Short Answer: Plasma zinc is the single most important marker of zinc status. Urine zinc may decline faster in deficiency. Hair zinc increases with supplementation but does not decrease in deficiency. Plasma zinc is decreased by inflammation, oxidative stress, the ovulatory and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle, probably pregnancy and oral contraceptive use, and …

Question: How should I take zinc if it makes me nauseous? As far as I know, there’s no relationship between the nausea and zinc deficiency. I could be wrong, maybe there’s research on it I haven’t seen or it could be not researched but I don’t think there’s a connection. My guess would be that …

Question: How to manage the zinc-to-copper ratio? I don’t agree with using the zinc/copper ratio in testing. So it is the case that zinc and copper need to be in a very loose range of ratios. So you don’t want your dietary zinc to be more than 15 times your dietary copper, and you don’t …

Question: Why zinc deficiency causes resistance to thyroid and sex hormones and vitamins A and D The answer to that is because the, because all of those things carry out their gene expression function by binding to nuclear receptors. And all of the nuclear receptors to DNA using zinc finger motifs. Zinc finger motif means …

Question: Isn’t taking copper with zinc self-defeating? No. So, the competition between their absorption is not that bad. And if it was bad, everyone would be deficient in both of them because all foods that contain one, contain the other. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About …

Question: How do you know if skin problems are from zinc deficiency? I would measure plasma zinc and if the plasma zinc, the sweet spot is around 120. If the plasma zinc is in the 70 to 90 range, that’s borderline and if it’s below 70, that’s very clearly potentially related to skin problems. I …