False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, Zinc & copper....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-15-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more. 

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements.  Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

 (Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do.  And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different.  Very different!

1.  Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial. 

There are a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large.  But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2.  We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer.  The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false.  And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer!  (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012.

We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C on Thursday, 4-12

On Tuesday, 4-17, we covered vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

On Tuesday, 4-24, we covered calcium.

Last week, on Tuesday, 5-1, we covered chromium.

Last week, on Thursday, 5-10, we covered Selenium.

Today we cover Zinc & Copper.

Both of these minerals are mixed review nutrients. 

The right amounts of each one, both zinc & copper, can be very beneficial. 

But too much zinc can be harmful; too much copper can be very harmful; and some people have genes that cause copper intake to be toxic.

They also interact.  If you don’t take zinc & copper in the right ratio, it can cause problems.

So why take zinc?

Because the right amounts significantly boost your immune system, improve your sex life, and help prevent sex linked cancers such as prostate and likely breast cancer.  Also, short term increases of zinc for one or two days can help fight viral infections in their initial appearance.

(If you are just coming down with a viral infection or fighting one off, taking an extra 30 to 60 mg of zinc for one or two days can help. You may miss getting sick or get over it a day or two sooner. But after that, taking extra zinc has the reverse effect!  So ONLY take the extra zinc for one or two days.)

The right amount of zinc to supplement is 15 to 45 mg a day.  Avoid taking over 45 mg a day of zinc except for the one or two days just described when needed.

Why take copper?

Unless you are someone who cannot take any because of your heredity*, you need to take at least enough copper to equal a fifteenth of the amount of zinc you take to balance the zinc.

So, my multi has 15 mg of zinc and 1 mg of copper. I take one a day.  And, I take 2 mg of copper each day in addition to balance the extra 30 mg of zinc I take each day.

Don’t take more than 3 mg a day of copper however.  This is a supplement for which more than what you need is NOT better.

*(Chances are you do NOT have the genetic problem with copper called Wilson’s disease where it simply builds up in the body instead of being used and excreted.  Most people who have Wilson’s disease find out when they are children and it only effects about 1 in 30,00 people.)

But of more importance for the rest of us, farmers found that animals shorted copper developed aneurysms while animals that got enough copper never got them.

Other work found animals not getting enough copper tended to develop heart problems.

The weakened blood vessel walls of aneurysms in the blood vessels that connect to your heart or in your brain can be life threatening or ending and horribly expensive to treat even if you survive them!  Aneurysms balloon up and if untreated can even burst with catastrophic results.

So the few cents a day it takes to have enough copper is CHEAP by comparison.

Since heart disease causes something like half of all deaths, doing even the small things that help prevent it makes sense to me.  That includes taking copper.

With zinc and copper however more than this level of intake is NOT better when done every day.

Excessive amounts of zinc daily has the reverse effect and lowers your immune systems function.  And, excessive amounts of copper not only is likely toxic, copper is an oxidant.

In addition to not taking too much copper, if you take copper, you must also take antioxidant supplements or eat foods high in antioxidants or both.

People who take antioxidant supplements or eat foods high in antioxidants -- and particularly those who do both -- tend to have better health and less heart disease than people who don’t.  So hopefully you are doing that already.

Taking 500 mg or more of vitamin C and eating berries and raw and nonstarchy vegetables does a great job of this and helps you be good health in many other ways and be less fat too.

Eating raw unsalted nuts with no added oil if you aren’t allergic gives you the full vitamin E complex as does eating avocadoes and extra virgin olive oil.

Mixed natural tocopherols with 200 iu a day of alpha tocopherol also helps.

So does taking alpha lipoic acid and ubiquinol which have other health benefits.

Selenium we posted on last week is also an antioxidant.

So you can take copper and more than compensate for it being an oxidant.  Given what copper does to protect you, I think that’s the way to go.