COPPER SALICYLATE - A Potent Inflammation Fighter and Rejuvenator, By Walter Last

"...Deficiency symptoms include anemia, bone disorders, defective spinal cord, hair greying and hair becoming fine and straight, losing its curl, infertility; weak connective tissue as evidenced by heart problems such as enlarged heart, weak aorta with holes and ruptures, aneurisms, varicose veins, wrinkling skin, and hernias. Copper deficiency greatly increases the lipid peroxidation of lipoproteins and cardiovascular tissue. It causes high cholesterol levels, and heart attack victims have low copper levels in the heart....
...Australian soils are generally copper deficient, and the importance of copper for development was discovered in Australia where sheep or lambs started to develop ataxia, a loss of muscle coordination. This was traced down to the defective development of the myelin sheet around nerves, especially the cerebellum and spinal cord. These changes are identical with human cerebral palsy, and defective myelin sheets are also present with Multiple Sclerosis. For more details about the role of copper in various diseases see www.oralchelation.com/technical/copper1.htm (1)....
.....Stress is a main factor in activating granulocytes, immune cells that cause inflammation, and are largely responsible for the symptoms of autoimmune diseases (6). Copper salicylate complexes have been found to control the metabolic activation of granulocytes (4).....
.....Inflammatory and Autoimmune Diseases -- Inflammatory and autoimmune diseases are associated with higher serum copper levels and lover tissue copper levels than normal. Copper complexes have lower toxicity and stronger anti -inflammatory activity than their parent compounds. This means, for instance, copper salicylates has much stronger anti-inflammatory effects than either common copper compounds or salicylic acid or for that matter other anti-inflammatory drugs.
Dr Werner Hangerter, head of medicine at the University of Kiel, successfully used copper salicylates for over 20 years with more than 1100 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. Of 620 patients with rheumatoid arthritis 65% became free of pain and other symptoms, and another 23% improved significantly, only 12% remained unchanged. With acute rheumatic fever 100% became symptom free.
Also neuromuscular problems such as sciatica, neuralgia and cervical spine-shoulder problems responded very well as did Sarcoidosis. Even short-term treatment of rheumatoid arthritis resulted in long-term remissions or improvements. Objective measures of improvement were remission of fever, increased joint mobility, decreased swelling, and normalisation of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (3, 4).
Wearing copper bracelets is a time-tested anti-inflammatory treatment but the amount of copper dissolved with the sweat is relatively low. In contrast, copper salicylates were found to be the best copper complex for the treatment of arthritic pain (3, 4).
Prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob or "mad cow" disease, and also Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease are related to the accumulation of wrongly folded and entangled prionproteins. It has now been shown that this may be due to a copper deficiency in the brain, and that copper stabilises prions and helps them to fold correctly (7).
In contrast to the disinterest of drug companies there is much interest in the research community in copper complexes as anti-inflammatories and anti-arthritics as evidenced by a large number of reviews and symposia in recent years. This research shows that copper complexes have strong anti-inflammatory activity in numerous models of inflammation (1).
Skin and Connective Tissue
Old, wrinkling and sagging skin is one of the signs of copper deficiency. Expensive copper peptides are being sold for the improvement of aging skin. In addition there is also much interest in salicylic acid as a skin rejuvenator. Commonly this has been used for short periods in rather concentrated form, but in 1998 Proctor & Gamble has patented the application on the skin of low dose salicylic acid and salicylates (including copper salicylate) as long-term treatment to prevent, reduce or manage aging skin and wrinkles (8).
The elastic fibers of arteries and other connective tissue need copper for tensile strength. Common examples of weak connective tissue are hernias, varicose veins and aneurysms. Aneurysms are ballooning arteries with very thin walls that easily burst. Albert Einstein and Paavo Aerola (pioneering naturopath and nutritionist) died of ruptured aneurysms, many individuals with white hair died of abdominal aneurysms. About 5% of autopsied Americans died of ruptured aneurysms, and another 40% have aneurysms that have not yet ruptured (www.american-nutrition.com/ba.html)...."
Learn more: http://www.health-science-spirit.com/copper.html