What are the hazards of copper to the human body

Copper is a very common metal and is widely used in many aspects of our daily lives. Many household appliances and other items are made of copper. In this way, we will be exposed to copper more widely in our lives. If copper enters the human body, it will cause great harm to the body and may cause some serious physical diseases. So what are the harms of copper to the human body? Let us introduce it below.

The main harm is caused by heavy metal ion copper. When a large amount of heavy metals remain in the human body, it can easily burden the internal organs, especially the liver and gallbladder. When problems occur in these two organs, the metabolism in the human body will be disrupted, and cirrhosis and ascites may even become more serious.

The physiological functions of copper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

l. Closely related to the hematopoietic function of the human body. It is generally believed that the hematopoietic function is mainly related to the trace element iron. However, copper plays a key role in the process of iron participating in the formation of hemoglobin. That is, when divalent iron is converted into trivalent iron, it must rely on the oxidation of plasma ceruloplasmin. If the body is deficient in copper, the oxidative activity of plasma ceruloplasmin will decrease, which will inevitably lead to difficulties in the conversion of iron valence and cause anemia. Clinically, it is often found that some patients with iron deficiency anemia do not respond well to simple iron supplementation, but after adding copper-containing preparations, the anemia is quickly corrected. In addition, in the later stages of cancer, anemia in patients is often related to the massive consumption of copper in the body. When supplementing iron for anemic patients, it is best to supplement copper appropriately, which often produces better results.

2. Related to the antioxidant effect of the human body. Copper-containing proteins in the body, such as metallothionein (MT) and copper-zinc superoxide dismutase (SOD), have strong antioxidant effects and can scavenge oxygen free radicals. For example, MT mainly scavenge hydroxyl free radicals, and SOD mainly scavenge hydrogen peroxide. It is now known that free radicals can cause obvious damage to the human body. If the balance between the generation and removal of free radicals in the body is broken, there will be too many free radicals in the body, which may be related to the occurrence of tumors, atherosclerosis, arthritis, accelerated aging and many other diseases.

After reading the above introduction, everyone should have a more intuitive understanding of the harm of copper to the human body. In fact, we cannot live without copper in many aspects of life, but as long as we are careful in contact with it and do not let copper enter our body, it will not have much impact on our body. So we should pay special attention to it in our daily life.