Welcome to the Dr. Berg's Healthy Keto and Interminate Fasting Podcast, where Dr.

Berg takes you on the journey for the truth about getting healthy and losing healthy weight.

Now zinc is so many things that's involved in over 300 different pathways, but recently

I found out that zinc has an unexpected sleep benefit. Typically when you think of a zinc

deficiency, you think of a child not growing very fast or someone having low testosterone

or they can't taste or smell or they have poor room healing or a poor immune system or

even they may develop an ulcer. But one huge symptom for a lack of zinc is poor sleep.

So zinc has a major influence over the central nervous system. In fact, it's the second

most abundant trace mineral in your brain. It's involved in neurotransmitters, which are

those hormone communications that travel through the nervous system. It's also essential

for making a denticine. Now what is a denticine? A denticine is that molecule that gradually

builds up to the day and creates sleep pressure. It's that compound that controls pressure

that pushes you into the deep sleep. And all night long when you're sleeping, a denticine

breaks down and then you become awake, right? Also caffeine blocks a denticine and that's

why caffeine makes you more awake. But zinc will help you build up more a denticine which

is sleep pressure. Zinc is also involved in making dopamine. It's also involved in making

serotonin, which then turns into melatonin, the sleep hormone. Also zinc is involved in

certain biochemical pathways involving glutamate, which is a profound effect on deep sleep.

So zinc is what is called a sleep modulator. It helps control sleep. Now any time you

take zinc, I also recommend you take it with copper in a certain ratio. So for every

8 to 10 milligrams of zinc, you want to take 0.5 to 1 milligrams of copper. And 0.5 milligrams

of copper is 500 micrograms. So roughly you'd want 10 times more zinc than you do copper.

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