Aaron Hartman, MD explains why zinc matters for immunity, fertility, and bone health, and why older adults often run low. He covers the specific mechanism: zinc helps immune cells form pores that kill infected cells. If you supplement, take 15-30mg daily and add copper to prevent deficiency.
Questions this video answers
20–30 milligrams per day (speaker suggests checking levels first).
20–50 milligrams per day (speaker said "between 50 and 20 milligrams" — interpreted as 20–50 mg).
About 1 mg copper per 30 mg zinc; for ~60 mg zinc the speaker suggests ~1–2 mg copper.
He states roughly 40% of adults and up to 60% of elderly over 60 have a zinc deficiency.
Chapters
Zinc is the stealth nutrient that just gets no respect. What do I mean by that? If you're a guy, you've got an enlarged prostate, you kind of know zinc is important for prostate health. And it's in most prostate kind of supplements. If you've got some gut issues, you've got sibo, infertility issues. People realize that zinc is important for the immune system. They kind of get that if you got thin bones, osteoporosis, people know zinc is important for other nutrient metabolism, great. But people forget that zinc is super important for the way our bodies actually kill virus and bacteria infected cells. Zinc actually help with these things called ironophores, which are literally little pores get poked into cells. If those are done the right way, then what happens? Those cells kind of die. Zinc is super critical for that whole process. And as you get older, 60, 80%, depending on what you research, you look at available individuals have low zinc levels. So if you're over 60, you probably need zinc 20 to 30 milligrams a day. Obviously you should get the level checked, but because zinc deficiency is so common, and during cold and flu season, if your zinc is low all of a sudden, now you're more prone to getting infections because it's super critical fat part of your immune system. During the pandemic, it came to the forefront how important zinc was, but now it's kind of fallen off and gone back to the male health and fertility bone world. But during cold and flu season, you need to keep your zinc in line. If you're taking between the average adult, if you take between 50 and 20 milligrams of zinc a day, you're, you're okay with that amount. Once you get closer to 30-50mg a day of zinc, it has to be balanced with usually about 1 milligram of copper per 30 milligrams of zinc. So if you had really low zinc and you're taking like 60 milligrams of zinc, for example, you probably need about one or two milligrams of copper to balance that. As always, you should check the levels. That's one of the most important things to make sure that your levels are adequate. But the typical American, actually 40% of adults, up to 60% of the elderly over 60 have a zinc deficiency. And we start talking about insufficiencies, numbers are even higher. So these are some of the basic nutrients we need during cold and flu season to make sure we're actually ready when you get exposed to be resilient and not get super sick. So hopefully this information is helpful. And if you want information about nutrients, supplements, as well as information about choosing the right kind of supplements, we have a whole blog series on the website about picking the right supplement and resources for you in regards to that as well. So take care and we'll talk to you soon.
