Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Guest Information
- Timestamps
- Related Resources
- Premium Content
- Detailed Study Notes
- Transcript
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Introduction
Zinc is an essential micronutrient that often flies under the radar, despite being vital for hundreds of enzymes and transcription factors involved in immunity, antioxidant defense, and DNA repair.
A surprisingly large segment of the population may not get enough – an estimated 10% of U.S. individuals consume less than half the recommended zinc intake, putting them at risk of deficiency.
In this episode, Prof. Emily Ho discusses how even mild zinc insufficiency can impair immune function, promote chronic inflammation, and accelerate aspects of aging. She delves into the concept of “inflammaging” – the chronic, low-grade inflammation that develops with age – and explains how inadequate zinc status can aggravate this process.
The conversation also highlights emerging research on zinc’s role in DNA integrity and how restoring zinc levels can reverse certain damage, underscoring zinc’s broader significance in healthy aging and disease prevention.
Overall, this episode provides a deep scientific look at why maintaining adequate zinc status is crucial for immune resilience and mitigating age-related inflammatory and oxidative damage.
Guest Information
Professor Emily Ho, PhD
Emily Ho, PhD is the Director of the Linus Pauling Institute and professor in the College of Health at Oregon State University. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which nutrient status and healthy foods affect the initiation and/or progression of chronic diseases such as cancer.
Her work has helped drive dietary requirements and recommendations for micronutrients such as zinc for communities with susceptibility to poor nutrition.
An important strength to her approach in her research is maintaining a mechanistic focus on diet/environment interactions, and encouraging to work in multi-disciplinary teams to facilitate the translation of cellular mechanistic studies to impact human populations.
Timestamps
- [02:10] Interview begins
- [03:58] The roles of zinc
- [06:31] Zinc deficiency and insufficiency
- [14:26] Prevalence and risk factors of zinc deficiency
- [21:12] Zinc and age-related inflammation
- [29:39] Zinc’s impact on chronic diseases
- [31:20] Practical advice on zinc supplementation
- [41:14] Final thoughts
Related Resources
- Join the Sigma email newsletter for free
- Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium
- Enroll in the next cohort of our Applied Nutrition Literacy course
- Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) Website
- Micronutrient Information Center
- Top 10 Micronutrients for Healthy Aging
- Webinars on LPI YouTube
- Related research:
- Ho, E. (2004). Zinc deficiency, DNA damage and cancer risk. The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 15(10), 572–578.
- Song, Y., Chung, C. S., Bruno, R. S., Traber, M. G., Brown, K. H., King, J. C., & Ho, E. (2009). Dietary zinc restriction and repletion affects DNA integrity in healthy men. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 90(2), 321–328.
- Ho, E. (2022). Impact of zinc on DNA integrity and age-related inflammation. Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 178, 391–397.
- Ho, E., & Ames, B. N. (2002). Low intracellular zinc induces oxidative DNA damage, disrupts p53, NFκB, and AP1 DNA binding, and affects DNA repair in a rat glioma cell line. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(26), 16770–16775
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Comments
Hi Danny! I am a huge fan of your content and really appreciate how evidence-based your episodes are. I was disappointed that you did not push back against Dr. Ho advocating for everyone to take a daily multivitamin, especially given that you have previously covered multivitamins (SNP37). There is a plethora of evidence demonstrating that there is no meaningful health benefit to taking a multivitamin for the average individual. I wish you had questioned her on that topic, or cut that out of the episode, rather than perpetuating the misinformation.
Thank you, again, for all the work you do to put reliable scientific evidence out in a digestible (no pun intended) way.
Best,
Naomi
Hi Naomi,
Thanks for the input and I understand your point.
I believe that Dr. Ho prefaced that the Linus Pauling Institute recommendation for MVM use in that context was not in line with typical recommendations. In addition the claim, to me, seemed to be that it could potentially provide a buffer for a shortfall in zinc intake, rather than stating it would lead to some strong outcome (e.g. lowered mortality risk).
Indeed, in our episode that you reference (SNP37), one of the points of that episode was to reflect on how strong one should be on the idea that “there is no meaningful health benefit to taking a multivitamin”. This is certainly not me claiming that I am of the position that MVM supplementation will lead to risk reduction in chronic diseases; I am in agreement with you that the evidence in that respect shows little in way of support. Rather, in the context of this interview and the concept of zinc insufficiency, the perspective that those at risk of low status should consider a MVM as an insurance policy didn’t seem to require more deliberation.
However, it’s entirely possible I am wrong on that and I misread the situation.
If it’s indeed the case that my failure to get into that point more has lead to confusion, or is incoherent with previous positions, then that’s a fair criticism and I can only apologise for the oversight and intend to not make similar errors in future. However, hopefully I have given some explanation to the reasoning.
I really appreciate you taking the time to both listen and offer your opinion. Thank you!