Can Zinc Really Help Fight Colds and Covid?
Plus, the links: a fatal flaw in the black-plastic-spatula study, PCOS misdiagnosis, how misinformation spreads, and more
Welcome to another installment of the Rethinking Wellness link roundup! Here I’m offering a small collection of links from around the internet that are relevant to the conversations we have here, along with some quick takes and occasional deeper dives for paid subscribers.
This time the take/dive is about whether zinc supplements are helpful for immunity, which I was personally invested in exploring because I’ve been sick so much this season.
Links
Here are some pieces that got me thinking in the past few weeks. I found value in all of these, but links are not endorsements of every single detail in the piece or everything the writer ever wrote.
A lack of high-quality research on PCOS causes both too few and too many diagnoses (Jessica Grose / NYT)
Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online (Science)
Related: Meta eliminates fact-checking in latest bow to Trump (AP)
Error in viral black plastic spatula study results in ten-fold overestimation of risk (RNZ ft.
)How retractions get weaponized on social media (STAT)
For nutrition and health information, 2025 may be a very bumpy ride (
/ Seattle Times)In Case You Missed It
Luigi Mangione, Healthcare Rage, and Wellness Culture
Best Of: Weight Loss and Wellness, and Differences in Our Perceptions of Risk
Top 10 Posts of 2024: Ozempic Hype, Gut Health, Andrew Huberman, Protein Overload, and More
How Is Your Relationship with Alcohol? Ft. Jenna Hollenstein
Take/Dive: Zinc Supplements and Immunity
I’ve been sick on and off for the better part of three months now. It all started with a bout of food poisoning (or possibly norovirus—a bad scene either way). I couldn’t keep anything down and was sick in bed for days, and it took a couple weeks to feel fully back to normal.
A month or so later, I came down with what I thought was a mild cold. I tested negative for Covid, but when it lingered and came with a sudden bout of fatigue, I tested again: positive. After close to two weeks, I finally recovered—only to come down with another respiratory virus a week later, just in time for the holidays. When that took a turn for the worse on day 7, I went to the doctor and tested positive for the flu—followed by a sinus infection, probably a result of being congested for so long. To top it all off, the antibiotics and Tamiflu I took for those infections triggered a flare-up of IBS, and here we are.
In the middle of all this, I spoke to a family member who’s into supplements and other wellness-y stuff, and she insisted that she never gets sick because she takes zinc supplements. Not just “takes,” actually—she also rubs zinc on her skin, in the form of diaper cream. She *also* wears a mask in most crowded indoor spaces and doesn’t have little kids bringing home germs, which I think is the more likely reason she catches so few viruses. But she believes the zinc is primarily responsible for keeping her well, and she strongly recommended I start using it, too.
I was skeptical, having briefly skimmed the research on zinc years ago when she first got into it, but I promised her I’d look into the science and see what I thought. Also, truth be told, I was curious: was I missing out on something that could have ended this nightmare streak of sickness—or prevented it from happening in the first place?