No way! Jan Drew already warned me. He said that metals do not belong
in the mouth!
Zinc is one!
Joel
**
http://www.newhope.com/nutritionsciencenews/NSN_backs/Nov_00/natnews5.cfm
From The November 2000 Issue of Nutrition Science News
Zinc Halts Colds
Zinc lozenges have been used to treat the common cold for a number of
years, but research results on their effectiveness have been
contradictory. Now, a comprehensive, randomized, double-blind,
placebo-controlled trial conducted by Ananda Prasad, M.D., Ph.D., of
Wayne State University in Detroit has shown that zinc lozenges work.
Forty-eight students, staff and employees at Wayne State University
who had cold symptoms for 24 hours or less were given either a placebo
or a zinc lozenge that contained 12.8 mg zinc acetate. Participants
were given 50 lozenges and asked to dissolve one in their mouths every
two to three hours while awake as long as they had cold symptoms. They
took no other cold preparations. All participants returned to the
clinic one day after their colds ended. At that time, their plasma was
examined for an immune factor called pro-inflammatory cytokines, which
causes cold symptoms.
The zinc recipients suffered from their colds an average of 4.5 days,
whereas the placebo group was under the weather an average of 8.1
days. Most notably, zinc recipients coughed for only three days
compared to six days for the placebo patients. When they initially
came in for treatment, those who ended up taking zinc supplements
actually reported more severe cold symptoms, including fever, sneezing
and sore throat. However, by day four, their severity score was only
half that of the placebo group.
The participants given the zinc lozenges ingested approximately 80 mg
of elemental zinc per day for about five days—five times the
recommended daily allowance. The researchers recommend that this zinc
dose not be sustained for many weeks at a time because it could cause
copper deficiency, but they say it is safe to take during the shorter
duration of a cold. Although researchers suggested the improvement in
clinical symptoms might be caused by a reduction in immune cytokines,
actual plasma cytokine levels were not significantly different between
the two groups, possibly because blood samples were taken too long
after the end of the colds.
— Annals of Internal Medicine 2000 Aug 15;133(4):245-52.
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Joel M. Eichen, .
Philadelphia PA
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