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Deficiency Diseases and Good Nutrition
Zink
Zn
Zinc was first recognized as an essential mineral when a deficiency was discovered in young boys living in Iran and Egypt. The symptoms were short stature, anemia, and late sexual maturity. Zinc aids your skeletal growth by helping your body to absorb calcium. Zinc increases the speed at which the hemoglobin in your blood exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide preventing anemia. Zinc also helps in the production of sex hormones, without which causes late sexual maturity.

The boys mainly ate unleavened bread. The bread is high in zinc, but is also high in phytates, which bond to zinc making an insoluble compound. This made the zinc unavailable to their bodies. When the boys received a zinc supplement, their symptoms disappeared. They grew up to 5 inches in a single year.

Zinc is needed to properly make the hydrochloric acid in your stomach. Without it, you couldn't absorb calcium. This can lead to a calcium deficiency or even osteoporosis.

Anemia is a disease characterized by insufficient amounts of oxygen reaching your cells. This is usually because the hemoglobin in your blood cannot correctly perform its function of transporting oxygen from the lungs to every cell in your body. Hemoglobin not only transports oxygen, but also carbon dioxide. This is a waste product produced by your cells and is carried by hemoglobin to your lungs where it is exhaled. Bicarbonate speeds carbon dioxide in "letting go" of hemoglobin. If carbon dioxide stays bonded to hemoglobin, there would be no room for oxygen to bond to it, and your cells would die as a result of too little oxygen. Zinc helps carbon dioxide to vacate the hemoglobin molecule by working as a coenzyme in regulating the production of bicarbonate. Without zinc, there would be no bicarbonate, and the detachment of carbon dioxide from hemoglobin would be much less efficient. With carbon dioxide stuck to the hemoglobin, there would be no room for oxygen and no way for your cells to get enough oxygen to perform their functions efficiently. Thus, a low intake of zinc, causes less oxygen to reach your cells, and could cause anemia.

Zinc also affects your sexual maturity. It does this in a very strange way though: through your eyes. Light goes through your pupil and hits the cones on the opposite side. Zinc helps the eye to understand that the stimulus it is receiving is light. This stimulus prompts a nerve impulse to be sent from the eye to the hypothalamus in the brain. The hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary to produce hormones, some of them being sex hormones. Without the sex hormones, your body could not mature sexually. Zinc helps to stimulate their production, and therefore, furthers your sexual development. Zinc affects your growth by growth hormones in the same manner.

Zinc must be bonded to insulin in order for it to be stored. It is important to have large amounts of insulin stored and ready to metabolize sugars in your blood. If you had to produce all the insulin you needed in one large effort, you would overwork your pancreas in the attempt, and still not even have enough insulin to metabolize it all. (Actually, this does happen when you eat too many refined carbohydrates which can lead to diabetes.) Zinc helps to store insulin and takes some of the load off the pancreas in its production of the hormone. Insulin also aids in the storage of carbohydrates, which would not be possible without the help of zinc.



RDA for Zink

  Age            RDA
0.0-1.0          5 mg
1-10            10 mg
11+ (men)       15 mg
  (women)       12 mg
Pregnant        15 mg
Lactating
  1st 6 months  19 mg
  2nd 6 months  16 mg

Men especially need to eat a good amount of zinc each day, as it is an important to the production of sperm. Quite a bit of zinc is lost with every ejaculation.

If you have been badly burned, zinc can help your skin to heal faster. Your skin needs zinc to heal itself. Your body also excretes large amounts of zinc after a burn. Zinc helps your body to whisk away debris, dead cells, viruses, and bacteria.

During adolescence, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause the body needs more zinc. Women in any one of these situations should increase their zinc intake.



Foods High in Zink

Oysters, Eastern, 1/2 cup          113.0 mg
Oysters, Pacific, 1/2 cup           21.0 mg
Wheat germ, toasted, 1/4 cup         4.7 mg
Ground beef, lean, 3 oz.             4.6 mg
Liver, beef, fried, 3 oz.            4.6 mg
Turkey, dark meat, baked, 3 oz.      3.8 mg
Beef enchilada, 1                    2.3 mg
Baked beans, with pork, 1/2 cup      1.9 mg
Cheese, ricotta, part-skim, 1/2 cup  1.7 mg
Pecans, 1/4 cup                      1.6 mg
Peanuts, dry roasted, 1/4 cup        1.4 mg
Crab, canned, 1/4 cup                1.3 mg
Wild rice, cooked, 1/2 cup           1.1 mg
Clams, canned, 1/4 cup               1.1 mg
Lobster, cooked, 1/2 cup             1.1 mg
Milk, 2%, 1 cup                      1.0 mg
Chicken, breast, baked, 1            1.0 mg
Egg, 1                               0.6 mg

Zinc deficiency is characterized by short stature, learning disabilities, anemia, and hypogonadism (diminished functioning of the testes). Zinc deficiency also has some of the symptoms of diabetes. Remember the importance of zinc to insulin and carbohydrate metabolism?

Zinc toxicities are extremely rare, as your body excretes what it doesn't need. Most often, zinc toxicities are found in those who have kidney failure and need homodialysis. Sometimes the dialysis fluids get contaminated by adhesive plastic on the dialysis coils. It is also possible to get a toxicity from ingesting too much zinc. This can be dangerous because it interferes with the absorption of copper. If you eat a healthy diet of whole natural foods, you won't have to worry about getting a zinc toxicity or deficiency.

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Revised: 14 Sep 99