I have a vague memory of a post saying that taking zinc early, while virus was replicating in the upper respiratory tract, was much more important than taking it later, because later it would have spread all over the body and thus the zinc can’t get to it, or something like this. So I tend to take a couple early on then stop. But it sounds like you don’t consider that difference important.
Is it your current (Not asking you to do more research!) impression that it’s useful to take zinc throughout the illness?
My impression is that since zinc inhibits viral replication, it’s most useful in the regime where viral populations are still growing and your body hasn’t figured out how to beat the virus yet. So getting started ASAP is good, but it’s likely helpful for the first 2-3 days of the illness.
An important part of the model here that I don’t understand yet is how your body’s immune response varies as a function of viral populations—e.g. two models you could have are
As soon as any immune cell in your body has ever seen a virus, a fixed scale-up of immune response begins, and you’re sick until that scale-up exceeds viral populations.
Immune response progress is proportional to current viral population, and you get better as soon as total progress crosses some threshold.
If we simplistically assume* that badness of cold = current viral population, then in world 1 you’re really happy to take zinc as soon as you have just a bit of virus and will get better quickly without ever being very sick. In world 2, the zinc has no effect at all on total badness experienced, it just affects the duration over which you experience that badness.
*this is false, tbc—I think you generally keep having symptoms a while after viral load becomes very low, because a lot of symptoms are from immune response rather than the virus itself.
Thanks for putting this together!
I have a vague memory of a post saying that taking zinc early, while virus was replicating in the upper respiratory tract, was much more important than taking it later, because later it would have spread all over the body and thus the zinc can’t get to it, or something like this. So I tend to take a couple early on then stop. But it sounds like you don’t consider that difference important.
Is it your current (Not asking you to do more research!) impression that it’s useful to take zinc throughout the illness?
My impression is that since zinc inhibits viral replication, it’s most useful in the regime where viral populations are still growing and your body hasn’t figured out how to beat the virus yet. So getting started ASAP is good, but it’s likely helpful for the first 2-3 days of the illness.
An important part of the model here that I don’t understand yet is how your body’s immune response varies as a function of viral populations—e.g. two models you could have are
As soon as any immune cell in your body has ever seen a virus, a fixed scale-up of immune response begins, and you’re sick until that scale-up exceeds viral populations.
Immune response progress is proportional to current viral population, and you get better as soon as total progress crosses some threshold.
If we simplistically assume* that badness of cold = current viral population, then in world 1 you’re really happy to take zinc as soon as you have just a bit of virus and will get better quickly without ever being very sick. In world 2, the zinc has no effect at all on total badness experienced, it just affects the duration over which you experience that badness.
*this is false, tbc—I think you generally keep having symptoms a while after viral load becomes very low, because a lot of symptoms are from immune response rather than the virus itself.
Thanks!