The answer is, a big difference. The human body is a mysterious thing, resilient and adaptable, but amazingly complex. The very resilience and adaptability that have made us the most successful species in the history of our planet depend on an intricate number of finely tuned relationships–between our bodies and the environment, between each of the organs inside our bodies, and between each of the cells inside those organs. We walk a thousand minute bioenvironmental tightropes every day, every moment, teetering and tipping, and righting ourselves just in time to maintain equilibrium, staying within the narrow band of conditions, both internal and external, that allow us to survive.
If the outside temperature falls below 32 degrees F and we aren’t wearing protective clothing, we freeze to death in a few minutes. If it climbs much above 120 degrees F, and we can’t find shade or an airconditioned building, we can die of heatstroke.
I’ve personally experienced both temperature extremes. Stranded by the highway late at night, during a January blizzard in Quebec, I huddled inside my snowbound car with only a thermal snowmobile suit and a lit candle between me and the –28 degree F winter wind outside. When the snowplow smacked into my back bumper in the morning, I was grateful that a couple of spots of frostbite on my cheeks were the worst the cold had done.
A decade later, crossing the Arabian desert during the first Gulf War, with temperatures well above 120 degrees F, I noticed that the air actually burned my lungs when I inhaled, while the sweat evaporated almost before it formed on the surface of my skin. It was a tremendous physical relief to pull off the road and walk into an air-conditioned restaurant in that throbbing, shimmering heat. If I’d stayed out in it much longer, after five hours in a car whose air-conditioning system had broken down, I’d have paid a steep price.
A narrow band.
As for copper, we’re all familiar with this practical, beautiful metal. We make pennies out of it, and electrical wiring, and polished kettles to boil our tea water. Anyone who’s traveled to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has seen copper ore, and probably bought a nugget or two at some souvenir stand. Copper roofs, turned green by contact with the air, adorn many of our best-known architectural monuments.
A normal, healthy person has about 100 milligrams of copper in his or her body, distributed throughout a variety of cells and tissues. Only 100 mg. A few specks. What can happen if that number goes up or down?
An article in a recent issue of Discover magazine ought to give an idea.4 The author, a neurologist from Concord, New Hampshire, recounted his experience with a 22-year-old patient he called Megan, who suffered from a disorder called Wilson’s disease. Wilson’s is a genetic disorder that prevents the body from properly eliminating excess amounts of copper. As Dr. John R. Pettinato explained:
Copper is an essential trace element, and most diets provide about one quarter more than is needed for cellular metabolism. The liver processes this excess copper into bile, which is excreted in the stool. Some people inherit a defect in this processing pathway, and symptoms occur as harmful amounts of copper accumulate in the brain and the liver. 5
A few specks too many accumulated in Megan. She became depressed, anxious, and developed anorexia, as well as a bad case of the shakes. Her legs and head shook, and she was rarely tremor-free. Then she began to drool, especially at night; “her extremities had become stiff, and her arms didn’t swing naturally when she walked. She felt dizzy and off balance and seemed to shuffle.”6
If Pettinato hadn’t quickly diagnosed and treated her, Megan might have gotten a lot worse. The full range of symptoms of Wilson’s can include hepatitis, liver damage, tremors, slurred speech, lack of coordination, cramping, emotionality, depression, parkinsonism, psychosis, and “other bizarre behaviors.” Some patients die. All that from a few specks too many of a single element.
Of course, Megan was suffering from too much copper. What about too little? As the authors of Understanding Nutrition note, copper deficiency is relatively rare, but is seen in some malnourished children. “Copper deficiency in animals raises blood cholesterol and damages blood vessels, raising questions about whether low dietary copper might contribute to cardiovascular disease in humans,” say Whitney and Rolfes.7
Copper is only one of the many nutrients our bodies need. Some, like iron, or vitamins A and C, are of major importance and have been studied in great detail over the years. Others, like selenium or molybdenum, or vitamins E or K, have received less attention and their roles in keeping us healthy are only beginning to be understood. As late as 1975, the USDA food tables didn’t even list selenium or vitamins D and E, and they have only recently begun to include the amino acids.
Also only partially understood are the effects each of these nutrients have on each other, or on the body when working in tandem, such as the interconnections between sodium and calcium intake noted in Chapter One. The point is that they are all important; each one affects the others, working with them or against them, in an intricate living symphony of chemical and biochemical reactions. Even the smallest excesses or deficiencies can provoke myriad unexpected results, which we ignore at our peril.
SCURVY KNAVES
In the 1800s, when Herman Melville wrote his classic whaling novel Moby Dick (the movie version, a century later, starred Gregory Peck), sailors would stay at sea for months, even years, and their stores of fresh vegetables would often be exhausted long before they could put into port for more provisions. Forced to subsist on diets of salt pork and biscuit, they developed a whole range of diseases stemming from dietary deficiencies, the best known of which was scurvy (“Ahoy there, you scurvy knave!”).
The first sign of scurvy was fatigue, which kept getting worse. Then the sailor’s gums would start bleeding, followed by his skin. The blood vessels under his skin would appear to turn red and swell. If the man cut himself, the cut wouldn’t heal. His fingers and toes would swell, and his body hair would turn curly and kinky. Horny growths would appear on the skin, particularly his buttocks. He would experience increasing pain in his joints, would become pale and lethargic and unable to sleep. Next his teeth would start falling out and finally he would start to hemorrhage. Finally, thankfully, he would die.8
As many as two-thirds of a ship’s crew would die this way during a long voyage. Experiments by British physician James Lind finally isolated the cause—lack of citrus or other fruits containing what was then called the “antiscorbutic factor.” Isolated nearly 200 years later, the factor was found to be a carbon compound similar to glucose, which was dubbed “ascorbic acid”—today’s vitamin C.9 Eventually, the British navy solved the problem by requiring all of its sailors to drink lime juice during long voyages, thus giving rise to the slang nickname for an Englishman, “limey.”
And what has the potato lost over the past 50 years? In Canada, 57 percent of its vitamin C. The American tomato has lost 16.9 percent of its vitamin C just since 1963. And broccoli, described by reporter Picard as “a food that epitomizes the dictates of healthy eating,”10 has, according to the USDA tables, lost fully 45 percent of this crucial nutrient since John Kennedy died.
Are Americans and Canadians likely to break out suddenly with the symptoms of advanced scurvy? Probably not in the short-term future, since other food items—including limes, lemons, and grapefruit— still contain considerable ascorbic acid. But the general trend toward drastic vitamin C loss in so many food items at the same time, a steady move away from what makes for good health and toward nutritional poverty, is hardly reassuring.
It’s even less reassuring if one takes such scourges as heart disease or cancer into account. The causes of cancer, what John Wayne called “the big C,” and which killed him shortly after he made his