Zinc nutrition as we enter endemic phase

well a warm welcome to today's talk and we're going to be thinking about the importance of optimizing the immune system because we believe now that everyone is going to be exposed to this virus and it's much making sure the probability of us getting sick is as low as possible we've talked about vaccination of course we've talked about vitamin d so many times on this channel the one i want to think about today is often overlooked and it is zinc the importance of zinc for immunity so no attempts to entertain you just give you the information that i believe is going to be really quite important especially as we come into uh the next few months where this virus is really going into the endemic stage so here we here we have this information here if we have the technology yes i think we do so zinc and immune function the biological basis of altered resistance to infection now this is the title of the paper and this is kind of summarizing what we know already about this but right there is new stuff coming out now zinc is known to play a central role in the immune system there he goes a simple statement of fact and zinc deficient persons experience increased susceptibility to a variety of pathogens bacteria and viruses that's again fairly accepted fact it's clear that zinc affects multiple aspects of the immune system innate immunity which acts against a variety of infecting agents and a acquired specific immunity which acts against particularly against individual viruses and bacterial infections zinc is crucial for normal developmental function of cells mediating non-specific immunities such as neutrophils and natural killer cells so these are working against a wide variety of organisms but zinc deficiency also affects the development of acquired specific immunity activation of t lymphocytes that we've talked about so many times that are so important and b lymphocyte helpers also so we see it's important for these lymphocytes these b and these t cells that we know are so uh so crucial to immune function b lymphocytes development and antibody production particularly immunoglobulin type g is compromised in immune deficiency and we know that the immunoglobulin type g is the more important one because it's the longer lasting one the immunoglobulin type m lasts for a short period of time whereas the immunoglobulin g is around for weeks and months and the macrophage is particularly affected by zinc deficiency now macrophages are these big cells they're derived from monocytes and there's monocytes circulating in the blood and then when they go into the tissues they become macrophages and they do all sorts of things release numerous types of locally acting cytokines that regulate the whole immune response so an absolutely vital cell and macrophage is adversely affected by zinc deficiency it's kind of that simple zinc is needed by these key immunological mediators basic cellular functions such as dna replication requires zinc and rna transcription cell division cell activation so the the rna transcription is the way that the information from the dna of the immune cells is coded into the rna of the immune cells to make the protein of the immune cells that's required for cell division and cell activation all these things are essential and that's that's that's fairly well known now here's some newer information coming up now from the frontiers of immunology now you can check that reference there out for yourself and in fact i would encourage you to read this full article it only takes a two or three hours and it's quite it's quite an accessible article to read nothing too technically difficult in it zinc deficiency results in altered numbers and dysfunction of all all immune cells all immune cells it's so important so optimum sub-optimal zinc states have increased risk for infectious diseases autoimmune disorders and cancer now that's a statement to fact right now what i often do is i'll try and state facts but as an academic writer i always try and give the evidence for it so that particular sentence there suboptimal zinc states have an increased risk for of uh for infectious disease autoimmune disorders and cancer now here's the evidence that i've used for that and i'm not going to go through this in detail it's all there it's all quite clickable if you want to but that's the sort of they're the references that substantiate that statement and this article we're looking at now is well referenced all the way through and i'm using those references so everything i'm giving you here is my understanding of the research and the current state of knowledge now i'm not going to show you our host of references again but that is what we're doing to get this information so this information is as accurate as i can understand it and relate it to you right risk groups for zinc deficiency people that are malnourished of course and i would add to that vegetarians are probably an increased risk of zinc deficiency as well and vegans especially are at risk elderly patients with various inflammatory and autoimmune diseases a more risk physical deficiency mild zinc deficiency is largely subclinical and if it's a bit like high high blood pressure high blood pressure at least initially is subclinical you don't know you've got it or early diabetes you don't know you've got it but it can be doing damage and zinc deficiency is the same as that mild zinc deficiency is not going to cause clinical features but it will be compromising your immune system and it's unnoticed by most people world health organization assume and again in the art if you click the links there's all the references for this assumes that at least one third of the world's population is affected by zinc deficiency that is a lot of people zinc deficiency is responsible for 16 of all the respiratory infections worldwide the deep respiratory infections are the one down down in the lung tissues like the pneumonias and things like that so that's pretty pretty powerful statement there's zinc deficiencies responsible for 16 of all low respiratory tract infections worldwide supplementation for which minimal to no side effects are known in the world health organization statement now i wouldn't particularly agree with this supplements must be taken at exactly the right dose of course um so it does depend on the dose and how well that is regulated but this study here i think it's from spain i'm going through a google translate but i'm pretty sure it's accurate 10 to 20 percent of people in europe are also zinc deficient or have sub optimal amounts of zinc so this one is well worth considering zinc protects the human body from uh entering the virus so so zinc protects the human body from enter entering of the virus so what that means is that the virus finds it harder to get into the cells to infect the cells in the first place if people have plenty of zinc if people are low in zinc then it's easier for the virus to get into the cells and this is essential for tissue barriers equipped with cilia which of course are these wafty hair hair-like things that waft up the mucus and antimicrobial peptides which are proteins in the mucus like lysozyme and interferons now interferons interfere with the ability of the cells to go the viruses to go from cell to cell lysozymes it's like does lysosomes in tears lysosomes in certain saliva these are antiviral and antibacterial chemicals in the products of these uh mucous membranes and it's also the the zinc is also necessary for the expression of tight junction proteins because what you have here is between individual cells in the respiratory tract there are tight junctions and you don't want the vise to be able to slip in between two of these junctions so it's necessary for that mucous mucous ciliary clearance system is affected by zinc this is the way that the cilia waft up the mucus to get stuff out of the lungs that you then cough up physiological concentrations of zinc increase cilia beat frequency in other words the cilia will be more slowly if you're zinc deficient you've got normal amounts of zinc they'll beat more quickly and of course that's essential for clearing the lungs from infection zinc dependent alterations in gene expression by pneumocytes pneumocytes of the cells lining the lungs so that keeps them in the best possible condition and there's associations with interferons they're a bit complicated not going to go into them but interferons are necessary a virally infected cell will release interferons which will inform adjacent cells that the virus infection is there and that forms a kind of a firewall around about the virally infected cells so all very important zinc directly inhibits viral replication direct antiviral effects of zinc have been demonstrated now i'm not going to read out this list of viruses but these this top one here this uh crono very day virus don't pretend to be that familiar with it but i've looked it up and it is quite similar to the corona virus and all those other viruses as well there's been demonstrate the direct antiviral effects of zinc deficiency have been demonstrated so plenty of zinc you're more resistant to these viruses not enough zinc you're more prone to these viruses this wide range of viral infections so really why should size coronavirus 2 be any different it was suggested that zinc can prevent fusion with the host membrane stopping the virus getting into the cell decreases viral preliminary dysfunction so that the preliminaries is the enzyme which allows the virus to make more viral rna and it inhibits that so it's an antiviral property blocks viral particle release because of course once the viral particles have been produced inside an affected cell they must be released into the mucous membrane to infect the next cell along and it inhibits that so adequate levels of zinc are important for all of these wide range of immune functions or it also destabilizes the viral envelope as well if there's plenty of zinc zinc balance and immune response during infectious disease so as well as people that are deficient in zinc it's a bit like vitamin d lack of zinc is going to result in immunosuppression but lack of zinc can also result in the over-inflammatory syndromes that we can get such as causes of the acute respiratory distress syndrome so it makes immunity adequate but also limits the inflammatory processes that we don't want too much of so without enough zinc you're going to get more immune infections and those that you're going to get more viral infections with that let me start that again if you haven't got enough zinc you're going to get more viral infections and the viral infections you do get are more likely to cause an inflammatory response that we don't want so adequate amounts of zinc important for both of those things movement and over activation of immune cells into the lungs you don't want too many immune cells in the lungs because that will they will release their digestive enzymes that are designed to kill viruses and bacteria but of course if they're released into the lung tissue that also damage the lungs which is the last thing we want and we know this happens so well because this is what happens in the disease process called emphysema this is a well-known disease process movement and over activation of immune cells into the lungs not good and plenty of zinc can reduce that so you get the right amount of cells going into the lungs doing the right amount of work but they're not over active causing the inflammatory response it's exactly what we want because we don't want acute respiratory distress syndrome where the alveoli fill up with inflammatory fluid did tell you this one would be hard work but we're getting through lots of really important science we need zinc for lymphocyte development and function and that zinc supplements can reverse lymphopenia now this is a direct quote from this paper so people that are deficient in zinc will develop lymphopenia now penia means not enough of so lymphopenia will be a deficiency of lymphocytes and then when you correct the zinc when you give the people the zinc that will increase the number of lymphocytes it will reverse the lymphopenia which is good if people are zinc deficient zinc is indispensable in the signaling cascade of t cell receptors as and as a second messenger so in other words what this means is zinc is necessary for the initial communication with the t cells and the ongoing signaling within the cytoplasm of the t cells these so-called secondary messenger systems zinc is required for b cell maturation and function then zinc supplement zinc supplementation and respiratory infection is the next topic so um a row of successful supplementation studies focusing on respiratory tract infections have been carried out and do show efficacy of zinc in people that are deficient of zinc in most cases prophylaxis zinc supplement was more effective than the therapeutic option so in other words it's people did much better if they took the zinc and made sure their zinc levels were optimum before they got the infection if they waited to get the infection it was too late and this is a bit like vitamin d again if you give people that are acutely ill large doses of vitamin d it's probably not going to do them much good because it takes the body a couple of weeks to activate the vitamin d into the active form so it will benefit them but not for not for two or three weeks after that and it's the same with zinc we want to make sure that our zinc levels are optimized at the time we get infected and the only way to do that is to anticipate the fact that i am going to get infected which of course i am because everyone's going to get infected with sarcoma virus too and if everyone has adequate amounts of zinc i believe i'm giving evidence here that that's going to reduce the morbidity and mortality that the virus will cause as it moves into its endemic phase studies have shown reduced symptoms reduced severity reduced frequency and duration of the common cold after zinc administration so there you go this is working against the common cold and of course about 30 percent of common colds are caused by common cold corona viruses so pretty interesting stuff here zinc supplements of children in developing countries when you supplement zinc to children in developing countries reduce pneumonia specific mortality by 15 that means 15 less children die and at 19 of pneumonia people getting sick is reduced by 19 so it reduces morbidity by 19 and deaths by 15 percent in the developing world where children are often deficient of zinc risk nearly done risk groups and symptoms of covered 19 and zinc deficiency reveal a large overlap now um this is quite interesting here now i'm not going to go into this in detail but this is one of those venn diagrams now what we have here is here we have the features of covered 19. here we have the features of zinc deficiency and these features here are common to cover 19 and zinc elderly obesity atherosclerosis bronchial asthma chronic obstructive pulmonary disease cardiovascular disease kidney disease dialysis all the risk factors we've been talking about for covered are also in risk factors in vita in zinc in zinc deficiency so that big overlap should give everyone pause for thought really low serum zinc levels are regularly observed in and here we see that overlap chronic obstructive pulmonary disease bronchial asthma cardiovascular disease autoimmune disease kidney disease these risk factors that we know about now this doesn't mean to say that these people are prone to covered 19 because they're low in zinc but it does mean to say that there's an overlap that there's a correlation here between these two things 57.5 of elderly and nursing home residents in the united states showed significant decreased zinc intake who died most in the first wave of course it was people in care homes zinc supplementation was able to reconstitute immune function in elderly zinc deficient individuals so again pretty clear if people are deficient in zinc then giving the zinc is going to re-optimize their immune system during physiological inflammation responses zinc is additionally redistributed to the tissue resulting in zinc zinc height sorry resulting in serum zinc no resulting in serum hyposynchemia got it right eventually hypozaekemia in in the uk would put an a in there as well in other words when people have a an inflammatory infection the zinc goes from the blood to the area of inflammation and if the zinc's gone from the blood into the areas of inflammation it's no longer in the blood therefore the levels of zinc in the blood go down and that is hypozynchemia which of course we don't want for the immune reasons we've looked at so if you've got adequate adequate amounts of zinc to begin with then that is less likely to be a problem in critically ill patients persistent low serum zinc was associated with the current sepsis which of course is a problem in covered serum zinc levels were inversely correlated with mortality from sepsis again good good zinc levels would reduce mortality from sepsis by that correlation zinc influences thrombocyte aggregation and coagulation and again we know about this unfortunately from so many videos on this talk covered 19 poor outcomes in patient with zinc deficiency this is a study here from the journal of infectious diseases i'm just going to quote the conclusion here the study data clearly show that a significant number of covered 19 patients were zinc deficient these zinc deficient patients developed more complications and the deficiency was associated with a prolonged hospital stay and increased mortality read the paper for yourself it's there foods containing zinc meat shellfish seeds nuts dairy eggs whole grain legumes and potatoes but too much whole grains and legumes can actually reduce zinc absorption oh and the good news there is dark chocolate not no not not milk chocolate with lots of sugar in it but dark chocolate contains zinc recommended daily allowance for uh recommended daily allowances according to web med boys and men aged over 14 years of order need 11 milligrams a day women 19 and older eight milligrams a day pregnant women 11 to 18 milligrams a day lactating women 12 to 14 milligrams a day so there we can see i need 11 milligrams a day women need eight milligrams of zinc per day and according to this recommended daily allowance the difference is that men lose quite a lot in in seminal fluid there's a lot of zinc in seminal fluid that's what makes the difference so there we go quite a lot about zinc there now what should we do about this well i think it would be a really good idea if quite a lot of doctors were to advise patients that could be zinc deficient to take maybe a 15 milligram supplement maybe three four five times a week depending on the individual someone like me for example i i might take a supplement of 50 milligrams of zinc about about three times a week and it would be good if chris whitty and anthony fauci were to advise something like about about that about 15 milligrams of zinc three or four times a week as this virus goes into the into the endemic phase then people are much less likely to be zinc deficient when the virus comes along of course it's not for me to prescribe but doctors may choose to give 15 milligrams of zinc three four five times a week as we go into the endemic phase so that is uh some thinking on zinc um so interesting to think that uh 80 to 90 of us in europe probably are not zinc deficient but that 10 to 20 that could be zinc deficient that will make a difference to the immune system so we can say from the science that we have that people are deficient in zinc will have compromised immunity for viral and bacterial infections it's real a pity that more studies have not been done specifically on covered 19 and zinc levels part of the problem of course is zinc is readily available everywhere in the world pharmaceutical companies can't patent it it's cheap everywhere in the world so there's not a lot of money to be made from uh from doing large-scale clinical trials on zinc but really it's a pity that governments haven't done this and it's somewhat surprising that governments haven't done this so let's hope there are some government guidelines on zinc fairly soon as we move into this endemic phase and feel free to uh ask your members of parliament or your congressman to stimulate the appropriate health executives in our governments to so uh advise okay that was pretty quick data burst but i wanted to get that out pretty important stuff this is not instead of vaccination of course this is as well as vaccination thank you for watching

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 224,693

Rating: 4.9230914 out of 5

Keywords: physiology, nursing, NCLEX, health, disease, biology, medicine, nurse education, medical education, pathophysiology, campbell, human biology, human body

Id: yISH-sCvHXU

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021