While other minerals often get all the glory, zinc often goes unnoticed, yet it’s essential to healthy immune function. Zinc is a critical part of many bodily processes and a deficiency in this mineral can result in many health problems, such as chronic fatigue, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, hair loss, and a compromised immune system.
Along with its long list of health benefits, zinc also shows promise in helping you avoid problems with COVID-19. For example, in a recent YouTube video, Roger Seheult, MD, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist delves into some data from South Korea and whether intracellular zinc may be able to help prevent COVID-19.
The video looks closely at a study done on the way zinc inhibits coronavirus – specifically SARS-CoV – and arterivirus, and offers some insight on how zinc may also help fight COVID-19.
Zinc has the potential to block virus replication
According to the study published in PLOS Pathogens back in 2010, zinc worked to inhibit coronavirus RNA polymerase activity. What this does is block RNA synthesis, which means that the virus isn’t able to keep replicating.
Basically, by blocking replication of the virus, it slows the virus down. Since SARS-CoV is very similar to what we see in COVID-19 (they are both types of coronavirus), it’s very likely that zinc works in the same way on COVID-19, slowing down the replication of this virus.
Of course, it’s essential to note that it’s intracellular zinc, zinc that’s inside of your cells, that can block virus replication. This means that popping a few zinc lozenges may not help you.
Sources for this article include:
WebMD.com
PLOS.org
YouTube.com
NaturalMedicineJournal.com
NaturalHealth365.com