What You Actually Need to Know About Zinc Supplements

Zinc, probably one of the minerals we get the most questions about, and I wanted to do a top-down look at zinc, what it does for us, how to take it, do I need to take it, how to do it safely, and a few other things. So let's jump into this discussion. The first thing about zinc that really came to light during the pandemic, a lot of people were talking about zinc because zinc is involved in a lot of your primary and secondary immune functions. So for example, some of the surveillance cells that help us with keeping bad bugs out use a lot of zinc. A lot of the other immune cells that work in the bigger networks use a lot of zinc. And so immune function is a huge thing around zinc. Now, we're going to talk about the use of zinc and can you go too far? And so for example, during the pandemic, did we see people maybe take too much zinc because they heard it was good and they didn't hear some of the caveats or the things, you know, be careful of and bam, You know, now they're sitting there with too much zinc. So yes, we're going to talk about balance and appropriate dosing, but it is involved in lots of immune function and processes. So that's a really important thing. Other things that zinc is involved in in the body is it is part of over 300 different enzymatic processes. Now enzymes are used as a way to take something from a preform and turn it usually into its active form. So the enzyme is sort of in the middle. Now, an enzyme usually will use an organic and an inorganic cofactor to come together. And the way it's going to do this is that you're going to have the organic cofactor, which is usually like a B vitamin or something similar. And then the inorganic one is going to be a mineral like zinc. So zinc is involved in 300 different types of these enzymatic actions. So it works All over your body, essentially. Some of the more famous places beyond immune system function are the repair of your cells. So whether that's due to normal wear and tear and use, or you're going out and you're working out in the gym and you're always needing cell repair, or you have a trauma or some other thing, use a lot of zinc in cell repair. Also, some of our senses are very dependent upon zinc. Taste and smell are 2 that are very, very dependent. And of course, we saw a lot of that during the pandemic, especially with earlier variants where people were having, you know, post-viral effects where they'd lost their smell or their taste or something like that. Also, zinc is used a lot in the reproductive system, male and female, and it is highly critical in the function of all of the reproductive apparatus from the formation of egg and sperm all the way through the metabolism and, and the actual propagation of the embryo. One of the most important safety things around zinc is that zinc has to be given in some way with enough copper to balance it out. Because if you just push zinc into somebody and you do it for a long period of time and they're not getting copper in their diet or they're not supplementing copper, their copper levels will go down. Now, too high of copper is not good for you, but also too low of copper is not good for you either. If you wind up with low copper, you might wind up with certain types of anemia, other blood cell problems and even connective tissue problems. So we saw this a lot during the pandemic where people would watch a video and they would say, well, take lots of zinc. And so people would go and they take lots of zinc and they missed the part about taking it with some copper. And if you're doing this for a month, that's not really a problem. But 6 months in, 1 year in, taking lots of extra supplemental zinc and no copper, whether it's through your diet or a supplement, you're going to deplete your copper. And we saw that with a lot of people after the first year or so of people doing this. Normally, you can get supplements if you're going to supplement zinc. You could get a zinc-copper supplement because they, you know, the supplement people know about this thing. And what you'll see is it's a high ratio. So most of it'll be zinc and there'll be 1, 2, 3 milligrams of copper, just enough to kind of balance it out. The other thing you can do, which is what I try to recommend to most of my patients during active cold and flu season, pandemics, et cetera, is instead of just getting a big bottle of zinc and slamming a ton of zinc all the time, a multi-mineral, you can get a multi-trace mineral blend, all in, you know, it's sort of like multivitamin. Well, it's just trace minerals. And it'll have a decent dose of zinc, which is 15, 20, 30, even 40 milligrams of zinc, you know, somewhere between 15 and 40 a day. It'll have a little bit of copper, like I said, 1, 2, 3 milligrams. And it'll have some other trace elements that you're going to need as well. And that way you're not getting out of balance. So just remember the copper needs to be there to balance it. Now, what is an uncomfortable Symptom of zinc supplementation. The biggest one is that zinc is a mineral; it's an ion, and it is very, very hard on the stomach lining. So if you take most zinc, say you take a pill of zinc, and it gets down to your stomach and it hits the stomach lining, the stomach acid will react and break the pill down or the capsule down, and then the zinc will stick to your stomach lining. Your stomach lining does not like zinc, and so your stomach will go into a spasm, and you will. Either be extremely nauseated or be extremely nauseated and then vomit because your stomach is going into a spasm. I have watched this happen to people. I have heard about it happening, et cetera. And so we always tell people to take trace minerals, especially zinc, while they're eating, not before you eat, not after you eat, but while you're eating. What I tell people to think of is you want half the food you're eating down there moving around already. You put the pill in, it's moving around with the food, and then you eat some more food to Keep it sort of tumbling around in there, and that literally will solve the nausea and vomiting issue with zinc for 99.5% of people in my experience. Do not take zinc on an empty stomach. Now, there's a form of zinc that's a liquid that is pretty well tolerated, but I would not chance that. I would just take it with food in the middle of a meal. Now, finally, beyond not throwing up and taking it in the middle of a meal and making sure we balance it with copper, there are differences in how dose zinc for acute use versus chronic use. So as I mentioned, if it's cold and flu season, or it just happens to be a bad time for your family and friends and everyone's got some virus or they're passing around a cough or whatever, and you're doing everything you can to take, you know, vitamin C and all the stuff to avoid it, it doesn't hurt for you to take extra zinc for a short period of time. A short period of time with high level of zinc can be 2 to 3 weeks to 6 to 8 weeks, okay, a month or And so a higher dose of oral zinc might be 30, 40, 50 milligrams, might even be 75 milligrams. But you wouldn't generally, unless you're deficient in zinc, you wouldn't generally need that level of zinc for months and months and months and months. And you would want to avoid that long-term because you're going to deplete copper like we talked about. So if you are looking at it and thinking about dosing, the way you want to think about it is sort of like a slide where you can do a month or 2 of a high dose and then you kind of fill the tank. And then you need less as time goes on to stay level and keep a good amount in your system to protect you, to support all the cell repair things, the immune things, all of the things you're doing zinc for. Because just like every other nutrient, while we don't want to be low in zinc, we can over-supplement and get too high in zinc, and then that imbalances other things. All right, I hope this answers those questions. Thank you so much, you subscribers and viewers. If you're a viewer and you haven't subscribed, please consider doing that for us. Doesn't cost anything. It really helps out the channel. Share, like, comment, all the stuff. And I will see you guys on the next video.