Mercury, lead, cadmium, oh my!
This is how to use zinc supplementation
to help you detoxify from heavy metals.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
And this is Chris Masterjohn Lite,
where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about using
zinc supplementation to detox from heavy metals.
So here's the thing. I don't know of any
studies in humans showing how
zinc supplementation can help reduce
levels of heavy metals, but I do know
that zinc is absolutely necessary for
heavy metal detoxification. We make our
own endogenous chelator to get rid of
heavy metals, called metallothionein.
And part of the response to heavy metals
is to make more metallothionein, but to
do so is zinc-dependent. You can only
respond to heavy metals with this
protein, metallothionein, that helps get rid of them
to the extent you have enough zinc.
But here's the thing.
All the scientific experimental
data that we have suggests that the
ability of metallothionein to respond to
heavy metals is not just zinc-dependent
in a way where if you have enough zinc,
you can make it, and if you don't, it's a
problem. It's dependent on zinc in a
linear fashion across deficiency, normal
range, and higher than normal
concentrations of zinc. In other words, if
you are not deficient in zinc, I believe
that it is probably the case that if you
increase your zinc status further, as
long as you don't cause any problems
with zinc toxicity or deficiencies
of other minerals,
increases of zinc above normal,
even beyond curing a deficiency, getting the
zinc status higher will help you
better—more effectively detoxify from heavy metals.
And so when I, the way that I look
at this is if you have a really severe
case of a clinical problem from toxicity,
this is a whole 'nother ballgame where
you need to be doing whatever you can,
working with the appropriate healthcare
professional. But if you get a lab test
that says your mercury is a little bit
high, you don't know if you have any
symptoms, it's, you know, it's clearly not
double the normal range, let alone higher.
Then I think when you're dealing with
something moderate like that if your
alternative is a chelation therapy that
has all its own dangers from greater
mobilization of that heavy metal, the
potential for it to get into other tissues,
but also the potential of any
chelation therapy is to cause
deficiencies of other minerals including
zinc, then it's much more gentler and
safer to cause a little gentle boost to
your zinc status than it is to engage in
a chelation therapy, again, when we're
talking about a moderate increase that
doesn't have obvious clinical
manifestations. So in those cases, what I
would do is start using zinc
supplementation in accordance with the
two episodes ago "How to Supplement with Zinc"
that I will post a link to in this description.
As a brief summary, you want
to get the right form, you want to take
it on an empty stomach if you can, and
you want a low dose like 15 milligrams
balanced with copper, such as Jarrow's Zinc Balance.
So I would take something like
Jarrow's Zinc Balance on an empty stomach
once a day, and when I say empty stomach,
maybe an hour before the next meal, once
a day. See how that impacts your levels,
consider tweaking it up to twice a day
or at most three times a day and see if
that helps bring the heavy metals down.
My suspicion is that most of the time,
that will work, and I think it's much
gentler and safer than trying to do a chelation
therapy for those cases of heavy metals.
Again, when you have a severe toxicity,
you're dealing with clinical
manifestations, that's a whole other ballgame.
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All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com.
This has been Chris Masterjohn Lite.
And I will see you in the next episode.
