 Hello, and welcome to Oregon State University Foundation's final webcast of the 2020 Knowledge Break Series. My name is Casey Farm, and I am the director of alumni relations for OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences, and I will be your host for tonight's talk on zinc. For tonight's webcast, I am pleased to announce we've had over 1000 people register. So a very big welcome to each of you attending this evening. Before I introduce our featured presenter, I am pleased to introduce OSU's Provost, Ed Phaser, who would like to share his greetings from the university. Ed. Good afternoon. I'm Ed Phaser, Provost and Executive Vice President of Oregon State University, and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Knowledge Break's webcast sponsored by the OSU Foundation. Today, we'll learn about how diet can help us lead healthier lives with a specific focus on zinc. OSU's research in health and wellness can be found in every corner of the university and in all of our colleges, from fields like pharmaceutical sciences to bioengineering to nutrition to public policy into many other fields. What makes our work in this area particularly impactful is its deep connection to community outreach. Our College of Public Health and Human Sciences, for example, is one of the only such colleges to combine public health and human sciences under a single academic home with community outreach programs built in through its linkages to OSU extension. Our connection with OSU extension then enables students and faculty to join hands with thousands of people across Oregon and every county and in many global communities to support public health and wellness. Today, you'll hear from Emily Ho, Executive Director of the Linus Pauling Institute, who will talk about the institute's cutting-edge programs in nutrition and its community outreach programs. Our research and outreach at OSU is made more impactful and better through our partnership with the OSU Foundation and with the support from many alumni and donors like you. I thank you for contributing to our scholarship at OSU. You help us achieve our land-grant research mission. I'll now turn it over to the moderator, but let me say thank you for being with us today and I hope you enjoy the talk. Thank you, Provost Fazer. As I mentioned earlier, we have a sizable audience tonight and many of you have already submitted questions for our speaker during your registration process. She will get to as many as she can in addition to those that will be asked during tonight's live Q&A portion by the end of her presentation. Speaking of which, if you look at the bottom of your screen, you will find a Q&A chat button and you are welcome to type questions at any point in time throughout the talk. Let's get started. This summer, Dr. Emily Ho became the endowed chair and the director of the Linus Pauling Institute, OSU's internationally recognized research center on vitamins and micronutrients. Dr. Ho came to Oregon State in 2003 after completing her doctorate in human nutrition at Ohio State University and her postdoc at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute and UC Berkeley. She joined the faculty of the College of Public Health and Human Sciences and became a principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute. And for the last past eight years, she was the endowed director for the Moore Family Center for whole grain foods, nutrition and preventative health. Dr. Ho's path into nutrition research began when she was an undergrad student back in Ontario, Canada. She is an animal lover and had entered school with the plan of becoming a veterinarian. But it was a summer research project that steered her into the field of antioxidants and the idea of potentially preventing disease by eating the right foods. Today, Dr. Ho is internationally recognized for her research on nutrients and chronic disease. In fact, her work helped drive dietary recommendations for micronutrients, including zinc. It is my pleasure to welcome Dr. Emily Ho. Welcome, Dr. Ho. Thank you very much for being with us. And we look forward to your talk this evening. Great. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone. One of the silver linings of 2020 is the proliferation of virtual technology and events like this that's allowed us to bring so many more of you here to Oregon State and the Linus Pauling Institute. So, so thank you for joining us. I'm actually at the Institute currently. If you see here on the slide, the, the, this is a picture of our building and I'm right here on the third floor. So welcome. So at the Institute, one of our main missions is know how do we promote optimal health through cutting edge and nutrition research and trusted public outreach. I'm really excited to be able to share with you some of the, the research that we're doing here at the, at the Institute where researchers, including myself are both highly committed to discovering and enabling individuals and communities to tip the balance towards optimal health. So, we really embody the, the passion and the essence of our founder Linus Pauling, and this is a quote from him, talking about how optimum nutrition is really the medicine of tomorrow. So today, I can convince you that some of these nutrients that we get in our diet are really critical to maintaining our health, both today and for many years to come. So today, I'm going to talk to you more specifically about one of my favorite nutrients. So zinc is one of our essential nutrients so it's required. It's our bodies require when we need to get it from either foods and or supplements. I often try to joke with my, my students I teach here at Oregon State University in the nutrition program and I often kind of tell them, if you're on jeopardy. And the answer is this mineral is critical to X function. Your answer should always be what is zinc. So zinc is an essential part of over 300 different enzymes in the body. It's associated with additional several thousand proteins and transcription factors. And it's really critical for them to do their job. So zinc is part and important in a whole host of systems them in the body and again, it's hard to think of a function that doesn't in some way need zinc. At the cellular level, I think it's really essential because it's part of so many of these proteins and transcription factors that it's important so every cell that needs to divide needs zinc. It's important in cell growth. It's also plays an essential role in enzymes that help our bodies and our cell metabolize nutrients. It's also important for factors that help ourselves communicate with each other through cell cell signaling. So when we think about the systems, the bodily systems that think of facts, the ones that are highly dependent on saying tend to be those systems that have a higher requirement for either cell division or cell differentiation. During growth, during reproductive systems in our brain, several behavioral and parts of our brain needs zinc as well. Wound healing is another essential zinc containing process. And today I'm going to focus a little more specifically on how zinc is important for immunity and how it's a really a critical factor in our immune system. So let's talk a little bit about about things specifically. So what is zinc. So again, it's a mineral. So I have here so if you can flash back to your high school chemistry classes, zinc is a metal or a mineral or a metal so it's found in the periodic element table. So it's here in the middle. You'll notice it's right beside another mineral copper, which it shares a lot of similarity with and I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later in terms of some antagonism that they have because of their similarities. But zinc, you'll notice this yellow block are a grouping of elements called the transition elements. So most of these elements transition and that they donate electrons and transition between states. Zinc is a little bit unique in this that it is one of the few transition elements that actually don't transition. So it doesn't lose electrons. And this special property of zinc really gives it some uniqueness is in terms of its ability to work and in particular, because of this non transitioning. It acts as a factor that really helps with stability. So help stabilize a lot of these enzymes so they can do their job. So things like transcription factors can bind to DNA. So again, they can do their job. And the cells and the body really rely on the stability for maintaining optimal function. Another big function that's related to the stability is the fact that zinc is a strong antioxidant. And we've known you've probably heard about antioxidants in terms of their importance and health to help combat against free radicals and oxidative stress. But even before we knew about the role of antioxidants and health, we've known that zinc is a great antioxidant for for decades and centuries. So let's look at something like this picture. So this is a picture of Gavin galvanized steel, and all gal steel this deal is, is that shiny layer is a zinc layer. So that zinc that overlays the iron is basically keeping that metal shiny and helping prevent oxidation, i.e rust by acting again as this, the stabilizing factor. So we're protecting the iron from oxidation, preventing rusting. And we can kind of think of it analogous to what zinc is doing in our body. As we get older, as we are exposed to stresses that zinc is really essentially helping protect ourselves and our bodies from slowly rusting aging and leading to dysfunction. That's definitely a bit of an oversimplification that something to think about in terms of how housing functions. We also, so where do we get zinc? So zinc requirements currently are, if you're a male, 11 milligrams per day. It's a little bit less if you're a female, 8 milligrams. And zinc, again, is known to be a pretty effective antioxidants. But it's one of the few antioxidants that you actually don't think green leafy vegetable as a great source. Zinc actually follows, food sources of zinc tend to be protein rich. So zinc in our own bodies and in a plant or other food sources tends to complex with protein. So the tendency is for protein rich foods, regardless of whether or not they're from animals or from plants, tend to be sources that have more zinc. So things like lean meats, seafood, nuts, and legumes, whole grains and cereals. Again, these are vegetarian sources that tend to have more protein that tend to be the sources that have a little bit more zinc. One thing to note, though, the vegetarian sources or plant based sources also tend to have another compound in them called phytate, which is a little bit of an anti nutrient in that it will bind, bind zinc in your gut and make zinc a little bit less absorbable and bio available. So there is some thought that if, for example, you're a vegetarian or a vegan and all your sources come from plant based sources that you actually need to increase that the amount you eat by about 50% to account for this decrease in bioavailability. So for female, that means instead of making sure you get eight milligrams in your diet, you actually need 12 milligrams. Consume 12 so your body will be receiving that eight. So for another little bit of nutrition trivia, if you want to know what the food that has the highest amount of zinc is, they're oysters. So if you ever want to come visit me here at Oregon State, I can take you out to the coast, we can have a couple oysters, and that's easily your, your, your RDA or your requirement for zinc for the day. So, why do we care about zinc? For the average person you might not have thought about zinc in terms of something that you need to worry about in terms of not getting enough. And hopefully after my presentation, this is something that you are going to think a little bit more about. So the World Health Organization, the WHO estimates that across the entire world, zinc deficiency affects about one third of the population. That's a lot of people. Developing countries are the ones that are hardest hit. But even in developed countries like North America, United States, zinc deficiency is an issue. In the United States, we don't see as much severe zinc deficiency. We see more of a more subtle, what's called marginal zinc deficiency. But it is fairly prevalent. So it's estimated that about 12% of the population does not consume what they need in terms of getting enough zinc. And I'll talk a little bit later. If you're over the age of 55, that number skyrockets up to 40 to 45% of the population is not getting adequate zinc. And one thing that I want to point out, again, zinc deficiency isn't often something that isn't on a lot of people's radars. And hopefully again, after you listen to me that it'll be on your radar a little bit more. But one thing that I'm going to talk about in terms of the studies and one of the limitations is currently we don't have a reliable sensitive marker for zinc deficiency. So even if you are concerned about zinc deficiency, the doctor will order plasma or serum zinc. And I'll show you some data in a little bit that it is not a great marker and will miss a lot of this marginal zinc deficiency. So a lot of zinc deficiency may in the clinic is likely to be largely underreported. And I'll show you some data as well that I have that clearly shows that even this marginal deficiency has some pretty functional consequences on your cellular health. And especially that could be relevant to your immune system. So here, so what happens when your cells don't get enough zinc. So these are some studies that were done in the lives Pauling Institute, we simply took cells and fed them a low, low zinc food. And this first graph shows, I have a marker for oxen stress. So again, remembering that zinc is a good antioxidant. And we can show that when we don't have enough zinc in the cell, there's a massive increase in oxidants. So lots of oxen stress. When we look to see what that's doing to the cell, we don't see some great things. So this is, so this slide shows this is an assay that I use in my laboratory. That is the called it's called the comet assay, because these things kind of look like comments. What this assay does is you take cells, you put them into a basic or alkaline solution and that allows all the DNA to unwind. You put it under an electric field. DNA is quite negative. So if you turn on the electricity, DNA will start to migrate to the positive, the positive field. And if the DNA is broken, so if it's damaged, you'll see this comet form. So comet in this case means bad. And what we can clearly see is on the left, we have cells that are again fed the normal adequate amount of zinc. And then when I take away zinc from what they're being fed, we can see a significant increase in in comments, which shows that the cells are being damaged. And one thing that I want to point out is that the immune cells in particular are sensitive to this damage and when these cells become damaged, they're no longer able to function properly. The other thing that we also know is ourselves actually get damaged all the time. We have lots of different stresses. And we have several checks and balances in place in terms of systems to help repair that damage. One of those proteins that does this, this helping is a protein called p 53, which is shown here. So we can see what these blogs show is amount of p 53. And we can see that in response likely to this damage that the blob is getting bigger, which says the cell is responding and able to up regulate the protein that helps repair itself. But the problem is, so this is a picture what p 53 looks like. So this is the p 53 for for this protein to work what it does is it needs to bind to DNA. And then that is a signal that tells the cell, make repairs stuff and help repair the cell, this little dot is zinc. And what we find is when the cells don't have zinc, that this process doesn't happen the protein doesn't bind to the DNA properly. And hence, all those, the on button to say repair me gets turned off. In essence, this is the total double whammy, where when you lose the zinc, not only do you create conditions that create more damage, but you also create conditions that the cell is not able to repair. So again, it's a big double whammy that ultimately ends up in more and more damage. And again, what I want to emphasize is that the immune cells in particular are highly sensitive to to this damage. So who needs to worry about zinc deficiency. As I mentioned before, a lot of the systems that really requires zinc are ones of times of rapid growth and rapid cell division. So there certainly is an increased susceptibility in childhood, for example, especially during high growth phases during pregnancy is another area of time where the susceptibility to zinc deficiency is higher. But I also want to talk a little bit about what happens with zinc as we get older, because there's some unique things that happen as we as we age that are specific to zinc. And they already had told you that that prevalence of, of eating less zinc seems to be higher as we get older as well again, think sense to be in more of these protein rich foods, and that those types of foods do tend to to decrease as we get older. Another thing that we also see is that there appears to be an age related loss of ability to utilize and absorb zinc so this slide shows as we age there tends to be a drop in plasma zinc levels. That again, even if you are consuming a little bit more more zinc that you as an older individual may not retain it or absorb it as well. So again, it's this concept of another double whammy older individuals do tend to decrease the amount of zinc that they're eating in their diets and the same time, they're not utilizing it and that can have some pretty significant consequences, especially on the immune system. We already know that as we get older age is associated with a compromised immune system, and that immune system dysfunction falls into several different categories and that there are things that are not working as well. At the same time, there's things that are becoming overactive and both have have ill consequences. So, we have a decrease of immune diversity and development. At the same time, that causes individuals to be more susceptible to infections, bacterial viral infections, and it also makes you as an older individual less responsive in terms of vaccinations. At the same time, there are also components of the immune system that are overactive. In particular, the overactivity we see is related to inflammation. So chronic inflammation or this overactive immune system also occurs. So again, with aging we see increased susceptibility to infection, reduced vaccination, efficacy, and then increased chronic inflammation, which all can lead to core morbidities, increased sickness and decreased quality of life. The interesting thing is if I substituted zinc deficiency here, all these same symptoms would occur. So we have been very interested in terms of the interrelationship between zinc and age-related immune dysfunction. So right now, currently in the US and North America, the current recommendations for zinc that 8 to 11 milligrams is the same if you're 18 or if you're 100. And we at the Institute are trying to establish that maybe similar to calcium and vitamin D need to have an age-specific requirement that's maybe a little bit more elevated to compensate for this loss. When we think about the immune system, the immune system is highly complex. There are three basic categories of how the immune system functions. So the first is a prevention mechanism. So this is what's called barrier function. So these are things like the membranes in our nose and our skin and our gut that help prevent microorganisms, bacteria or viruses to get into our system. The second category of defense mechanisms are more defense, and they can be put into two subcategories. One, general defense. So these are things like white blood cells. Some of these cells literally spit out little bits of bleach into your system to help, you know, fight off bacteria and viruses or they engulf them and kind of chew them up. The other system is a little bit more specific. So these are things like antibody producing cells that help more specifically target specific organisms. The bottom line is that zinc is critical for all of these functions. So again, the multi facets of zinc applies to even within a single category. And again, if you're not getting enough zinc, you're going to have issues in terms of your immune system defenses at many, many, many different levels. So one of the things that we've been able to show. So this is a study that we've done again here at the Institute looking at young and old animals. So here, these are mice that are either two months old or 20 months old. Mice tend to live about two years old. So a 20 month old mouse is a fairly old mouse. And what we can show is, on the left, I have plasma zinc levels. So we are in the green feeding these animals what we think is a zinc adequate diet. And these aged animals have a decreased level of zinc. So even though we're giving them what we think is enough zinc, they look like they're zinc deficient. We can also show on the right, looking at inflammatory markers that those older animals have a significant increase in inflammation. What's interesting is, if we in the yellow, give them a little bit of a zinc boost, a zinc supplement, that we can raise those plasma zinc levels back to their young counterpart parts. And at the same time, we can see that we can repair or restore their their immune function. And we see a rapid decrease in that age related inflammatory processes. So the zinc is helping boost back the immune system back to more normal in a specific case. So, again, zinc is highly required for the growth and development of our immune cells. So maintaining a healthy immune system, you need to make sure that you're getting enough zinc. Zinc is a critical factor for all those three components that I talked about. And especially if you're an older individual, getting enough zinc for your diet might not be enough. There's also some known effects of zinc as specifically an antiviral. Most of the work has been done in cold viruses. I'll talk a little bit more about other viruses in a moment where it appears to have a little bit or some anti viral activity by decreasing viral replication. So if you feel a cold is coming on early, if you take zinc, you may be able to slow down the progression or decrease the time of symptoms. The one thing though is that you can get too much of a good thing. So the upper limit is 40 milligrams of zinc a day. And you should really try not to get more of that in the combination of supplements and your diet. What higher levels of zinc will do, so zinc by itself, again, it's a pretty stable molecule, not highly reactive. It by itself actually is relatively non-toxic. But the problem is that zinc is, again, kind of similar to that copper. And what happens at high dose zinc, so over this 40 milligrams, is that you can start to block the ability of your body to absorb copper. So all the toxicity that's associated with zinc excess is copper deficiency. And if you're not getting enough copper in your body as well, that is also an important factor in your immunity as well. So you can get too much of a good thing. The other thing that I want to mention, so I can't emphasize enough, it's quite essential for you to be able to make sure you're getting enough zinc. What we don't know as much about is whether or not, if you already are zinc adequate, if you supplement more, that's really going to boost your immune system anymore. So identifying populations that are a risk for zinc deficiency is really critical. Unfortunately, we don't have a great marker for zinc yet. And I'll show you some, so we did some studies in people where we, in this case, took healthy men, they're adults here, and gave them a zinc adequate diet for about two weeks. And then we transitioned them to a zinc deficient diet for about six weeks. And then we gave them back zinc again for an additional couple weeks as well and we measured plasma zinc and various other things. So one thing I want to point out, so here is the plasma zinc. So this is again what your doctor will look at if they are concerned about your plasma zinc levels. And you can clearly hopefully see here that across all the dietary periods, the zinc levels are the same. So again, in this middle area, I know that these individuals are not getting enough zinc, they're consuming a diet that's about four milligrams of zinc. So definitely too low. And that plasma marker that we're relying on to identify people that are at risk for zinc deficiency is not working well. However, when I look at some of that, so we did that same comet assay, looking for DNA damage, you can see, so starting at the green here. So this is over time during the deficiency period and you can see that that DNA damage is so even though the test says the person isn't zinc deficient. They're seeing some ill consequences of that low zinc diet, and namely increases in DNA damage, and that DNA damage is in those white cells that I talked about previously that are important in the immune system. Good news. As soon as we gave them back sink, the damage went away. So this damage is reversible. And it's just again essential to know that you are zinc deficient and as soon as you replete yourself, you're back to normal. The other thing I want to show you for the study. The other big thing that we saw was this big decrease here in this two week period. So in this study what we try to do is recruit people that we didn't think were zinc deficient. But what we used was plasma zinc levels. So we think what were happening here is a high proportion of our subjects probably were zinc deficient and we just didn't know it. And then when we gave them that two weeks in adequate diet were able to correct some of that DNA damage. And it just illustrates that we need to find some better biomarkers and again the importance of, even if the clinical test doesn't show that you're zinc deficient to make sure you're getting enough sink. In some cases that may be a little bit of an insurance policy by taking a multivitamin or multi mineral that contains zinc. And that's really all that you need to do. So again, why do you should you take extra. We don't have great biomarkers. So a lot of zinc deficiency may go on diagnosed. You can take zinc especially if you have symptoms of a cold coming on as well. You don't need to take anything special though you do need to look, though, at the multi taking your zinc as part of your multivitamin or with that as part of your multivitamin and multi mineral is perfectly fine. There's a lot of different forms of zinc. Some are a little bit better absorbed than others but to be honest the difference is generally 5% or less so it's not a huge difference between all the various forms of zinc. But you do need to look at your label. There are quite a few multivitamin multi mineral formulations that actually don't have thinking them. My husband, once had the gall of coming home with a multivitamin that didn't have a zinc with it so he very quickly was shoved back into the car back at the store, returning it for me. So you do need to look at your labels zinc unfortunately does have some it's a metal and doesn't have a great taste. So some formulations intentionally take it out because of the taste characteristics so you do need to take a look. When or how should you take it again form doesn't seem to matter too much. Similar to iron and copper can make your tummy upset a little bit so generally it's not good to take on an empty stomach and that's nothing to do with how it's absorbed it's it does tend to give you more of a tummy ache though. I usually take my multivitamin actually in the evening, rather than first thing in the morning to ensure that I have food in my stomach before taking the multivitamin. Again, make sure though to watch the amount you can get too much of a good thing, and that can have a serious consequence on lots of various functions and especially your immune system. So stay under that 40 milligrams higher amounts are okay short term, but no more than a couple days. So, last thing I want to point out, and I know it's a question that I've been getting a lot and many are interested, you know, what about zinc and coven 19. What's the evidence is zinc beneficial for about infection, the evidence is yes. Again, making sure that you get adequate zinc is critical to support your immune system zinc also appears to have some effects in terms of viral replication. So making sure you you're not deficient is extremely important. Again, whether or not if you already are zinc adequate and super adding more zinc whether or not that has a boosting effect is unclear but certainly making sure that you prevent deficiency that is more than you think is important can zinc prevent or treat coven 19. So a lot of the work with zinc and viruses has been done more in both the cold. So the cold is either a coronavirus or rhino virus and influenza. We don't have the data yet in terms of how it affects coven 19. And so it's a big maybe at this point, we definitely know again, maintaining a healthy immune system which is going to be a critical in terms of either preventing and reducing the severity of coven 19 is going to be important. And specifically on coven 19 is still still a little bit limited. I will say I did do a clinical trial search before this talk and there's currently about 10 different clinical trials looking at zinc either alone or a combination of things, specifically with coven 19. So the evidence that the premise is there, but we just don't have the evidence especially in people yet in terms of specific impacts but bottom line maintaining zinc for your immune system which is going to be one of the big building blocks to help stop coven 19 is is going to be important. So, the facts are, make sure that you're getting enough think bottom line. You can take that zinc as a supplement. Again, but make sure that you're not getting too much is is kind of the, the take home message. So zinc is important for the immune system again, but zinc alone is not ever going to be enough to prevent or cure coven 19. We still have a lot to learn about zinc and flu colds and corona viruses, and we are learning more every day. Again, there's some, there's definitely some scientific premise and promise, but we're just not quite there yet in terms of the evidence and the data, but again, number one thing that you can do is make sure that you're getting enough think combination diets and again it's a little bit of insurance. Take a supplement. Just make sure, again, you don't need to don't take too much and there's nothing crazy that you need to do in terms of your zinc. I emphasize there's a lot of things that are going on in terms of your immune system so zinc is just one of the tools in terms of maintaining immune system. This is taken from an article from the micronutrient information center and I'll show this but these are some other nutrients they're going to be really critical for maintaining your immune system. Sometimes in particular that you might want to consider in terms of making sure you special attention that you're getting enough of zinc of course is one vitamin D is another that you might not be getting enough from your diet. VHA is another one that people tend to be a little bit more limited in terms of their diet and then vitamin C is another one that you might want to consider in terms of a little bit more. But again, generally a multivitamineral is going to be fairly sufficient in terms of helping you meet these needs. The bottom line is a lot of the work that we're doing here the lines Palling Institute is again with taking your inspiration lines Palling and trying to help you take back charge of your your health and help you live better longer. I'm able to you as well. Here's some of the resources that I pulled from our micronutrient information center if you haven't seen it is a fabulous resource in terms of lots of information on zinc and many of the other micronutrients. We have a couple of special articles on immunity and on COVID specifically here as well here are those links. And lastly, I just want to thank you for your time and attention. We'll have a time for a few questions as well but again here are some resources, you know, visit our website. The micronutrient information center that I just mentioned is celebrating its 20th year. So, you know, take, take a look in terms of a resource. I would like to, you know, support the micronutrient information center or support our research at the at the Institute as well. There's mechanisms on our website to get more information and ways to support us. So thank you. I am going to call Casey back, and we can look at getting through some of these questions that you all have. Fantastic talk. Thank you. I will say that why I was in my void. I laughed out loud about the story about your husband coming home and he had the gall to bring the wrong multivitamin and that in your world that would absolutely be a no-no. So I'm glad that you had sent him back out to grab the correct one. So it was really funny. I really liked that story. Also, I had no idea about oysters and I think that's just a great pub trivia question that you know at some point in time that's going to get asked and someone's like I now know that. Thanks for this reason. So I want to talk about that a little bit along with some other good food sources for zinc when you're talking about oysters are you talking about raw or cooked. Does it matter and how many are how many is too many. Yeah, no, that's a great question. So for zinc, again, it's really stable. So cooking doesn't affect the zinc levels. We do know though, for example, in the grains that as you process, you start to lose the zinc as well. So more processed foods do tend to have less zinc in terms of the oysters. So the oysters you definitely if you ate a half dozen of oysters every day you're going to be around above that 40 milligrams per day. So for lots of reasons I wouldn't recommend eating six oysters every every day all the time. But average, like I said one, two to three oysters would give you a little bit above that RDA of 11 milligrams. Got it. And some other good food sources for zinc that you would recommend for those huge oyster fans. Yeah, so again, think protein. Protein rich foods tend to be the foods that that have more zinc so chicken actually dark chicken has a little bit more than the than white breast meat lean lean meats, and then from the plant sources again follow the protein so nuts and legumes beans and those whole grains but again for those vegetarian if you're so vegetarian and only getting your protein from plant based sources that you do need to up your intake a little bit to account for that anti nutrient effect of fight eight that's going to decrease your ability to absorb. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I know you touched on this a little bit but I wanted to dive a little bit deeper we had a few questions from people who are at or over the age of 50 and and at or over the age of 70 about zinc supplements. And are there any, are there any modifications I know you had talked about, in case you're not getting some of that animal protein about up and up, but what about as far as as you continue on in those age brackets. Is there an appropriate change for the recommendation based on age as you continue to go. So currently there isn't an official recommendation in terms of an age specific requirement for zinc. I definitely recommend though, for most of my friends and colleagues that are older over the age of 50, as you mentioned, to probably just as insurance, take that that multi vitamin multi mineral that that contains zinc. I usually ballpark 10 to 15 milligrams is a good place to try to hit in terms of a supplement that usually will mean between the foods that you eat and the supplements that you're not at risk of going over over too much. Okay, you know I know you had mentioned some some similarities between zinc and copper, and a few of our listeners have asked a little bit more about too much zinc and effect copper levels I used to talk about that. Can you go a little bit further into the relationship to zinc and copper. Yeah, so it's all about what happens in your in your gut and the absorption. So when you take when you take a high dose of zinc for example induces a very specific protein called Mattel finding that's in your gut, and it will suck up the copper. So when you take when you have too much of that protein as a result of too much of high levels of zinc, it'll suck up the copper and make it stuck in your body. So you won't absorb it. So then all that copper that you have won't get into your body properly. And you'll start to see signs of copper deficiency. And can you take more copper to counter the effects of too much zinc or are you just piling on at that point in time. And then three from a chemical standpoint yes from biological standpoint, largely because there's a log full difference in zinc and copper levels. So to kind of overcome it the amount of copper that you would have to take may in itself have have issues in terms of your biology. Okay, that makes sense. I know you had already touched on it as well as zinc and COVID that's something that people are really really curious about. You know during COVID people have been interested in zinc and as ionophores. Two people have asked about you know I'm going to butcher these I'm going to try to my best quercetin and hydro oxychloroquine. Can you comment in relation to zinc. I know I get this a lot because there's been a lot of press about these zinc ionophores so first off, what is the zinc ionophore. So these are on a four is can be put into two different categories. One are kind of channel openers to kind of think of that as a door opening that will allow zinc to come into the cell. And then there's like other category of ionophore that so chloroquine falls into that category. The other one is sequestin falls in the category of ones that bind zinc and help is help carry zinc potentially into the cell. So the premise is that, again, because zinc plays such an essential role in your immune system and potentially had some antiviral effects if you could get more zinc inside the cell, you may be able to slow down. The issue is that the premises there, but we still don't know enough in terms of if it actually is that if that strategy is doing that job, we can see it work well in a controlled system cell culture, but we don't really know have the whole picture in terms of what happens in the whole body. So someone the analogies that I that I use is for the for Clark for these ionophores for example. So those of you who do know me know I have a dog his name is Bruno, and he has a very high affinity for slippers. So the thought the premises if my feet are cold, he should very efficiently be able to grab that slipper and get it to me, and my feet will be warm. For all of you who are dog owners know very well that if I need my slippers. I am not certain that Bruno will bring it to me when I need them. I'm also not certain if he's going to even bring it to me at all may take it somewhere else. And three, I also don't know if he's going to give up the slipper and give it to give it to me. And all these are same things apply to these ionophores as well. And whether or not again we know that if we get more zinc into the cell that's going to be a benefit. But whether or not that ionophore is is the key item or whether or not I just need to put slippers in every room of my house and have more slippers to keep my feet warm is the better strategy. So there's still a lot of questions bottom line. Yeah, and I'm with Bruno I'm all for slippers as well so I like that. You know let's let's let's stay in on a similar topic. When it comes time to zinc and colds and I know you talked about with COVID that there's still a lot of data that needs to be out there but let's so let's stick like with colds. Whether I'm taking a lozenge form or whether I'm doing a nasal spray. Does it really matter about when along the point in time where I first start noticing symptoms how far deep can I really go before you know it no longer really has any kind of effect doesn't matter when in that process I'm taking zinc. So two things there. So when earlier is better. It's kind of like with any disease disorder that the earlier you can get your systems up and going again is going to be more beneficial. And as you go further in the continuum of severity is going to be harder to fight. The other thing you'd mentioned nasal. So I do not recommend any zinc, going up your nose that there's been clear studies that show that intranasal zinc does potentially cause irreversible loss and taste and smell. So those forms do appear to be viable and get zinc potentially close to the virus and close to those immune cells that barrier function again. But there are some serious side effects. So these intranasal zinc is not something that I recommend. Okay, so I'm trying to use any brand names here so like anything you know you recommend the laws has been definitely not the spray from whatever that zinc brand name would be. Similar to some things. Some things just don't belong up your nose directly. I'm going to leave that one there are our children at risk for any kind of zinc issues. Yes, so as I mentioned because of the high growth needs and children are susceptible to zinc deficiency and actually worldwide. Especially severe is zinc deficiently children are the ones that are that are most susceptible and are susceptible especially to diarrheal diseases and gut infections and that's a major issue in some of these developing countries. There's been some links with low zinc intake with growth trajectories as well failure to thrive, as well as immune system effects. There's also been some work in terms of brain and cognitive function as well so absolutely children do also need to make sure they're getting enough think as well. You know there are many forms of zinc found in supplements is there a best form in your opinion. Yeah, and I had mentioned this so there are lots of different forms of zinc, there are there's zinc salts, like the zinc gluconate that are in those losses. There are chelated forms of zinc. There are also forms that are bound to amino acids that tend to be a little bit better absorbed. Again, the difference between all these forms is generally not that big 5% or less. So, paying for the more absorbable one isn't really making a that much of a selective advantage. I will also say that the more absorbed ones also tend to taste more metal like. So there is definitely kind of the push and pull in terms of do I actually want to take this for that little bit of increased absorption. Are there any drugs interfere with the absorption of zinc. Um, there are so any drug that affects your GI tract may potentially affect your ability to absorb zinc. But there aren't a lot of there are some conditions so some anti-malarial drugs for example that help move iron also interfere a little bit with zinc. But for the most part, unlike some of other micronutrients there aren't as many drug interactions that you need to worry about. So a lot of our participants that are living in the Northwest right now don't necessarily have to deal with this next question right now but definitely in the future zinc sunscreens. Can it be absorbed through the skin. Is there a negative effect with zinc absorbed through the skin through sunscreen. Is there a positive effect that way. Yeah, that's a tricky question so is zinc from a sunscreen that you put on your skin absorbed answer is yes, but not that much. You could not rely on diaper rash cream, which is a zinc oxide sunscreens as a means to make sure you're getting enough of zinc bottom line. The only zinc oxide topical that has been correlated with some zinc toxicity are denture solvents. But a lot of that also gets it's not just the topical it's the fact that you also consume a little bit because in your mouth as well. But in terms of using a zinc based sunscreen very little risk in terms of zinc toxicity. You know I know you talked a little bit about zinc with food. Is it okay to take it on an empty stomach. I know you had said that you try to take it with food one to two hours. Is it okay to take with an empty stomach or do you really recommend like yeah make sure that our two after breakfast lunch or dinner or whenever you're having that that's the best way to go about it. So in terms of absorption, there's not a big, a huge difference in terms of how much zinc your body will take in zinc does begin because it does follow protein. If you're consuming it with your shortly after meal and you still have protein kind of in your body that will enhance absorption. One reason is, if you are someone that does get a tummy ache, as a result of taking zinc, which a high portion of people do, you're going to more likely get that tummy ache if it's on an empty stomach. Does zinc work well really in tandem with other vitamins such as vitamin D your vitamin C gives you an extra boost in some way shape or form. Absolutely, in a lot of different ways. So again, thinking about the immune system on the immune system is pretty complex. So taking a whole complement of your essential micronutrients zinc, vitamin D, C and a, they all hit the different parts of the system. Together help the whole whole system. But again, of those 300 proteins that zinc's a part of a lot of them are things that metabolize or help vitamins or other minerals do their job as well. So there is definitely some interrelationship between between them, both directly and indirectly. And last question Emily and this one will probably be the most soft ballish but then again you've handled each one of these fantastically. Where can people go if they want more information on zinc and maybe perhaps you'll know about some other places for other vitamins as well. Absolutely so I'd mentioned the micronutrient information center at the Linus Pauling Institute is is my go to resource for any of the micronutrients, including zinc. The Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institute of Health also has a great page in terms of information on supplemental lots of things including zinc. I believe we'll have a lot of the links available to both the zinc article at the micronutrient information center and some of these in the in the micronutrient information center you can also search on conditions as well so if you're worried about heart disease, your immune function. You can go to those as well and then look at the host of nutrients that affect or you can go the other way, look at a specific nutrient and see what processes that it's involved in. So I know we got a lot of questions beforehand we have a lot of questions in the live chat people are really really into zinc more so than I ever knew. Again, email lpi at Oregon State.edu if you didn't get your question. Thank you for your time today, but Dr. Hoth thank you very much for your time, and thank you to everyone for your fantastic and engaging questions. We will be sending up a follow up note that includes a link to this recording of this webcast that's recorded so you can share with your family or friends who weren't able to join with us today. Additionally, we will also send a very quick and easy survey. We greatly appreciate your feedback so we can continue to bring you this type of content that you want to see more from OSU via the Alumni Association and the OSU Foundation. So those two things, again, more things come in your way but the survey is really really helpful for us. Thank you. All right, you head over to the OSU Alumni Association's website and register for the next webcast of the change makers series taking place on December 14 at 5pm for a conversation with indigenous activist and assistant director of the OSU Native American Longhouse. For more information, please visit OSUalum.com. We always have a lot more things going on between the Foundation Alumni Association and our partners on campus. That is all for tonight. So on behalf of Emily and the rest of us here, please have a very safe and happy holiday season. I and the rest of my colleagues look forward to seeing you all again in the new year. Please take care. Bye bye. Thank you all. Thanks, Inc.