This is the right way to supplement with zinc.
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 supplement with zinc.
In the last episode, I talked about when you
should supplement with zinc.
And to briefly summarize here, if you have
a severe zinc deficiency, or you have a
cause of zinc deficiency that's not your
diet, and you're working to fix that
cause, but you still want to bring zinc
status up to normal as fast as possible,
those are the best times to supplement with zinc.
I don't think everyone across the board
should be supplementing with zinc.
If you supplement with zinc, the first
thing you need to choose is the type of zinc.
Among them I would include
zinc monomethionine, zinc citrate, zinc
gluconate, zinc acetate, or zinc sulfate.
Any of those are good. They're all about
equally as good. I do not recommend zinc
oxide. I do not recommend zinc picolinate.
I get a lot of questions about why I
don't recommend zinc picolinate, and I'll
cover that in the next episode. When you
take these, you want to take them so that
you swallow them. What that means is that
you're not sucking on lozenges. You're
swallowing a capsule, you're swallowing a
tablet, or if you have a lozenge, you're
chewing it up and swallowing it. The zinc
gluconate and zinc acetate lozenges are
designed to put the zinc in your nose
and throat. That's great if you're trying
to prevent a cold. It's not great if
you're trying to get the zinc through to
the rest of your body. So to improve your
systemic zinc status, you want to swallow
the zinc. As long as you swallow it,
zinc gluconate and acetate are fine.
The principle inhibitor of zinc absorption is phytate.
We do know that if
you take your zinc supplement with a
phytate-rich meal, which means a meal
that has a lot of legumes, nuts, seeds, or
whole grains, you'll have lower zinc absorption.
Scientists debate whether the zinc has
to be on an empty stomach or whether
zinc absorption from a phytate-free meal
is just as good.
My recommendation is to take it on an
empty stomach when possible.
In other words, when it won't make you sick.
One of the ways that you can
avoid getting sick from taking
zinc on an empty stomach is to take a
low dose. I recommend taking a low dose
anyway because you can't really absorb
more than 7 milligrams of zinc at a
time. The best dose of zinc to take would
be 10 milligrams. You'd absorb about
7 milligrams of it, most
likely, if it was the right form and you
took it on an empty stomach. You're
probably not going to find lower than
15 milligrams. So let's say you
take a 15-milligram dose of zinc.
Take it on an empty stomach. That
probably will not make you nauseated.
If it does, take it with a little juice, or a
little bone broth, or a little food.
If you need to, you can take it with your
meal. It's far more important to take the
zinc than to take it on an empty stomach.
In other words, sometimes I recommend to
my clients, say take it an empty stomach,
and they find themselves not taking it
because they couldn't find the time to
take it on an empty stomach.
If you can't take it on an empty stomach,
take it with the meal. The most important
thing is to take it. But you want to try
to take it on an empty stomach or with
as little food as possible, and if you
can't do that, if you have to take it
with a meal, consume at least one meal a
day that does not have any whole grains,
nuts, seeds, or legumes, and put the zinc
at that meal so that it's a phytate-free meal.
If you need to take more than
15 milligrams of zinc, you want to
take it at separate doses because your
ability to absorb the next 7 or so
milligrams of zinc basically resets
every 5 hours. So it's far better to
take 15 milligrams an hour before
breakfast and 15 milligrams an hour
before dinner than it is to take 30
milligrams an hour before breakfast.
So spread out the doses. Take small doses
and spread them out through the day if
you're taking multiple doses—if you're
taking more than 15 milligrams of zinc
in order to get better absorption.
The main adverse effect of too much zinc
supplementation is to cause a deficiency
of copper. I recommend taking copper
alongside your zinc. And the easiest way
to do this in my opinion is to take
Jarrow Zinc Balance, which has the dose
I like, a form I like, and the copper
already mixed in. I'll put a link in the
description of this video. If you use
that link to order it, I'll get a
commission at no extra cost to you, and
that'll help support the free work that
I'm always offering.
Although copper has
best been studied as an adverse effect
of excessive zinc, there remains the
possibility that too much zinc could
cause deficiencies of other minerals.
So in general, I recommend not using more
than 45 milligrams of zinc per day, and I
think if you do get to or above that dose,
you should consider using a mixed trace
mineral supplement to provide a
background of all the potential minerals
that the zinc could potentially cause a
problem with.
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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.