Okay.
RJ says, “I know you recommend Life Extension enhanced zinc acetate lozenges.
However, shouldn’t we be concerned that they have 4 grams of sugar per serving, which
could easily add up to 24 grams of sugar or more?
Are there any other brands that you would recommend that have less sugar?
If not, what brand of ionic zinc do you recommend?”
Yeah, particularly if you have any negative microbiome issues from consumption of sugar.
So, I know in my case I had a problem tolerating them for a while because I didn't realize
that I have a fructose malabsorption issue.
And I believe what happened for me was that I had negative microbiome fructose metabolizing
microbes that basically just crawled up my whole throat into my mouth.
And so, for a while before I got that under control, which I basically got under control
by 3 to 6 months of a zero fructose, almost zero fructan diet, and almost zero FODMAP
diet, which wasn’t fun.
I mean that basically meant meat and white rice.
At one point, I reintroduced bell peppers, which are low FODMAP.
So, I mean now I’ll eat ice cream occasionally and stuff like that.
And so, if I overdue the sugar, I do notice that creeping back up the tiniest bit.
But in general, as long as I'm not being really irresponsible with sugar, sugar doesn't cause
that problem for me.
But when it did, the
zinc acetate lozenges, which are 4 grams of sugar dissolving in my mouth probably feeding
negative mouth microbiome bugs, did cause a problem for me.
But I don't worry about it now.
The thing is with the zinc acetate lozenges, yeah, it’s 4 grams of sugar per serving
and, yeah, you don't wanna be consuming 40 grams of sugar or 60 grams of sugar every
day, but in terms of a cold, I know of nothing more effective to stop a cold dead in its
tracks than to intensively dose these upon the first semblance of a cold symptom.
And you know, if you wait too long, their efficacy really declines.
And if you follow the label at first, the efficacy may decline a lot.
But in my experience, like if you sneeze and you think there's any possibility that there's
a cold and you start your first zinc acetate lozenge at that sneeze and then you kind of
see whether you sneeze again and if you get the sense that it's persisting, you intensively
dose them until it goes away.
And then when it starts to have gone away, you finish the bottle at the dosing that the
label recommends as long as no symptoms come back.
But if you have your first sneeze, then you take that as the symptoms coming back and
you get more intensive with it.
So, in that kind of protocol attuned to the progress of the potential cold, I find no
alternative is more effective than the zinc acetate lozenges.
And so, therefore, I'm willing to consume 40 or 60 grams of sugar for like 1 day or
2 days and then have it taper off granted— I might have a totally different attitude
if I had diabetes.
But from a cost-benefit analysis, I don't think consuming 40 grams of sugar once for
a healthy person is going to cause any permanent damage.
It's not the ideal thing, but the problem is that all the alternative zinc lozenges
have generally involved factors that decrease the zinc ionization in the mouth.
And so, they're going to be less effective as a result of that.
And I've seen some lozenges come on the market, but not any that don't violate the basic principles
of the things you're not supposed to do to stop the zinc from ionizing the mouth.
And so, I think from cold prevention perspective— I don’t think they're replaceable at this
point.
And then for COVID-19, I haven’t looked at it yet, but a colleague of mine forwarded
me some case reports that seem to indicate some promise of using these zinc acetate lozenges
in COVID-19 cases.
But due to the multiple mechanistic concerns where we would expect zinc to inhibit the
replication of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, even though there’s
no RCTs for COVID-19 like there are for the common cold, I think the zinc acetate lozenges
make a lot of sense.
And so, from a preventative in the food and supplement guide for the coronavirus, I recommend
using them like one a day.
And then when you go out into a potential exposure, to use them before and after.
Now, I would define potential exposure a little bit more narrowly for myself now that living
in New York City the pandemic is sort of really pushed down to borderline nonexistent levels.
So, back when we were the epicenter of the pandemic, I was defining a potential exposure
as going outside among people.
Now, with cases having fallen to very low levels and not going back up, now I consider
a potential exposure like when I go out to dinner and I’m much closer to other people
than I otherwise would be even though I'm outside, you know, those people are not that
much further than 6 feet away and we're all there for a couple hours talking the whole
time, or I go hiking and I'm out of state, or I’m in a place I'm not usually at or
who knows who else is traveling to do that fun thing there and it's crowded at the hiking
place or something like that.
In those intermittent events, I’ll treat those as potential exposures and that's partly
because there’s 4 grams of sugar in each zinc acetate lozenge and I don’t want to
be needlessly pounding sugar all the time, but I also don’t want to needlessly be pounding
zinc acetate all the time.
You know, frankly, like I find the zinc acetate lozenges very tolerable for the payoff that
I get from them, but I don't exactly like the feeling of zinc acetate in my mouth.
You know, it burns my mouth a little bit.
And so, I don't wanna use them when I don't believe there's a good ROI from it.
Yeah.
And when someone comes out with a sugar-free version that actually looks like it fulfills
all the criteria for cold prevention, then I'll start recommending it.
But a serious problem is that these things already don't taste good and taking the sugar
out is gonna make them a lot worse.
Now, in terms of ionic zinc, I do have to say that I believe that ionic zinc spray is
unambiguously inferior to the zinc acetate lozenges in the sense that unless you're gonna
micro spray it every short period of time, you’re dealing with something that is much
more intermittently dosed rather than continuously dosed.
And so, I strongly suspect you’re going to get less of a fraction of the dose of the
zinc that you sprayed into your mouth actually permeating your nose and throat tissue compared
to swallowing it.
RJ says I should start selling a sugar-free zinc acetate lozenge.
Probably I should do that.
Yeah.
But anyway.
So, the ionic zinc spray, let me quickly take a look at the one I have.
I can see it in my orders here.
One second.
So, I actually think that I've ordered a couple different ones and I made the decision mostly
based on the ingredients and the concentration.
So, the most recent one I used is Zinc Best Liquid Ionic Mineral Supplement from Wellness
One, which I bought on Amazon.
And I believe that the people who make concentrates— I forget what the name of the company is,
but their bottle looks very similar.
So, I think it's the same company.
But if you put in trace zinc on Amazon, it will probably come up, but I'm pretty sure
it's the makers of concentrates, but I'm not 100% positive.
But anyway, I'm not too concerned about the brand because I'm not that familiar with the
different brands and I suspect that it's largely the same stuff.
But anyway, that's my answer, RJ.
Hopefully that helps.
Thank you
for your question.