You know it used to when people
talked about using zinc as protection they were talking about coding
iron bars with zinc to galvanize it to protect against rust. Or
maybe they talked about zinc oxide smeared on the nose to protect
ourselves against excessive sunlight. But, now we're talking about
something else. Now we are talking about using zinc to protect ourselves
from that great winter scourge the common cold.
Why should we even think about
using zinc for the common cold? Well, because zinc is part of numerous
enzymes in the body and enzymes basically are the molecules that
make our body run. The particular enzymes we are talking about here
are involved in our smell, our sense of taste and most important
of all our immune system. They also produce testosterone one of
the sex hormones, they're involved in sperm production which may
be why oysters have a reputation as an aphrodisiac because they
are very high in zinc. But in terms of the common cold, its our
immune system that's involved and here's the story.
About 1980 there was a little
girl who had a history of catching colds all the time and on a lark
her physician suggested to her mother "why don't you try giving
her zinc supplements to see if it will help." But the little
girl wouldn't swallow the tablets and she sucked on them. But it
seemed like her cold got better. This is just the kind of anecdotal
evidence that starts scientists scurrying about. And up to about
this year there were 10 trials on zinc supplement to see whether
or not it could alleviate the symptoms of the common cold. And 5
showed that it did and 5 showed that it didn't. And recently a new
study was published in the annals of internal medicine which kind
of shifted the playing field because in this study the results showed
that taking zinc on a regular basis at the first sign of a common
cold can reduce the symptoms.
What does a regular basis mean?
Well, taking 13 milligrams of zinc every 2 or 3 hours throughout
the whole day up to a total of up to about 70 or 80 milligrams per
day for a couple of days and what they showed was that it reduced
the severity of the cold and the duration from about 8 days to 4.5
days.
So what's the bottom line on
zinc supplements? Well, the scientific scorecard now stands 6 in
favour of zinc supplements for the common cold, 5 against. That's
not very dramatic, still a lot of people are really trouble by symptoms
on the common cold it's worth a try.
There are no really major downsides
here except maybe a slight metallic taste. But I'll admit it's a
tough scientific decision. But remember zinc is also important in
many other biochemical processes such as in thought processes. It
helps with our cognitive abilities. So maybe in order to decide
whether or not we need zinc supplements for the common cold, we
need a little bit of zinc to make us think.
