Okay. So, Deb Stuart says, “Do the phytates in nuts primarily block absorption or bind
with the zinc in the nuts themselves? Or if you eat, say, a one-quarter cup of nuts,
are you crushing your ability to absorb zinc for hours, even supplemented zinc,
topped with the short eating window to get the nuts far from the zinc?”
So, phytate primarily inhibits absorption of zinc and iron. It doesn't inhibit absorption of other
things, but zinc and iron are the main concern. Zinc is the #1 thing with phytate because phytate
is basically the overwhelming thing that dictates zinc absorption. It doesn't just inhibit the zinc
in the nuts from being absorbed. It inhibits any zinc that’s taken with a meal from being absorbed.
You have to remember that it might take, you know, 5 hours to effectively put you in the
fasting state, but it’s not like all the food just immediately spreads through the
intestines and stays there and then leaves after 5 hours. So, you put something in the stomach
and even the stomach isn't really a big open sack where it just falls to the bottom of the stomach.
It's really like something that the contents are at the upper stomach and then they migrate through
over 40 minutes, 20 to 40 minutes. Then, in the intestines, after 20 minutes after the meal, you
started to get a drip of stuff in the intestines and it migrates down the length of the intestines.
So, I really think that you don't need to empty the small intestines to separate the
zinc. I think you really want adequate space to be like “Okay, when the zinc gets into the stomach,
everything in the stomach has been cleared and there's a bit of a gap where the beginning of the
proximal small intestine is not still actively swishing around with phytate, you know.” So,
I'm gonna say like an hour and a half is— Well, the way I usually look at it if you really wanna
be serious is 3 hours after the meal and an hour before the meal. I think that's the simple way to
look at it. And yeah, it's hard to fit a window in if you're trying to do multiple doses of zinc.
It’s actually pretty easy if you wake up and take the zinc first thing in the morning
and then wait an hour, although coffee does inhibit the absorption of zinc. So, that would
also mean you have to wait for the coffee. You know, most people don’t eat every 3 hours. So,
it should be doable to have the nuts and wait 3 hours and then do the zinc.
Even if you only wait 2 hours if like 3 hours is impossible, you're still gonna have a lot of
distance from the zinc and the phytate if you ate 2 hours because, again, it's not a binary thing.
It's like everything is continuously moving. So, I think you're gonna have a much lower probability
of zinc encountering phytate if you take the zinc 2 hours after eating the phytate than if you
take the zinc while you eat the phytate. But you know, if you're trying to be maximally
conscientious, 3 hours after the meal. All right. Thank you, Deb, for your question.