heya. zinc is low in ms. alcohol consumption reduces zinc. zinc can actually repair liver cirrhosis from alcohol consumption.
your level should be close to 18 umol/L in order to match healthy controls in societies that don't eat much gluten (people that are healthy but eat gluten foods have lower zinc because gluten is a zinc drain).
ms patients also have low uric acid. in some cases without enough zinc the liver can't properly convert ammonia by-products of digestion, into urea. uric acid normal range is 140-360 umol/l. ms average is 194 (~160 in relapse, ~230 in remission). healthy controls sit around 290-300. i tried for years to get my uric acid up with diet but when i discovered the zinc/uric acid connection, my bloodwork shows that fixing the zinc problem fixed the uric acid problem. i was 194 or lower for years. with zinc bumped up from 8.6 to 16.1 umol/l, uric acid shot up to 278.
uric acid is a powerful natural anti-oxidant. it's only when lifestyle dynamics lead to too much, that you end up with probs like gout.
ms patients also typically have low vitamin d3. when i fixed my zinc deficiency, my d3 absorption tripled (in hindsight, there is more evidence for d3 effects the work done on magnesium status around the same time period). ie with the same d3 dose, serum value went from 100 to 270 (above 250 is not good by the way), when i was expecting to get up to 150.
i had been zinc deficient from being vegan (no zinc inputs from meat), eating lots of wheat foods (gluten drain) and lots of legumes (phytates impair zinc absorption) AND alcohol consumption (another zinc drain) so my level was down below the normal range (which varies but locally the regional ref is 11.5-18.5 umol/L). i was at 8.6.
(update re magnesium: i realize in hindsight after correcting low mag that i had likely been in deficit since high school, based on high activity levels, subpar diet and chronic symptoms. later, choosing less and less useful sources of mag in diet over time (eg not enough nuts/seeds/leafy greens as a vegan), followed by adding high dose d3 after dx, inflicted quite a hit on my magnesium status. rebuilding tissue mag stores likely had more to do with the more recent improvements to d3 dose response than the zinc.)
hope that helps
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