Want quality sleep? Reach for the zinc

Zinc is the 2nd most abundant trace element in the human body.  It reduces stress, improves the quality of your sleep, and regrows your thymus to its original size. 

Further, 

in this same period, the thymuses of these mice had quadrupled in size and exhibited a greatly enlarged cortex repopulated with immature thymocytes

For years, I was under the impression that magnesium was the go-to mineral for the biological ravages of stress.  And I am sure that magnesium is still good for treating that.  But more recently, in the last couple of years, I've learned first-hand that zinc is even better.  After a simple Google search of "stress and zinc," the first entry produced this, 

Zinc plays a significant role with respect to the stress response.  Proper maintenance of zinc status can help to stabilize serum cortisol levels over time,¹ and zinc intake has been shown to temporarily inhibit cortisol secretions. However, in turn, prolonged stress will deplete zinc concentrations in the blood.

That article goes on to say that

Zinc is required for the catalytic activity of approximately 100 enzymes. 

Magnesium is involved in even more--over 300 chemical interactions in your body.

Zinc plays a role in immune function, protein synthesis, wound healing, DNA synthesis, and cell division. Zinc supports normal growth and development during pregnancy, childhood, and adolescence, and zinc is necessary for proper sense of taste and smell. 

So if you find that your sense of taste and smell diminishing, reach for the supplemental zinc. 

Given that the body has no specialized zinc storage system, regular daily zinc intake is required to maintain a steady state and to prevent deficiency.

That was interesting because I think that homeostasis leaves us with the impression that we're all doing okay; meaning, that it's hard to tell, hard to know if we're deficient.  And you're never going to have a doctor tell you that you're deficient in zinc.  Ever. 

I remember the first time that I ever took supplemental zinc how it completely relaxed me and put me in a great mood for a good night's sleep.  This was about 3 years ago.  In fact, now I prefer to take zinc rather than melatonin for sleep. Note well, that 

Sleeplessness has a huge impact on the human physiology and is commonly associated with metabolic disorders (obesity and diabetes), cardiovascular diseases (hypertension) and mental disorders (anxiety and depression). 

So if you're looking for quality hours of sleep, reach for the . . . well, you know what to reach for--the zinc, of course. 

The first paragraph in this article states that

Recent research has concluded that zinc serum concentration varies with the amount of sleep, while orally administered zinc increases the amount and the quality of sleep in mice and humans.

Melatonin is a decent sleep-aid and has excellent anti-oxidant properties to boot, but so does zinc.  Melatonin does lower your blood pressure.  If you have high blood pressure like I have had a few times, then melatonin would be a good choice.  But zinc relaxes more functions in your body, I believe.  

Important to know [in the Introduction] is that 

Zinc is the second most abundant trace metal in the human body and is essential for many biological processes.

WHAT TYPE OF ZINC IS BEST?

That depends. 

Zinc lozenges are made with zinc acetate, so if you've got a cold then you'll want zinc lozenges. [I tend to trust Bill Sardi's recommendations, so I buy his zinc lozenges product.] Zinc lozenges are what you should be giving your children, er, grandchildren when they have a cough, not a cough drop which is mainly sugar and provides only a short-lived placebo effect.  Know, too, that zinc regrows your thymus gland back to its original size, which I find absolutely miraculous.  The thymus gland has a tendency to shrink through the years.  Read this, 

After the deficient mice had been fed a zinc-adequate diet for 1 week, their response was nearly normal, except that the indirect response was 68% of controls; in this same period, the thymuses of these mice had quadrupled in size and exhibited a greatly enlarged cortex repopulated with immature thymocytes [my emphasis as if you couldn't tell].  By 2 weeks, the thymuses of the previously zinc-deficient mice were normal in size and appearance; however, there was a slight increase in the numbers of indirect plaque-forming cells. By 4 weeks, the thymus weights, direct and indirect plaque-forming cell counts, and the secondary response of the previously deficient mice were normal. Mice that were nearly athymic after 45 days of dietary zinc deficiency were also able to fully reconstruct the thymus and regenerate T-cell helper function.

It's been argued that the brand name Optizinc is the most absorbable.  May be true.  If you're deficient in zinc and have never supplemented with it, then the Optizinc will surely improve your sense of well-being.  Keep a bottle of zinc lozenges around the house in case of a cold or any lung issues.  Lately, I've really appreciated Bill Sardi's zinc product, called T-Cell Zinc.  If you accidentally overeat at a party (remember those?), reach for the zinc.  We overeat in response to stress, and then overeating causes our bodies stress.  So any stressful event, reach for the zinc.  

The benefits of zinc are remarkable.  OptiZinc reduces acne by 50%.  So there's that.  Acne may be due to bodily stress of a teenager.  Zinc Carnosine treats intestinal ulcers.  Even Wikipedia understands this.

"ZINC IN OLD MICE FACILITATED A COMPLETE RECOVERY OF THYMUS GLAND FUNCTION AND REGROWTH OF THE ORGAN WITH GREATER IMMUNE EFFICIENCY

". . . zinc [in old mice] facilitated a complete recovery of thymus gland function and regrowth of the organ with greater immune efficiency."

Spinach has a high zinc content.

Maybe there isn't a master mineral.  Maybe all essential minerals are masters of health.  I recently wrote about the magic of magnesium.  But why are minerals in general so important?  Is it just general, good maintenance?  Maybe.  Or is it that minerals are essential in digestion, like breaking down proteins?  Maybe it's not the class of nutrients that's so important as how well any single nutrient interacts with our biology to produce desired outcomes.  

For example, I recently read Bill Sardi's "Reassessment of Vitamin C Therapy and Cancer," published at his site and picked up by Lew Rockwell.  What astonished me wasn't actually the benefits of Vitamin C or the benefits of Vitamin C therapy on cancer.  What struck me was the study by Abram Hoffer.  

Enter a forgotten investigator in the war against cancer — Abram Hoffer MD, a nutrition-minded psychiatrist based in Canada who was known for his use of high-dose niacin therapy to treat schizophrenia.  Vitamin C therapy for cancer could easily be dismissed except for Dr. Hoffer’s strikingly successful use of oral vitamin C (12,000 mgs/day) to achieve prolonged survival times.

So Hoffer produced astounding results in his cancer therapy, but no third party ever tested or examined his results to find out why he was successful.  And to show you just how successful he was, check out this chart:

Here is Dr. Hoffer’s 5-year survival data:

Oral Antioxidant Therapy & End-Stage Cancer

Abram Hoffer MD, Journal Orthomolecular Medicine, Volume 15, 2000

No. of patients treated/vitamin C: 441

No. of patients in control group (chemo, radiation): 54

SURVIVAL CONVENTIONAL CANCER TREATMENT [i.e., chemo-therapy]
Year 1: 28%

Year 2: 15%

Year 3: 15%

Year 4: 13%

Year 5: 11%

VITAMIN C TREATMENT*

Year 1: 73%

Year 2: 56%

Year 3: 48%

Year 4: 44%

Year 5: 39%*

Consisted of 12,000 mg oral vitamin C as ascorbic acid, mega-dose niacinamide, beta carotene, zinc.

What is equally astounding is that no one checked his work.

Steven Hickey and Hilary Roberts, researchers from Manchester, England, also report on Abram Hoffer’s exceptional results with oral vitamin C in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. [Journal Orthomolecular Medicine 2013]  Reasons for the astounding effect of oral vitamin C were not explored, however.

Sardi found that in addition to the oral Vitamin C, that Hoffer also administered Zinc.  But which kind.  There are different kinds of zinc, 7 different zinc supplements in all [actually, there are more]:

• 
  

1.  Chelated Zinc.

2.  Zinc Orotate (some claim that this is the best form)

3.  Zinc Picolinate.

4.  Zinc Gluconate.

5.  Zinc Acetate.

6.  Zinc Oxide.

7.  Zinc Sulfate.

So at least from Sardi's article it's not clear which zinc was used.  And though the benefits of zinc are reported almost everywhere, take a look at very specific, very important organ that responds nicely to zinc.  That organ?  Your Thymus gland.

Dr. Hoffer treated his patients with an array of other nutrients including zinc.  Zinc is the key nutrient that primes T-cells in the thymus gland that shrinks with advancing age.

Shrinkage of the thymus gland, located below the chest plate (sternum) is progressive with advancing age.  The thymus gland is responsible for activating T-cells that are essential for immune system maintenance.   The thymus gland shrinks at a rate of about 3% per year till middle age and then 1% per year thereafter.  [Frontiers Immunology 2013]  There are no present therapies offered by physicians to regenerate the thymus gland even though they are widely documented and available.

This information should spike everyone's radar.  More on the thymus gland and zinc. 

Remarkably, zinc supplied to old mice facilitated a complete recovery of thymus gland function and regrowth of the organ with greater immune efficiency.  Researchers conclude that age-related thymus gland shrinkage and immune system dysfunction are not intrinsic and irreversible and largely depend upon zinc adequacy.  [International Journal Immunopharmacology 1995]

Imagine folks who've suffered childhood diseases and have had to endure chronic conditions their whole life.  If only they'd known about the combination of zinc and Vitamin C. So there's that.  Then there's this. 

A recent study is instructive.  Vitamin C, aspirin, and zinc were administered to laboratory rats given a chemical to induce colon cancer.  Aspirin and vitamin C maintained normal colon cells in 87.5% of the animals whereas zinc showed a 100% reduction in tumor incidence. [Asian Pacific Journal Cancer Prevention 2013]

All this to prove that Vitamin C as a cancer therapy works but works mainly because of the pair.  When used alone Vitamin C didn't always perform.  It still did better than chemo, or conventional therapies, but it performed off the charts in the presence of zinc.  One more note on cancer therapy.  Check this out.

When vitamin K3 is combined with vitamin C therapy, cancer cells die by autoschizis – that is they are split and utterly destroyed. [Ultrastructural Pathology 2010]

The synergistic use of vitamin E as alpha tocopherol succinate and synthetically made vitamin K3 plus ascorbic acid is also proposed as a further enhancement of vitamin C cancer therapy. [PLoS One 2012]

Not surprisingly, the addition of quercetin to vitamin C + vitamin K was more effective in killing cancer cells than the two vitamins alone in a lab dish study. [Alternative Medicine Reviews 2010; British Journal Cancer 2010]

This is hopeful stuff.  It was upon this recommendation that I tried Zinc Orotate. 

Zinc orotate is a chelated form of zinc that is more readily absorbed by the body than any other zinc supplement available. Manufacturers of it will usually boast about having this type, because they have good reason to. Zinc orotate passes through the membranes of cells easily, and it pulls the highest amounts of accompanying minerals into the cells, which leads to higher tissue concentrations of zinc and other beneficial nutrients

But I felt nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Was that nothing feeling the result of that powerful absorption?  Who knows? Then I read this article by Sardi on zinc acetate.  I could not believe what an energetic rush I got.  And it centered around the heart and the spine.  I thought "Wow! This stuff is potent."  Turns out that the zinc acetate was waking up my thymus gland.  

Given what I read on the internet, Sardi outstrips most in his details and exhaustive research, that exhaustive work to compare stories, and find out what was missed and why.  Talk about dedication.  

The other form of zinc I have taken is Chelated Zinc.  See, the nice thing about Sardi is that he explains which organ responds so well to a specific nutrient.  In the case of zinc it is the thymus gland.  Then he does background study on it and finds out that with age people's thymus gland shrinks.  And when that shrinks, you're going to have lowered immunity. All the other articles on the web tell you that zinc is good for immunity, which sounds good but is no where near the specificity of Bill Sardi.  Amazing, really. 

There are essential minerals for health, then there are trace minerals.  Both equally important, one more than the next? FitDay sums it up:  

Five percent of your diet typically includes macro minerals and trace minerals. Macro minerals are minerals that you need in quantities greater than 100mg/day and make up about 1 percent of your total body weight. These include sodium, chloride, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and calcium. Trace minerals are elements that are needed is smaller amounts, 1-100mg/day by adults and are less than .01 percent of totalbody weight. These include Copper, Chromium, Fluoride, Iodine, Iron, Molybdenum, Manganese, Selenium, and Zinc. Trace Minerals are inorganic matter that cannot be destroyed by cooking or heat and are essential to the body for a variety of processes.

Macro Minerals

1.  Sodium.

2.  Chloride.

3.  Potassium.

4.  Phosphorus.  [despite this being a macro mineral, people's teeth are a mess today.  What's causing that?  Lifestyle?]

5.  Magnesium.

6.  Calcium: good for teeth and bones.  You know where to get it--milk and meat products.

Trace Minerals

1.  Copper.

2.  Chromium.

3.  Fluoride. 

4.  Iodine.

5.  Iron.

6.  Molydenum.

7.  Manganese.

8.  Selenium. 

9.  Zinc.

10.  Cobalt.

Together, I count 16 minerals in all.  But the lists that I have found range from 11 to 17 to 19 as in the list I compiled below, so there seems to be some debate as to which minerals are trace or macro or necessary for health.  And here I thought I was going to add or organize information into bite-sized, manageable tidbits.

1.   Lithium orotate.

2.   Reacted calcium

3.   Calcium-Magnesium

4.   Chromium

5.   Iron

6.   Magnesium

7.   Magnesium-Potasium

8.   Selenium.

9.   Phosphoros.

10.  Zinc.

11.  Stromium.

12.  Sodium

13.  Copper

14.  Manganese

15.  Molybdenum

16.  Iodine.

17.  Sulfur

18.  Fluoride. 

19.  Cobalt

Also, almost all the articles I read at sites like NCBI, KnowledgeofHealth, Natural News, and others point out deficiencies.  Why are Americans deficient in these nutrients?  Isn't this knowledge built in the local culture, local wisdom of its people?  You would think.  But one reason that Americans are deficient is precised because of what we consume, like alcohol, or people turning Vegan to for lifestyle or eating too many nuts or vegetables.  There are nutrients in daily foods called anti-nutrients that actually block minerals from getting absorbed into our system.  Is it entropy?  

My guess is that if you eat beef, cheese, milk, yogurt, eggs, and green leafy vegetables that you're getting the best multivitamin known to man.  Some folks recommend nuts for Vitamin E, but nuts contain an anti-nutrient called phytic acid, which blocks the absorption of calcium, zinc, magnesium, and others.  If a population is experience a deficiency in these minerals, it doesn't seem like a good idea to eat foods that block their absorption.  And why are nuts so prevalent in our stores and diets?  Is it because of the Mediterranean Diet craze?  Who knows?  But definitely pasteurized nuts have grown in popularity since I was a kid.  And the only packaged nuts we ate were sunflower seeds, peanuts, and corn nuts.  Stores used to have a bin of assorted nuts in shells.  Yeah.  At Christmas time my dad would buy bags of walnuts that we'd shell on the dining room table and pick from.  It was never the kind of thing where we open a bag and start eating them like, well, peanuts.

The latest mineral on my Top 5 List is zinc.  Wow!  This stuff is restorative.  I mean if you're in to taking supplements and all, I would definitely make zinc a priority.  You can find zinc in foods, of course, with oysters having the highest level of zinc than any other food.  So you want lots of zinc through food, eat your oysters. But if you're shell fish averse, you'll want to supplement.  

So I go to the internet not so much to prove as much as I do to corroborate my claims and findings.  We all know that zinc is good for us, but how good?  Where is it best served and what organs are best served by adequate zinc or zinc supplementation?  

John Phillip reports at Natural News that . . . 

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology collaborated to study the effects of zinc on brain function. Scientists experimenting with mice used a chemical that binds with zinc to eliminate it from the brain of the test animals. They found that in the absence of the mineral, communications between neurons was significantly diminished and that zinc is vital for controlling the efficiency between nerve cells in the hippocampus.

For more than a half century, scientists have understood that high concentrations of zinc are deposited within nerve cells; called vesicles, they package the transmitters which enable the nerve cells to communicate. The highest concentrations of brain zinc are found among the neurons of the hippocampus that control the high functions of learning and memory.

Clearly, if you're looking for brain support, zinc is the way to go. But we're always hearing about fish oils or gingko biloba and others as brain food.  And they are.  But these lowly minerals tend to take a back seat in the miraculous department until you're deficient in them.  And how does one become deficient in zinc, magnesium, and calcium?  Phytic acid is one way, one of a series of anti-nutrients available to us in our stores that end up in our diet. Nuts are a big one. The phytic acid in nuts blocks the absorption of minerals in our system.  Does the phytic acid deplete the minerals? I don't know, but I would say that blocking is no picnic either. We want magnesium in our bodies.  We need calcium for bones and teeth.  One of the things that phytic acid does is block or deplete phosphorous, which is the essential mineral for our teeth.  You want to keep those bones in your head for a lifetime?  Then consume foods high in phosphorous.

Then the question of which kind of zinc.  And there are several. The first zinc supplement that I took was Zinc Orotate on the recommendation of an online article.  In fact, I went through 2 bottles of them, thinking that this was the best of the zinc forms. I really did not feel anything.  Even overdosing on Zinc Orotate, nothing.  The next zinc I tried was Zinc Acetate on the implied recommendation of Bill Sardi.  

But for best absorption, Sardi recommends Zinc Gluconate and Zinc Methionine:  

SUPERIORLY ABSORBED FORMS OF SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRIENTS: VITAMINS, MINERALS, & TRACE MINERALS

1.  Zinc gluconate: Zinc methionine.

2.  Inorganic selenium as selenite, selenite: Organically bound selenium in a natural full array of protein-bound forms (Seleno Excell®).

3.  Iron as ferrous sulfate: Iron as carbonyl iron (Ferronyl).

4.  Magnesium oxide: Magnesium chloride, carbonate, malate, glycinate, gluconate, threonate, others. 

Further, Sardi lists some conditions that zinc improves

       Zinc deficiency is associated with a low sperm count. 

Zinc deficiency increases the prevalence of dental caries. 

Zinc deficiency in the skin is associated with psoriasis and acne.  Patients with these skin conditions are likely to have normal blood serum levels of zinc.

Zinc supplementation is associated with 14% reduction in preterm birth.  

Zinc is only recently appreciated as an essential nutrient to prevent age-related bone loss, a.k.a, osteoporosis.

A skin rash condition (acrodermatitis enteropathica) which emanates from an inherited disorder of zinc absorption is resolved by zinc supplementation.Zinc carnosine is a remedy for H. pylori infection and gastritis.

Crohn’s disease results in poor zinc absorption.  Researchers successfully used 110 milligrams of zinc sulfate (providing 75 mg of elemental zinc) to quell recurrence of symptoms of Crohn’s disease (10 of 12 patients experienced resolution of their “leaky gut” problem).  

Resolution of a leaky gut!  That is news, incredible news.