a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then
afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.
some details:
one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet
that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox
yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that
The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.
you want zinc acetate, or if that’s not available, zinc gluconate. it has to be a lozenge or otherwise dissolve in your mouth, since the theoretical method of action is coating some tissue or receptor or something with ionic zinc. preferably with as few additives as possible. if it doesn’t taste bad and feel astringent, it’s not working. in the US everyone buys the life extension ones. idk about elsewhere
it is ideal to start as soon as possible. preferably in the not-sure-if-im-actually-sick-yet phase. starting once the infection is well developed seems to be much less effective
tbh I will actually take one prophylactically if I feel like I was in a high exposure environment. this is a not the protocol the research was done on but it seems reasonable and as long I don’t do this every day it is at worst a bad tasting zinc supplement
iirc the studies mostly had a protocol along the lines of one lozenge (of varying size and type?) every 1.5-2 hours while awake until symptoms subside. that’s a lot. it seems to produce some effect in the studies. I do not know that anyone has done any real study on taking more or less to compare, so it’s unclear what the optimal amount is, or how long it is worthwhile to persist in taking them
…well, I tried a Life Extension zinc-acetate lozenge (not to be confused with a Life Extension zinc-oxide/gluconate + citric acid lozenge, which I previously got by accident and which are much wimpier), and, uh, that was kind of scary.
I *didn’t even get a full dose*! I ended up running out of time before bed and having to spit two-thirds of it out! And it *still* took about *17 hours* for my sense of taste to stop being blunted!
(my sense of smell still worked, FTR, so I’m *probably* not just leaving a proverbial bad Yankee Candle review)
…I’ll *consider* giving it one more try the next time I’m *confident* I’m sick, but I cannot do this at-first-sign-of-illness when my first-sign-of-illness has a 99%+ false-positive rate.
yeah that sounds like a bad reaction, don’t think I’d bother with that either
from a single lozenge I do notice astringency but the effects on taste are minor. I hardly notice them, I don’t mind them much when I do, and they last at most a few hours if that
For me, TheraZinc lozenges pretty consistently stop colds if I start using them as soon as I notice a sore throat (haven’t tried Life Extension, have tried Cold-Eeze and they were bullshit.) they do indeed fuck up my sense of taste for days, and that’s a decent tradeoff for me because my colds have a tendency to turn into bronchitis. but it’s hard for me to voluntarily inflict that much unpleasantness on myself >_< so sometimes I don’t.
Yeah, the “as soon as I notice a sore throat” aspect is probably the main hurdle here. This could maybe have been a very valuable antidepressant for, like, 2015!me, but these days…well, these were some of my tags on that recent reblog:
(the current ratio is *mostly* because I have other forms of throat irritation way more often now, but partly because I have fewer colds thanks to more other layers in my security I’m literally writing this while wearing a P100 because my sick housemate was recently puttering about in our kitchen completely bare-faced like an asshole)
I have a really hard time doing QALY analyses on myself because my brain’s response to being queried on how much lifespan it would give up in exchange for not experiencing X suffering is “we do not negotiate with terrorists”, but ‘hypogeusia is more than 1% as bad as severe depression’ seems like a very plausible statement to me.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #the power of science #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #illness tw #death tw? #venting cw? #he *has* at least been refraining from hanging out in the living room or in our parents’ room #and *sometimes* he wears a KF94 (unsealed‚ but he might not *know* how to seal a mask around facial hair) when he’s fetching food/water #I don’t know why he’s landed on ”sometimes” and I don’t dare ask
a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then
afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.
some details:
one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet
that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox
yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that
The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.
you want zinc acetate, or if that’s not available, zinc gluconate. it has to be a lozenge or otherwise dissolve in your mouth, since the theoretical method of action is coating some tissue or receptor or something with ionic zinc. preferably with as few additives as possible. if it doesn’t taste bad and feel astringent, it’s not working. in the US everyone buys the life extension ones. idk about elsewhere
it is ideal to start as soon as possible. preferably in the not-sure-if-im-actually-sick-yet phase. starting once the infection is well developed seems to be much less effective
tbh I will actually take one prophylactically if I feel like I was in a high exposure environment. this is a not the protocol the research was done on but it seems reasonable and as long I don’t do this every day it is at worst a bad tasting zinc supplement
iirc the studies mostly had a protocol along the lines of one lozenge (of varying size and type?) every 1.5-2 hours while awake until symptoms subside. that’s a lot. it seems to produce some effect in the studies. I do not know that anyone has done any real study on taking more or less to compare, so it’s unclear what the optimal amount is, or how long it is worthwhile to persist in taking them
…well, I tried a Life Extension zinc-acetate lozenge (not to be confused with a Life Extension zinc-oxide/gluconate + citric acid lozenge, which I previously got by accident and which are much wimpier), and, uh, that was kind of scary.
I *didn’t even get a full dose*! I ended up running out of time before bed and having to spit two-thirds of it out! And it *still* took about *17 hours* for my sense of taste to stop being blunted!
(my sense of smell still worked, FTR, so I’m *probably* not just leaving a proverbial bad Yankee Candle review)
…I’ll *consider* giving it one more try the next time I’m *confident* I’m sick, but I cannot do this at-first-sign-of-illness when my first-sign-of-illness has a 99%+ false-positive rate.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #I cannot find the post but I saw someone recently saying that the Yankee Candle Index looks bad again for this winter #(that is to say‚ Yankee Candle is experiencing another flood of negative reviews from #people who actually have sudden-onset anosmia but are blaming the lack of scent on poor candle quality) #P.S. I started wondering whether my health-log data supported my 99%+ estimate #so I did some ctrl-F and wow‚ I have non-contagious sore throats *even more* often than I thought #I had a noticeable amount of non-contagious throat soreness on *86 days* out of 2023-so-far #plus one contagious sore throat spanning two days‚ slightly under 24 hours total (before moving on to different cold symptoms) #but bear in mind that in the period 2020 – 2022 inclusive‚ *every* sore throat was non-contagious #so yeah‚ lately I *have* had >100 sore throats that don’t lead anywhere for each one that develops into a cold
Posted yesterday, apparently the first Utah Monolith (and all the other American ones) were art pieces made by a group called The Most Famous Artist, who want to sell them. They didn’t make or distribute any of the ones outside America, though.
Tags:
#reblogging for reference #today in Apocalypse Memes #(well‚ three years ago in Apocalypse Memes‚ but that’s the tag) #apocalypse cw #racism cw?
#Tumblr traditions #Christmas #so‚ traditionally I reblog this post once a year on the day I first hear ”Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” #(…technically it was yesterday‚ but it’s been less than 24 hours!) #(anyway) #my workplace is on a non-Christmas-music station right now‚ so yes‚ it did take me until December 19th to hear it #and even then… #the version on the grocery-store playlist says #instead of ”won’t you guide my sleigh tonight” #”*you can ride with me* tonight” #and *skips the last verse* #(I think it proceeds directly into ”Jingle Bells” instead) #which‚ uh
Justifying your irrational dislike for something by saying it “killed my father” is at least twice as funny when talking to someone who knows your still very alive father
when people ask why i don’t like horses, i tell them a pack of horses pushed my mother off a cliff, and i often do this within earshot of my mother
Tags:
#death tw #this is a complete tangent but this post is making me think that maybe #we should throw a party for the upcoming 30th anniversary of my father’s successful resuscitation #not today‚ Grim Reaper
The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it – victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done – humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.
It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow. In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).
Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.
For a long time, there was no hope – only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.
In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.
It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it – but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.
An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.
A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.
And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.
At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.
The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.
The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.
They found none.
35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.
This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world – was destroyed.
You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.
Happy Smallpox Eradication Day.
Tags:
#an increasingly bitter holiday as we head further into the 2020s #(also I dislike being called human) #but thank you‚ civilisation‚ for the knowledge and the tools that I needed to throw this starfish into the ocean #I still want that new orthopox vaccine though #Tumblr traditions #anniversaries #history #proud citizen of The Future #disappointed permanent resident of The Future #illness tw #transhumanism
She may live like a lizard, but is she a lizard in real life?? Checkmate liberevals B)
i’m glad tumblr adopted you
Tags:
#that one post with the thing #hey guys I got a living-room humidifier as a Hanukkah present today #the whirr blends very nicely with the whirr of the air purifier #my thermostat says the humidity has gone from 51% to 54% over the first ~45 minutes #(and I’m sure in a month or two the unhumidified baseline will be down in the low 30s) #(unfortunately my sun lamps are cheap and shitty) #(I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking longingly about the $400 ones that all of my friends wax lyrical about) #(someday! someday!) #domesticity #lizards
Brinens and Things 