Zinc. Here is how to make sure you're
getting enough.
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 how
to make sure you're getting enough zinc
and how to monitor your zinc status.
Zinc is incredibly important to all kinds of
things in the body. When you become zinc
deficient, usually the first thing that
happens is you start getting patches of
dry skin. And some people, when they get
worse, they might turn into acne. In other
people, they might turn into blisters or
pustules or other skin problems.
You can also experience other things, and
the patches of dry skin don't have to
come first. An increased risk of
infection, especially with sore throat
and diarrhea, poor glucose tolerance,
impaired wound healing, hormone problems,
hair loss from an autoimmune condition
known as alopecia, all these things can occur.
You can have lower appetite and
loss of lean mass. And in children, zinc
deficiency can, if it's bad enough, delay
puberty. You get resistance to
vitamins A and D, thyroid hormones, sex
hormones, cortisol, and
pharmaceutical glucocorticoids. So you can have all
kinds of other things going wrong
because those things aren't working
properly in your body. Zinc is important
to virtually every aspect of vitamin A
metabolism, and so anything that looks
like vitamin A deficiency but it doesn't
necessarily correspond to a diet that's
deficient in vitamin A, could be a zinc
deficiency. As I'll talk about in future
episodes, detoxifying most heavy metals
is also extremely dependent on having
enough zinc. So why might you run
deficient in zinc? Well, the best sources
of zinc in the diet are oysters, red meat,
and cheese. The principal inhibitor of
zinc absorption is phytate, which is
found in whole grains, nuts, seeds, and
legumes. So a diet that's low in animal
products and high in phytate is the
principal dietary risk factor for zinc
deficiency. Even if you eat animal
products, if you're avoiding red meat,
cheese, and oysters, you still might not
be getting enough zinc. In addition,
sometimes you can have a cause of zinc
deficiency that isn't your diet.
For example, chronic diarrhea or persistent
vomiting, especially when the vomit is green,
which means that it's carrying bile,
a number of malabsorption disorders, and
impaired methylation. So see the link in
the description for all the methylation
resources that I've made on that topic.
And rare genetic defects and zinc
transporters can all cause zinc
deficiency. Other cases, rarely, could be a
collection of genetic disorders known as
porphyrias and one disorder that
was called pyroluria but hasn't been
backed up by continuing research over time.
Those all can be sources of zinc
deficiency, as well. Outside of industrial
exposure or taking high-dose zinc supplements,
I don't think zinc toxicity from foods
is worth being concerned about. To test
your nutritional status of zinc, the most
important test is plasma zinc. It's very
important that this test be in plasma
and not be in serum or whole blood.
If you look at tests from LabCorp and Quest,
they usually say plasma or serum. So when
you get these tests, try to ask your
doctor, or if you are a doctor, try to put
a note for the phlebotomist to make sure
that it's coming from plasma, and as a
patient, when you go there with the order,
it's good to remind the phlebotomist
directly that your doctor would like it
to be a plasma zinc test and that it
should be from plasma and not serum.
The ranges used by the laboratories are too wide.
If most of these ranges usually
have their lower cutoff in the 50s, but
the lower cutoff should be the mid-70s.
If you see—if I see anything 70 or below,
I'm concerned about borderline zinc
deficiency. If I see something below 55,
I'm thinking that there's a severe zinc
deficiency going on. My suspicion is that
the sweet spot for plasma zinc is to be
in 100 to 120.
Unfortunately, you can't look—you can't use plasma zinc
to look for zinc toxicity on the higher
levels. If you're just getting zinc from
foods, again, I don't think you need to
worry about it.
If you're supplementing with doses of
zinc, especially doses that are over 45
milligrams a day, I think it becomes a
concern to at least look out for, and the
principle negative effect that you would
expect from excess zinc is a decrease in
copper status. The two things that you
can look for as a result of too much
zinc are a decrease in serum copper or
ceruloplasmin, the two most important
markers of copper status, or a decrease
in superoxide dismutase. For superoxide
dismutase, you can get that on the Genova
Oxidative Stress 2.0 blood panel. And for
serum copper, which I think is the most
important one, and ceruloplasmin, you can
get those from LabCorp and Quest.
For serum copper, I would try to make sure
that you're in the middle of the range
because I've seen borderline copper
deficiency symptoms creep up in the
lower, about 20 or 30 percent of
the normal range.
If the zinc deficiency is mild and the
cause is the dietary pattern, I think the
best thing to do is fix the dietary
pattern and watch it correct over time.
If you're dealing with a severe zinc
deficiency, then I think you should
correct the diet if it needs correcting,
but you should also supplement with zinc.
I'll talk more about how to supplement
with zinc properly in the next episode.
If the problem is malabsorption or any
of the other disorders that I mentioned
had non-dietary causes, then you need to
work with a medical professional to
resolve the underlying cause.
Nevertheless, supplementing with zinc
in a case of zinc deficiency, even when the
cause is something else, supplementing
with zinc is generally I would say is
warranted alongside fixing the
underlying cause to make sure that the
zinc gets back to where it should be as
fast as possible. I've produced a lot of
other resources for managing zinc status,
including some that have more details
on how to manage your diet, and
I'll post links to those in the description.
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All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com, and this
has been Chris Masterjohn Lite,
and I will see you in the next episode.
