Scientists have found that there is a food supplement that can reduce the chances of exposure to respiratory viruses and shorten the duration of colds by two days. The German physician Hieronymus David Jobius, in 1771, presented the Western scientific community with “the most promising drug” – zinc.
More than two hundred years later, zinc has become one of the most popular nutritional supplements on drug shelves and health food stores, along with vitamins and other supplements, according to healthy.walla.
But does zinc help fight the common cold? Scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of zinc for fighting colds has so far been very limited, and the results of studies have not always overlapped. Another problem has been the lack of sufficient research regarding the dosage, composition, and duration of use needed to obtain the best benefits from taking zinc.
But now, a new study is published that is actually a meta-analysis of 28 controlled studies, and its results provide strong support that taking zinc can reduce symptoms and shorten the duration of illness in the case of respiratory virus (example: influenza, colds and other winter nuisance viruses) .
“It has been common knowledge that zinc’s role in preventing or treating infections is only effective in people with zinc deficiency,” says Dr. Jennifer Hunter, a specialist in integrative medicine at Western Sydney University in Australia.
She added, “However, our results challenge this assumption… The two largest studies on the topic, conducted in China, found that a very low dose of zinc using a nasal spray reduced the chance of developing clinical disease, and two smaller studies conducted in the United States focused on the protective abilities of zinc intake, and did not include zinc-deficient people. She explained that “other studies that were included in the analysis and examined the effect of zinc intake during colds, were conducted in communities where zinc deficiency is not common at all.”
Fewer symptoms in fewer days.
When an oversupply is made preemptively, a 28 percent increase is made, while an 87 percent increase is made after a preemptive eating.
When zinc was taken for therapeutic purposes – that is, after people had a cold – the researchers found that it was able to reduce the time they were exposed to symptoms of the disease, as it turned out that zinc shortened the duration of the worst symptoms by about two days.
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