Zinc the 30th element in the periodic table.
Without it we wouldnât have the batteries that power your girlfriends vibrator nor the song Careless Whisper with itâs iconic saxophone solo (sax's are made from brass - a copper/zinc alloy).
But are there any more reasons why your girlfriend loves zinc?
A group of plucky young Broscientists from Harvard Medical School decided to find out by running two different experimentsâŚ
Experiment One: Cornflakes
Being intelligent hard working broscientists from one of the most famous schools in the world they decided to aim high and recruit 9 people for their study.
The men (aged between 50-80) were borrowed from a separate project run by the Kellogg Foundation.
Now Kelloggs cereals are a good source of fortified zinc so it could be seen that their involvement would bias this study (in favor of zinc). But at the same time John Kellogg, the man behind your favorite cereals, was famously anti-masturbation and sex (describing it as worse for humanity than the plague or any war).
He also said of âmasturbation-related deathsâ (which were apparently a thing back in the day đ¤Śââď¸) that the âvictim literally dies by his own handâ which is pretty jokes.
In fact it was said that the whole reason he invented cornflakes in the first place was that he thought food should be bland as to prevent sexual arousal.
Apparently this tagline was so popular with Americans at the time that he quickly had the number one cereal in the country.
Basically what we're saying is that if you want to see if this study was biased against zinc go see if Dr John Kellogg is rolling in his grave right now đ¤ˇââď¸.
Back To The Experiment
The 9 men were provided with about 30mg/day of zinc supplements which they were meant to take for 6 months.
After 3 months 4 of the men get fed up and decided to stop taking them đ¤Śââď¸.
The Results
After 3 months the mens testosterone just straight up started wilding - jumping up 71% (from 8.3 nmol/L to 14.2 nmol/L).
And for the men who stuck it out for the whole 6 months? There commitment to the study was rewarded with an even greater rise of 92.7% (8.3 nmol/L to 16.0 nmol/L).
Now before you go out rushing to buy zinc we will say that all these men were deemed to be marginally zinc deficient at the beginning of the study. So it may just be getting their zinc levels back to normal was why their testosterone rose and there is no evidence at the moment that taking zinc supplements when your zinc levels are normal will also cause a rise.
Knowing this and wanting to look more into the effects of zinc deficiency our broscientists moved on to experiment number two.
Experiment Two: Hospital Food
Having found recruiting 9 whole people such a pain in the ass last time, our Harvard medical school broscientists decided to settle for a sturdy 4 participants for their next experiment.
They recruited 4 men, all aged around 27, and took complete control of their diets for the next 20 weeks.
Then, in a masochistic display not seen since the Stamford Prison Experiments (and so they could ensure that they were having a diet with the correct daily amount of zinc), they made them eat only hospital food for the first 4 weeks.
Following this, they made them eat a semi-purified diet of soy products. This diet was purposefully low in Zinc as to induce a Zinc deficiency in the participants.
After 20 weeks of the low zinc diet the researchers finally ended the barbarity experiment.
The Results
So yeah, it turns out zinc is massively important for testosterone production.
Over that 20 weeks the participants saw a huge 75% drop in their testosterone levels đ¨.
Summary
So to summarise, if you're deficient in zinc you may (seriously) benefit from some zinc supplements! (Though as always consultant your doctor first!).
So why does your girlfriend love zinc so much?
We told you before - itâs the batteries thing.
âď¸ peace