Do you get dry skin when you
put on muscle mass?
If so this video is for you.
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!"
If you're a bodybuilder or you're any other
type of athlete where you're
intentionally putting on muscle mass
and you develop dry skin, the most likely
explanation for that is that you're
giving yourself a moderate deficiency of
zinc. Your body considers it so important
to maintain normal zinc concentrations
in your tissues that if you were
deficient because of a poor diet in
zinc, your body would shrink. It would
shrink on purpose because lowering your
lean body mass decreases the lean mass
so that the zinc concentrations remain
constant. It's basically a way to
accommodate a shrinking zinc pool.
If you're putting on muscle mass you could
have the opposite problem. You went into
this with normal zinc, but then you worked
really hard in the gym to provide an
anabolic stimulus, you work really hard
in the kitchen to provide calories and
protein, your muscle tissue expands,
your body is being told that expanding that
muscle tissue is your number one
priority. That means that putting extra
zinc into that muscle tissue takes
priority over the other uses of zinc.
We know from experiments of human
zinc deficiency that the earliest thing to
happen in a marginal deficiency of zinc
is patches of dry skin. Another thing
that can happen is you get sick more
often, the most common symptom of which
is getting a sore throat. If those things
are happening to you and zinc deficiency
may be the cause the simplest way to
test that is to take some zinc and see
if it works. When you supplement with
zinc I recommend not taking zinc oxide
or zinc picolinate. Rather take zinc
acetate or zinc gluconate, zinc citrate
or zinc sulfate, or zinc amino-acid chelate
such as zinc methionine. If you take zinc
acetate or gluconate don't suck on
lozenges, those are designed to put the
zinc into your nose and throat. Take a
tablet or a capsule. To maximize the
absorption take it on an empty stomach,
at least three hours after your last
meal, at least one, about one hour before
your next meal. Zinc on an empty stomach
can cause nausea, but if it's only 10 or
15 milligrams most people will not
suffer nausea. In fact you don't need any
more than 10 to 15 milligrams for this
test. Most zinc supplements, the lowest dose
you'd get anyway is 15 milligrams.
So take 15 milligrams per day on an empty
stomach of any of the forms of zinc that
I mentioned and see if it improves your
symptoms. I would give it as long as
those symptoms have been developing.
If they've been going on for a long time
and it's getting bad you can increase
the dose of the zinc to two or three
times a day for a couple of weeks, but
not for any longer than that. Is zinc the
only thing that could go wrong? No in
fact in the next episode I'm going to
talk about two dietary pitfalls that
people often make when they're
optimizing their diet for their body
composition. But that's less about
gaining the muscle and more about what
you're doing with your diet so we'll
talk about those in the next episode.
Thanks to Bob Davodian of Taurean Mixing
for enhancing and processing the audio.
You can find more of his work at
taureanonlinemixing.com.
All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. You've been
watching Chris Masterjohn LIte, and
I will see you in the next episode.