the bioavailable copper is actually regulating and normalising those numbers. So bringing that basal energy production rate back down, the proton leak is much much lower, and then the reserve capacity which you want to be higher is higher because there’s not as much energy being spent making energy that’s not being used at all.

Lisa: So you’ve done phase one, you’re heading into phase two, you’ve got phase three and phase four will be actually with patients.

Melissa: Yeah three and four are both patients. Phase two is what they’re working on right now which will solidify those numbers over more cell lines. And then we’ll do the protocol with patients and it’ll be ASD patients and most likely neurotypical siblings is what we’re going to be looking at. So pairs.

Lisa: Wow okay. That’s going to be great. Dr Frye is on the case so to speak. So the children who have autism have poor adaptive skills because of this Complex IV problem and the reduced copper can really help them produce more efficient mitochondria. In Dr Frye’s most recent work in 2025 he did a double-blinded placebo-controlled trial published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences that showed that a mitochondrial-targeted supplement significantly normalised citrate synthase and Complex IV activity in children with ASD. Which is really amazing for anybody who’s got an autistic child. And that’s the same enzyme that depends on copper. And just this year in 2026 a paper in Science Advances showed something extraordinary. That copper deficiency in a mouse model produced ASD-like behaviours and impaired social behaviour through a specific mechanism. The copper deficiency caused mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress in the oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, the cells that make the myelin insulation around the neurons.

Melissa: Would that affect also then people with like multiple sclerosis and other sort of nerve related? Wow that’s interesting.

Lisa: It suppressed the mTOR signalling, reduced the myelination and produced measurable social behavioural deficits. When they restored the mTOR pathway the social behaviour improved. So what you’re describing with your son is not really just an anecdote but is starting to be borne out in the clinical research. But this isn’t just for people with autism is it? There are a lot of people with mitochondrial disorders. Charlie was actually trying to help his nephew who had a spinal injury. Does that mean it’s going to be helping with nerve conduction?

Melissa: I mean copper is so important to your body in so many ways. Like you said the myelin sheath, it’s very critical in the production of myelin and that’s critical for your brain and your nerves and your whole nervous system. It’s good for collagen production. It transports iron in the body. So if you don’t have enough copper you could have enough iron but you need copper to move it around. It literally transports iron through the body. I mean it’s just amazing for everybody in many many ways. It’s great for anti-aging because of the collagen and because of the mitochondrial benefits. Because your mitochondria age. And your skin starts sagging and hair starts falling out.

Lisa: So that actually brings us to the other topic which really interests me, especially with the new product that you’ve just brought out which is the MAX formulation which has got 2mg per capsule, whereas the one that I’ve been taking myself is only 0.5. So I’ve been taking multiple of those a day. I’ve noticed personally in the gym I have more energy. I have more ability to recover from my workouts. I have more explosive strength which at 57 you don’t usually go improving in your strength. So I’ve noticed that in the athletic side of it which would make sense. My ATP is maybe better. My mitochondria are functioning more like a younger version hopefully. The other reason I was really interested in it for me personally was my hair’s starting to grow grey. My brothers are both completely grey and I’ve managed to not be quite so bad probably because I experiment all the time with different supplements. But this is definitely part of my regime now and when I get the MAX I’ll be really happy with that because we probably need bigger doses for the reversing of grey hair. Tell us about the MAX product and why you brought this one to market.

Melissa: Yeah. So the MAX product is a great anti-aging product but we have a newer product coming out probably in about three weeks which is the anti-grey hair product. Because we believe that you need more than just the two milligrams to have any anti-greying. And I will preface this with because I’m very grey and I take MitoSynergy all the time but I went grey 30 years ago. So I’m kind of beyond help at this point. There’s a point at which you can’t go back. But definitely what we see are people that are anywhere up to maybe 20 maybe a little bit more than that 30% grey can have some really great effects. And the product that we’re using for that is called Grow and Restore. And the restore part is the grey part and that is a 10mg a day copper dose for hair grey restoration. And you can also take it as a preventative to prevent your hair from greying because there’s a lot of people in their 20s or early 30s who have a grey hair here and there.

Our owner went on vacation last year and he forgot to take any with him and by the time he came home like two weeks later he had grey hair. And he started massively dosing and it was gone pretty soon. But he’s my age and he’s not grey at all which is totally amazing. But the MAX product has 2 milligrams. It will take probably 8 to 10 milligrams a day in order to get there. So you need to take four of the MAX or you wait for the new product to come out. And then we have following on its footsteps in another couple months a product that is just anti-grey. So our Grow and Restore product is like a hair thickening and anti-grey product. And then we have another one that’s really just targeting anti-grey. So it’s got the bioavailable copper and then a handful of other products that are really made to help with the hair greying and push along that melanin production.

Lisa: Because your tyrosinase has to be converted into melanin which is in the melanocytes and melanocytes are very energy hungry cells. They need the mitochondria working really well. Also it’s part of the superoxide dismutase pathway. So the bioavailable copper would be really really important in this whole pathway to stop your hair going grey or even maybe reverse it. But it is all like hair greying is not just a cosmetic thing. It is a warning sign that things are going wrong in the mitochondria in those pathways. Because they are the most energy deficient. So the body goes actually the hair colour is not my priority right now. I’ve got other things to be dealing with. So I’m going to focus on that and let that go. Because it’s not life-threatening to have grey hair. So it’s prioritising. It’s like a canary in the coal mine.

Melissa: I was just going to say that. Yeah. And what I anticipate with the people who are going to take the anti-grey product, the side effect for them is going to be wow and I feel so much better. Because they’re probably unaware that some of the things aren’t functioning quite as well as they need to be. But like we talked about earlier when your mitochondria aren’t functioning some of the critical things stick, right? Your brain and your heart and your organs. And it lets the hair go. Your body knows what’s important. And so they’re going to start feeling much much better as well as getting rid of some of that grey hair.

Lisa: Well I’m up for all of that. I’m just wondering aloud. I’ve got a few patients with mould toxicity and things like that that of course really affects the mitochondria. Anyone done any studies in that direction?

Melissa: Not with us, not with BioCopper1. Mould’s so challenging. And I would think honestly and I know I’m from the company, I feel like copper helps with everything honestly because it’s that baseline of your mitochondria. Every cell in your body that needs to produce energy needs copper. And it helps with detox. It goes in and it kills the pathogens that aren’t supposed to be there.

Lisa: What about the zinc and copper antagonism? We know that zinc is really important. If we’re taking these very high doses of the bioavailable copper, is the zinc antagonism still a thing? Do we need to take them separate from each other? Do we need to measure our zinc levels and copper levels and ceruloplasmin levels before we start?

Melissa: Yeah you can definitely do that if you feel like you want to do the measuring. Some people just don’t have the money for blood tests. Definitely take copper and zinc apart from each other. They compete for the same transporter. So we don’t want to take them at the same time because you’re going to lose one of them and I think zinc’s pretty much going to win that battle most of the time. We suggest four hours apart. But if you can only do two, every bit helps. A lot of people have this big supplement routine all day long and they’re like how do I fit it in? So if you can only do two hours do two hours but we do suggest four hour separation between the two. I do up my zinc when I up my copper and I try to stay within that ratio.

We haven’t done testing but we’ve had clients that have done testing and shared it with us and nobody on high doses of copper has ever come back and said hey look my copper’s really high. They’ve all been like oh my gosh I can’t believe that I’m in normal ranges and this is great. Because it’s that oxidised form of copper that is the problem that’s causing the oxidative damage, the stress on the mitochondria. So it’s a very different thing than this bioavailable copper that the body actually knows what to do with.

Lisa: And that’s what’s in food. And that’s why but as you said with the glyphosate we’re not getting it. And when you look at the statistics for things like autism and chronic fatigue and right across the board nerve disorders, myelin disorders, microbiome disorders, there’s something wrong in our environment. There is something massively wrong in our environment. So many of our children, I think the statistics are something like one in thousands of children was autistic just 50 years ago and now it’s sort of one in 36 in some countries.

Melissa: Yeah it’s in the low 30s I believe. And also depends on whether you’re talking about boys or girls because the boys numbers are higher. And there’s certain states that have at least in the US that have way higher numbers.

Lisa: You’ve got to start asking yourself what’s happening in those areas. And there could be a multitude of factors, different toxins, glyphosates and other things in the environment and the food chain. But there’s something we’re doing wrong. So if we can find a way to actually help our kids because there’s so many parents and kids that are suffering with autism. I think this is a good thing to try. Maybe for people that want their hair to stay a nice colour, if they want better athletic ability, if they’re having mitochondrial disorders. And as with most supplement companies, everyone is trying to get clinical research done and it’s so expensive and so difficult. You’re going to be waiting forever if you wait until the last bit of evidence comes in.

Melissa: Yep. I remember early on somebody saying to me don’t do that, that’s not clinically studied. And I’m like why would I wait around for that? And I think for me, I’ve tried many things with my son over the years and the things that work are the things that insurance doesn’t pay for. So it’s the things that are not studied, that are natural or anecdotal. Those are the things that work for us.

Lisa: Coming back to the MitoSynergy. You’ve got a number of products. You have a 0.1mg dosed formulation which is sort of the starting point. Would you put people at the beginning on that? Does it make sense to go low and slow?

Melissa: I’m glad you came back to that because I wanted to address that specifically for any autism families that are thinking oh maybe I’ll try this. The LDS or Low Dose Serving is 0.1 milligrams. A normal person if they took one of those would not feel a thing ever. It’s the lowest dose. But we have a lot of very sick chronically ill people that find us and that’s where they start. With my son I had him on one drop of this liquid years ago and I’ve cycled him in and out of dosing. It was like a year or two ago I thought I’m going to start low and slow again and see kind of where that point is and I started him again with 0.1 milligrams.

So for very sick people, sensitive people, and for autism because most of our guys cannot say hey that makes me feel funny, they can’t tell you how it’s making them feel. So you’re just kind of trying to figure it out. So low and slow is the way to go. Our LDS bottle has 90 capsules so it’s a lot to get you titrated up. I would start with one. Take one of them for three to five days. Kind of okay I’m not seeing anything, let’s add in another one. And then the next level up is our EX product which is 0.5 milligrams which is the one you’ve been on. So once you get up to five of the LDS you’re at EX and then you can move up. I would not start with EX or MAX for anybody who’s really sick or on the autism spectrum just because their bodies are usually pretty sensitive.

Lisa: They’re super sensitive. And you can tip things. Same with most supplements really with people that are sensitive. You’ve got to go low and slow and titrate up. Watch for things like Herxheimer reactions. They’re not bad but they are not pleasant. You could have a detox response. You might have headaches, various issues that can pop up. That’s usually a sign that it is working but you might need to titrate down a little bit and go a bit slower. If you’re young and strong and just want it for athletic performance and hair greying you probably can go jumping to the more potent forms. But if you’ve got a sick person with mitochondrial issues, start low and slow.

Melissa: I am on probably 8 to 10 milligrams a day and it’s been a couple years since I’ve been sick. People around me are like what’s going on, they’re all sick and I’m like I don’t know, I’m not getting sick. And my son’s never sick either.

Lisa: Me too. I haven’t had a cold since I don’t know, six years or something. Melissa, anything that we’ve missed today that we should have talked about?

Melissa: No I think, you know, I will come back and talk to you about our next round of numbers when we get phase two. I’m so excited about it. And just know that start low and slow if you’re sensitive. The anti-grey product is coming out soon. It’ll be on the website two or three weeks.

Lisa: I’m going to be stocking either the MAX or the new Grow and Restore or both. And people need to know about Grow and Restore. The way your body processes copper and the way it’s going to function inside the cell with making the melanin again is a very long and slow process.

Melissa: Yeah. It’s going to be four months before you see the roots coming back at a normal colour. It has to kind of build that up and get through the whole growth process. So one month is not going to do it.

Lisa: And that’s not just hair by the way. I have this with my clients. They say I took one bottle, why am I not fixed? It takes a bit longer. You have to replete and restore and get the machinery going. A lot of times you just need to give it a bit more patience. Thank you so much Melissa for your time today. I really appreciate it and we will hear from you soon hopefully on phase two. I’m really excited about MitoSynergy.

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