Originally Posted by Greger
Dietary zinc is readily available in all sorts of foods, meat; eggs, dairy, beans, nuts, grains, etc. As long as you eat a balanced diet you should get all the zinc you need without supplements.

And there is the gut microbiome to consider. The healthier it is the better your immune system is going to be. Dumping excessive amounts of a metal that is known to kill microbiota into your gut seems like a stupid thing to do. Diarrhea is often the result of over-consumption of zinc, which tells me that you've probably just wrecked you gut bacteria. Gut bacteria is 85% of your immune system.

I'm always suspicious of supplementation, especially when the body has whatever it is in abundant supply already. Just because you put it into your stomach does not mean your body will absorb it and use it the way you want it to.

I wouldn't subscribe to these notions. It's not that we should be taking huge amounts of Zinc forever. It's that it does seem to have some replication inhibition properties regarding viruses, and if there is a hugely dangerous virus going around, it seems to be a good time to beef up the Zinc level.

85% of the immune system is due to intestinal bacteria? Not even close. You are clearly overestimating that role.

In any case, I do NOT eat a balanced diet, unfortunately... so, yes, I'll be taking some Zinc supplements for now, and when this danger is over, I'll stop. But I didn't go for the mega-doses. I ordered 30mg capsules, exactly to avoid side effects like diarrhea and metallic taste.

And no, the body doesn't always have an abundance of some oligoelements and some vitamins.

Take vitamin D, for example. Its demonstrable deficiency is very wide-spread in the population. I need a supplement. I don't even drink milk (which in most brands comes with some vitamin D). I barely get any sun rays as I actually dislike the outdoors (I know, weird, right? I could go on and explain why at some other point) and in this time of stay-at-home orders I'm catching even fewer rays.

It's common for people to have low vitamin B12 and folate and develop some degree of macrocytic anemia. Sure, people who eat lots of fruits and leafy vegetables aren't those, but again, unfortunately I don't eat lots of fruits and leafy vegetables...

So, sure, eating a balanced diet is ideal... but those unreasonable schmucks like me who don't do that, do have a role for supplements.

And then, yes, there are supplement formulations that are perfectly absorbed, which can be clinically demonstrated.

Take a person with low vitamin D and low folate as proven by blood tests, give them by-the-mouth supplementation of Vitamin D capsules and Folate tablets for two months, take another blood sample and measure the levels again, and they will be up.

So, I get the feeling that you are generalizing... you have a sort of ideological antagonism to supplements, and you are extending this to this advice that is strictly related to COVID-19. No, this advice from the Eastern Virginia Medical School does seem sound to me and I intend to follow it, while the pandemic lasts.

Last edited by GreatNewsTonight; 05/09/20 07:32 PM.
Please take COVID-19 seriously; don't panic but don't deny it; practice social distancing (stay 6ft from people); wash your hands a lot, don't touch your face, don't gather with too many people, so that you help us contain it.