If you want beautiful skin, great sex, an
immune system that will keep you healthy
from the beginning through to the end of
cold and flu season, if you want to be
able to eat freely and not worry about
your blood sugar spiking, or if you just
want to be healthy in general, then you
need to start thinking about zinc. Hi. I'm
Dr. Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com
and you're watching 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 five rules you need to follow to
get enough zinc. Now, if you don't like
to follow the rules,
don't worry. I don't like to follow the
rules either. So just think of these as five
principles that you need to be mindful
of to get enough zinc. Rule number one.
There are three zinc superfoods: oysters,
red meat, and cheese. You can get enough
zinc for the day if you just eat one or
two oysters.
You can get another zinc for the day if
you eat one or two servings of red meat,
where a serving is about a quarter pound.
And you can get enough zinc by
eating two to three servings of most
cheeses, where a serving is a hundred
grams or about 3.5 ounces.
Rule number two. Beware of phytate.
Phytate is a compound found in whole
grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes. It's
something that helps lock in zinc and
other minerals to prevent them from
getting lost before it's time for a seed
to sprout. For the seed, this is a way of
making sure that when it is time to
sprout it's ready to grow a healthy plant.
But for us when we eat those foods the
zinc is very poorly absorbed and so we
can get very misled by looking at a
nutritional database and seeing that
whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds are
the best plant sources of zinc, but no
one really knows how much you'll absorb
from those foods. Some scientists
estimate that you need fifty percent
more zinc when you get it from these foods
and others estimate that you need ten
times more. And eating those foods with
your animal zinc superfoods can actually
inhibit the absorption of the zinc from
the animal foods. If your diet is really
rich in the zinc superfoods you
probably don't need to worry about this,
but if you only eat a little bit of the
zinc superfoods, then it might become a
problem.
The way you get around that is to eat
your zinc-rich foods away from your
phytate. So if you eat a lot of whole
grains, nuts, legumes, and seeds, push them
towards two or three meals of the day,
any eat your zinc-rich foods at the other
meal.
Rule number three. You're gonna absorb
more zinc from your food if you spread
it out across the day. You can only
absorb as much zinc in a single meal
that will last you about two-thirds of
your day.
So what you don't want to do is stock up
on oysters on the weekends and assume
that that's going to get you good for
zinc through the week.
What you do want to do
is have at least one meal a day that's
high in zinc and low in phytate and at
least one other meal of the day that's
moderately high in zinc and moderately
low in phytate. For example, maybe your
breakfast is jam-packed with zinc
because you ate two oysters and you
didn't eat any phytate-rich foods. If at
lunch you have another zinc superfood
like cheese, you can afford to eat some
phytate with it. Or if your diet is
fairly low in phytate, as long as you
just eat some animal foods of any kind,
chicken or fish, at your other meals
you're probably gonna be all set.
Rule number four. Some conditions are
going to increase your need for zinc.
These include anything related to the
growth and repair of tissues. For example,
if you're pregnant you should eat one
extra serving of zinc-rich foods per day.
When you're lactating you should eat two
extra servings of zinc-rich foods per
day. If you're a bodybuilder and you want
to put on ten pounds of muscle mass if
you want to go at it really hard core
and put that on in a month you should eat
an extra two or three servings of zinc-
rich foods per day. If you're going to
stretch it out over two months you can
cut that down in half and if you're
going to stretch it out over a longer
period of time it's not going to make
as big an impact on your zinc
requirements. For men,
if you ejaculate you need to eat
an extra serving of zinc-rich foods each
time. If that's twice a year,
it doesn't really matter. If it's twice a
month, it doesn't matter that much either.
If it's twice a day, it means a lot. If
you're recovering from a wound a little
extra zinc is probably going to help
you heal faster. If you have an acute
episode of diarrhea, while you have the
diarrhea you should double your zinc
intake and if you have chronic malabsorption
from, for example, Crohn's
disease or anything else that affects
the small intestine you may need to
double up on your zinc long-term.
Alcoholism and diabetes increase the
urinary excretion of zinc and so you may need
more in those conditions as well.
Although if you have any medical
condition that may be impacting your zinc requirement, then before taking
action you should discuss these
principles with your doctor.
Rule number five
is be really smart about your
supplementation. If you're following the
other four rules you probably don't need
a supplement at all. But if you're eating
a diet where most of your zinc is coming
from phytate-rich foods or most of your
meals are very rich in phytate you
really don't know how much zinc you're
absorbing, and to be on the safe side
it's probably wise to take a zinc
supplement. But most zinc supplements
come in doses that are a lot higher than
what you need. If you take 10 or 15
milligrams of zinc per day on an empty
stomach before a meal you're going to
absorb sixty to seventy percent of that
zinc and that's going to be enough. If
you take that supplement with a meal
you don't know how much you're going to
absorb and if you take a lot higher
doses on an empty stomach
it could make you sick. More importantly,
long-term supplementation with high
doses of zinc causes deficiencies of
copper and it may cause deficiencies of
other minerals that we haven't studied
as closely. If you're supplementing with
zinc on the background of a diet that's
high in seafood and organ meats and
unrefined plant foods across a wide
spectrum of foods and it's really
nutrient-dense, you can probably just
take 15 milligrams of zinc per day and
not worry about the copper and other
nutrients, but if you're taking more you
should maintain a 10 to 1 ratio of zinc to
copper. And if you're taking more than 20
or 30 milligrams a day, I suggest
taking one serving of a trace mineral
complex such as Concentrace in order to
make sure that you're not causing a
deficiency of any of these other
minerals that we tend not to think too
much about and that haven't been studied
as closely. For a zinc supplement I
like Natural Factors zinc citrate, but if
you want a simple way to balance your
zinc with your copper I recommend Jarrow
Zinc Balance.
All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn
of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
You've been watching Chris Masterjohn Lite,
and I will see you in the next
video.
