First, a little background. I've been prone to disease most of my life, cold's and flu have a distinct attraction to me, they love to burrow in and make my body their playpen for a while. All it takes is being in the same room as someone who has a contagious viral infection and I have it (unless I take some rather OCD hazmat precautions and don't touch anything/breathe). This is quite an irritation. Especially as when I have said cold, there'll generally be a day or two of severe throat pain, constant sneezing/nose blowing and complete lack of energy, followed by another week or so of nose blowing. Not the most joyful experience in the world. In an average year I used to have anything from 6 or 10 weeks out ill.
Now when I cut out evil gluten, this improved and I got ill far less frequently. Whether it was psychosomatic or whether my system was a little less 'fucked' from being poisoned constantly, I am not sure. Either way, I seemed to fight off infections a little more.
Then came this lovely substance.
NOMS!!!
(ps. I know this is technically not just zinc, but
the zinc on its own didn't look so delicious)
Now, I would describe myself as a skeptic with an open mind. If something has been proven to work, it works, otherwise it's most likely hippy naturalistic crap (don't get me started on the fact that qualified doctors here prescribe homeopathy). I know there is a placebo response and it can have quite a large effect on some conditions, but mostly there has to be a reason why something works and a scientifically significant, observable effect.
Most of you may be of been already aware of the apparent link between eating zinc and reducing the symptoms of colds. I was not. So when I heard they had conducted a study on the effects and, from the condensed version I heard, found it to be effective (although with the proviso that if you took enough zinc to help, the nausea from the side effects could be worse), I thought I'd give it a try.
The result being that the past few times I've been ill I've either not noticed it, just feeling worn down for a couple of days with a sniffly nose, or the length of the symptoms have been drastically reduced to an afternoon or at most a day before being back to complete normality. No runny nose, not much of a sore throat.
I assume this is how most other people have colds, its not so much of an hindrance to every day life, crappy, but not stuck in bed for a couple of days crappy like I've experienced most of my life.
The main problem with this though, is why the hell wasn't I told about this 20 years ago? The first study was done in 1984 and seemingly everyone I mention it to is like "oh, yeah, of course zinc helps with colds". What worries me is what other little nuggets of essential information have I been deprived of?
The only other problem being that I'm not taking as much zinc as is noted in the paper, but its still having a significant effect. Placebo? Psychosomatic? Real? That I had a Zinc Deficiency before the pills? Who knows. All I know is I'm ill a hell of a lot less.
Therefore, I Love Zinc.
PS. It also seems that taking pills is better than lozenges as it causes less side effects : Zinc Study
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