Health & Healing

Don't over-do it. Please consider this before supplementing with zinc. It's possible we may be getting more zinc than we thought.

The Higher the Brain's Zinc Levels = The More Severe the Dementia

An Australian team who examined autopsy specimens found that Alzheimers' patients had double the amount of zinc in their brains as people without Alzheimer's, and that the more severe the dementia, the higher the zinc levels. ~ pgs. 154-155, The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg. [Reference 1: Religa, D., D. Strozyk, Robert A. Cherny, Irene Volitakis, V. Harouturian, B. Winblad, J. Naslund, Ashley I. Bush. 2006. Elevated Cortical Zinc in Alzheimers Disease. Neurology 67:69-75. Reference 2, See Below]

And a growing body of literature shows that zinc supplements worsen Alzheimer's disease, and that chelation therapy to reduce zinc improves cognitive functioning in Alzheimer's patients. [Reference 3 and 4, See Below] ~ pgs. 154-155, The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

Where Is All This Zinc Coming From?

The role of zinc was discovered in the 1950s by Henry Peters, a porphyrinologist at the University of Wisconsin Medical School...Peters found tremendous resistance to his idea that zinc toxicity was at all common, but growing evidence is now accumulating that this is so.

Large amounts of zinc are in fact entering our environment, our homes, and our bodies from industrial processes, galvanized metals, and even the fillings in our teeth.

Zinc is in denture cream and in motor oil. There is so much zinc in automobile tires that their constant erosion makes zinc one of the main components of road dust - which washes into our streams, rivers, and reservoirs, eventually getting into our drinking water. [Reference 5 and 6, See Below] ~ pgs. 154-155, The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

Are We Zinc Poisoned?

Wondering whether this was perhaps poisoning us all, a group of scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, the United States Geological Survey, and several universities raised rats on water supplemented with a low level of zinc. By three months of age, the rats already had memory deficits. By nine months of age, they had elevated levels of zinc in their brains. [Reference 7, See Below]

In a human experiment, pregnant women in a slum area of Bangladesh were given 30 milligrams of zinc daily, in the expectation that this would benefit the mental development and motor skills of their babies. The researchers found just the opposite. [Reference 8, See Below] ~ pgs. 154-155, The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

In a companion experiment, a group of Bangladeshi infants were given 5 milligrams of zinc daily for five months, with the same surprising result: the supplemented infants scored more poorly on standard tests of mental development. [Reference 9, See Below] ~ pgs. 154-155, The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

Are We Misled by Blood Tests?

Nutritionists have long been misled by using blood tests to judge the body's stores of zinc; scientists are finding out that blood levels are not reliable, and that unless you are severely malnourished there is no relation between the amount of zinc in your diet and the level of zinc in your blood.

In some neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, it is common to have high levels of zinc in the brain while having normal or low levels of zinc in the blood.

In a number of diseases including diabetes and cancer, urinary zinc is high while blood zinc is low. It appears that the kidneys respond to the body's total load of zinc, and not to the levels in the blood, so that blood levels can become low, not because of a zinc deficiency but because the body is over-loaded with zinc and the kidneys are removing it from the blood as fast as they can.

It also appears to be much more difficult than we used to think for people to become deficient by eating a zinc-poor diet; the body is amazingly capable of compensating for even extremely low levels of dietary zinc by increasing intestinal absorption and decreasing excretion through urine, stool, and skin. ~ pgs. 154-155, The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.

Whole Food Zinc

Please toss your daily vitamin pills if they contain zinc.

Use whole food zinc. While lab synthesized zinc (such as in daily vitamins) is toxic, if you still want to supplement zinc, use whole foods such as: chickpeas, lentils, beans, crab, pumpkin seeds, cashews, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, brazil nuts, almonds and more.

References

Ref 2. Bush, Ashley I., Warren H. Pettingell, Gerd Multhaup, Marc D. Paradis, Jean-Paul Vonsattel, James F. Gusella, Konrad Beyreuther, Colin L. Masters, Rudolph E. Tanzi. 1994. Rapid Induction of Alzheimer Amyloid Formation by Zinc Science 165:1464-67.

Ref 3. Cristovao, Joana S., Renata Santos, Claudio M. Gomez. 2016.Metals and Neuronal Metal Binding Proteins Implicated in Alzheimer's Disease. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, article ID 9812178.

Ref 4. Cuajungco, Math P., Kyle Y. Faget, Xudong Huang, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ashley I. Bush. 2000. Metal Chelation as a Potential Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 920:292-304.

Ref 5. Nazzal, Y., Habres Ghrefat, and Marc A. Rosen. 2014. Heavy Metal Contamination of Roadside Dusts: A Case Study for Selected Highways of the Greater Toronto Area, Canada Involving Multivariate Geostatistics. Research Journal of Environmental Sciences 8(5): 259-73.

Ref 6. Apeagyei, Eric, Michael S. Bank, John D. Spengler. 2011. Distribution of Heavy Metals in Road Dust Along an Urban-Rural Gradient in Massachussetts. Atmospheric Environment 45: 2310-23.

Ref 7. Flinn, J. M., D. Hunter, D. H. Linkous, A. Lanzirotti, L. N. Smith, J. Brightwell, B. F. Jones. 2005. Enhanced Zinc Consumption Causes Memory Deficits and Increased Brain Levels of Zinc. Physiology and Behavior 83:793-803.

Ref 8. Hamadani, Jena D., George J. Fuchs, Saskia J. M. Osendarp, Syed N. Huda, and Sally M. Grantham-McGregor. 2002. Zinc supplementation During Pregnancy and Effects on Mental Development and Behaviour of Infants. A Follow-up Study. Lancet 360:290-94.

Ref 9. Hamadani, Jena D., George J. Fuchs, Saskia J. M. Osendarp, F. Khatun, Syed N. Huda, and Sally M. Grantham-McGregor. 2001. Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effect of Zinc Supplementation on the Mental Development of Bangladeshi Infants. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 74:381-86.