Dr. A explains why zinc boosts immunity but warns that too much suppresses copper, causing metabolic problems. Take 10-30 mg daily with food, or 30-50 mg during illness for a month. Nausea happens on an empty stomach.
Hey, Dr. A, I was told to take zinc because it's cold and flu season. Then I read a bunch of scary stuff about it on the internet. Can you tell me the best way to take zinc and how to do it safely? Sure. Let's break that down. I'm Dr. A. This is my YouTube channel, obviously, and I use this channel to answer questions just like this one. I've been involved in research and teaching in the integrative and naturopathic medical communities for over 30 years, and I've been seeing patients with chronic illness for a very long time. So zinc is wonderful. Our body needs it. It's used in a lot of places in the body, one place being the immune system. But a lot of times people will be told, oh, take more zinc during cold and flu season, which there's nothing wrong with that information, but there's a few things about zinc you should understand in regard to immunity, safety, and just tolerability, really. So the first thing is that zinc is often recommended during cold and flu season to help with the response of both your primary immune defenses and some secondary ones, because zinc is used a lot by the white blood cell families and other parts of the immune system. So if somebody is zinc deficient, especially their immune system would be a little slower in responding. That's why we do it. But what did we see a lot? Because this was a common recommendation early in COVID, but what did we see in people a lot when we tested their blood for mineral levels after they've been supplementing a ton of zinc for a long period of time? If you over-supplement zinc, not only will your zinc levels go too high, which you don't want that either, but your copper levels can go down because zinc and copper are always balancing each other. This is one reason why during COVID or cold flu season, I generally don't anymore have people just take zinc. I just say get a good multi-mineral that has a decent amount of zinc, you know, somewhere between 10 and 30 milligrams of zinc. And you can take multiple of those for a few days if you want, but it's also going to have some copper and other trace minerals because they all work together, but especially zinc and copper. And it's fine to take a higher level of a nutrient short-term, but you don't want to keep taking a high level of the nutrient like forever and ever because you're going to overdo it. You're going to have too much in your system. And like I say, those of us that, you know, check mineral levels in people, it's not uncommon after, especially during COVID they were just slamming lots and lots of zinc and not attending to their copper intake. And so they have the high zinc, low copper, and you don't want that either. You want balance. Okay. Now, can you get too much? Yes. Can overdoing zinc cause problems? The 2 big problems, one is going to be you'll have an excess state, and then that's going to throw off some of your metabolism. The other is it's going to decrease or outbalance, imbalance copper, and we need copper for stuff. We don't need a lot of copper, but we need copper functioning of our red blood cells and other important things in our body. Quick interruption from the regular video. If you are a healthcare practitioner and you have an interest in this topic, we're going to put a link in the description below to my CE website and specifically the webinar that is about this topic. We'll see you over there. Thanks. Now, what about doses? So usually for long-term maintenance, you're just looking at a few milligrams of zinc and copper. Zinc might be long-term maintenance dose 10 to 20 milligrams. Copper might be 1 to 2 milligrams, and that's a good balance. Short-term cold and flu season, let's say you don't know if you were deficient or not, you could easily double that. And during cold and flu season, people might take a product that, you know, total dose winds up being 30 to 50, maybe a little more zinc and, you know, 2 or 3 milligrams copper, that's fine, you know, for a month or something like that. And then you go back down to maintenance dosing. What's the biggest immediate side effect from zinc supplementation? Biggest immediate side effect is going to be nausea and maybe vomiting. If you take zinc on an empty stomach, it's going to go down, it's going to stick to your stomach lining, and zinc is very irritating. And as soon as that capsule or tablet starts to dissolve, the zinc is going to hit your stomach lining, it's going to cause a spasm, and you're either going to be very nauseated or you're going to vomit. And usually people who take a pill and it makes them vomit don't ever want to take that pill again. I totally understand. When I take my trace minerals, I never take zinc alone. Usually I take it as a trace mineral combo. When I take those, what I do is I only take them when I'm eating. So I get some food in my stomach, I take the tablet or the capsule of my trace mineral mix, and then I eat some more. And that way it's tumbling around in there. You got food, it's not going to stick to the lining of your stomach. Do not take it on an empty stomach. Take it in the middle of the meal. That take away the nausea for 99.5% of people. There are people who cannot tolerate any zinc pills, even with food. There is a liquid zinc that's very well tolerated. You can drink it and doesn't cause nausea, and you can buy that. It's called zinc heptahydrate and comes in a bottle. And again, it doesn't have a lot of taste, and you can take that if you're real super sensitive. We also use it like in little children. We're going to give a lower dose or something like that. So zinc is good, but we have to balance it. Over time with other trace minerals, especially copper. And it's fine to take extra during cold and flu season, but generally we take bigger doses for about a month and we back down to maintenance doses. And if you're gonna just keep it simple, get a good multi-trace mineral supplement that's got copper, zinc, and the other trace minerals. That'll keep you outta trouble. And then finally, if you're the 99.5% of people and you can take it in the middle of a meal, so eat half your food, take your trace mineral mix, eat the other half of your food, drink some water, you going to be fine. If you're in that half percent of people that still get nauseated, get a liquid like zinc heptahydrate and take that as a liquid. And generally that will not cause any nausea. All right, Dr. A, love answering these questions. We're making more content all the time. Thank you all you subscribers. If you're not subscribed, check it out, do subscribe, go over. We got hundreds of videos, all health education oriented over there on the main YouTube channel. And I'll see you guys on the next video.
