Yup. Alas, Arizona is still short on tests and trying to limit tests to
those already obviously needing hospitalization. I'm gonna have another
cup of coffee then make a second try at pushing past the gatekeepers.
On 3/24/2020 10:13 AM, Stephen Daniel wrote:
Loss of senses of taste and smell has been strongly correlated with covid-19.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/24/coronavirus-symptoms-loss-smell-taste/2897385001/
On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 12:45 PM Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On 3/23/2020 4:32 PM, Norman Yarvin wrote:
On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 12:37:48PM -0700, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
FWIW, YMMV, I took a dose of zinc, zinc gluconate 50 mg (about 7 mgFor oxygen saturation, 92% is a pretty low number; the Zhejiang
actual zinc) right after I first noticed mild shortness of breath/spO2
92% yesterday evening. (Previous bottom extreme of my normal range was
93%, when I was being particularly sessile.) Also bit off a few mg more
and let it dissolve between cheek and gum, renewing as needed since (my
usual cold-reduction dose.) Theory being common colds are often also
small-c coronaviruses, and zinc is proven to reduce cold duration and
severity. (Been taking it for that for years, it just works.)
University Hospital COVID-19 handbook classifies anyone with less than
93% oxygen saturation as a "severe case" (not "mild" or "moderate",
but less than "critical"), who should be in the hospital and on
high-flow oxygen.
I was aware of 92% being quite low. Hence my concern.
I was also aware that the Chinese COVID-19 spO2 screening
thresholds are significantly higher than US standards. One
possible factor there might be the Chinese playing catchup and
casting as broad a net as possible for potential cases, in the
aftermath of their initial botch. Another is likely the default
US medical establishment attitude of "go away, stop bothering us,
you're not sick" until you fall bleeding on the floor in front of
them. Which a 90% spO2 reading is the blood-oxygenation
equivalent of.
But when a scale is non-linear to the point where 94% is healthy
and 90% is get-to-the-hospital-FAST time, minor differences in
calibration can be a factor too. At that point, the thing to
watch for is deviations from your known baseline. Mine, on the
meter I own, being the range 93-97.
Reliably back up in the 93-96 range since I started taking zinc, FWIW.
But the coronavirus doesn't give the usual symptoms of "a mildly
annoying generic respiratory bug": the ACE2 enzyme that it latches
on to is expressed in the lungs and not in the mouth or nose. So it
mostly infects the lungs, sparing the upper respiratory system. Also
one normally gets fever with it.
You know, if you're going to proclaim like this, you should
probably add a "I am not a medical professional, nor do I play one
on the internet" disclaimer. An hour's study of the field reports
would reveal that actual COVID-19 cases present a mix of symptoms
all over the map, ranging down through random scattered entries
from the overall generic respiratory-bug symptoms menu, to none at
all in something near half of infections.
So if it seems like a "generic respiratory bug" it probably is.
Thank you, Dr. Yarvin.
My actual words, which you deleted, were "I now have what I'd
_normally_ call a mildly annoying generic respiratory bug."
(Emphasis added.)
Did it perhaps occur to you that I am neither an idiot nor overly
prone to self-dramatization, thus that I wouldn't have even
mentioned it here among numerous old friends if, in the currently
decidedly non-normal context, I didn't have good specific reasons
to suspect it may NOT be just "a mildly annoying generic
respiratory bug"?
(Short version, the specific mix of symptoms feels very
unfamiliar, not a respiratory-bug gestalt I've ever encountered
before. And I have, alas, encountered a lot.)
One more interesting symptom to report, BTW. My sense of taste
has been AWOL since the weekend. Down to perhaps 1/3rd usual
sensitivity - I can tell what I'm eating, barely, but everything
tastes massively bland. (And I did not read that this is now also
a known COVID-19 symptom till well after I'd already decided I
might as well drink my cheap backup coffee because I could no
longer taste the difference.)
With the coronavirus and zinc, the problem would be getting enough
zinc into the lungs. It's easy to bathe the nose and mouth in a high
concentration of zinc: you don't even need to (and indeed shouldn't)
apply it to the nose, but can just let the zinc ions migrate up there
by themselves. There is (I swear I am not making this up) a small
potential difference, usually about 60 to 120 millivolts, between the
nose and the mouth that drags positive ions from the mouth to the
nose. (I had to grab a multimeter and measure it in myself before I
believed it.)
Interesting data on the potential difference. Yes, I've observed
empirically that zinc dissolved in the mouth seems to permeate the
upper respiratory mucous membranes in general (and to then inhibit
common-cold small-c coronaviruses.) Good to know a bit more about
a possible distribution mechanism.
Anyway, moving a lozenge around in your mouth, you can get a far
higher concentration of zinc than you can by swallowing it and letting
the body absorb it and transport it to the mouth: zinc is an essential
nutrient, but the body controls its absorption and stops when it's
gotten enough for its own needs. So getting a high concentration of
it into the lungs would be a problem.
I've read that chloroquine works by allowing more zinc into lung
cells. Given however the resource I had was 50mg zinc gluconate
pills, period (CVS store brand, on the shelf here for some years)
I elected to experiment with raising my overall zinc levels to see
if some useful amount might get to my lungs, in parallel with the
established suck-on-a-pill-fragment method of raising neck-up
respiratory-tract mucous-membrane levels.
Early non-scientific results: The rapid initial lung deterioration
(over the course of a couple hours) that was making it
subjectively difficult to breathe and presumably was related to a
couple of outside-my-normal-baseline spO2 readings of 92% was
halted within an hour of taking 50mg zinc gluconate, and after 36
hours of 50mg ZnG q12h (plus semi-constant cheek-and-gum dissolved
zinc) has been modestly reversed - lungs still feel raw, but
breathing is not subjectively difficult and my spO2 has been
averaging 94-95%.
FWIW, I'm not notably prone to placebo effect. (LOTS of people
have tried to feed me placebos over the years in the space
business, heh.)
Pure coincidence is possible, yes. But I'm unfortunately familiar
with the sensation of my lungs going south fast. They were doing
so Sunday night. They stopped. I'm quite pleased.
Now there is one well-known way of getting zinc into the lungs: weld
some galvanized steel without wearing sufficient respiratory
protection, and give yourself the "zinc flu". But that is most
definitely not medical advice! (I mean, if anyone is crazy enough to
try it on the coronavirus, by all means let us know what the results
are, but it's definitely not something that is safe to try.)
Well, yes, I have a welder here, and plenty of galvanized scrap,
but that never occurred to me as a delivery mechanism, no.
Given the idea is to heal the lungs and not traumatize them even
more, I think I'll leave that suggestion firmly on the shelf...
My experience too is that zinc lozenges work against colds. A lot of
studies on using them against colds have come out negative, but that
seems to be because they did it wrong: it's free zinc ions that are
effective, and free zinc ions give a "metallic taste" which is
somewhat unpleasant. Most commercial zinc lozenges have some
ingredient that binds the zinc (such as citrate), which both makes
them more pleasant and ruins their effectiveness. And the zinc has to
be in a form that dissociates well in the first place: gluconate is
good, but acetate is better. (Combining either with a citrate still
ruins them.) But when you do get it right, the zinc has a direct
antiviral action against many cold viruses, as well as being something
of an astringent:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19906491
Again, thanks for the data. Yeah, I tried the candy lozenges for
a while, but they didn't work as well. Metallic taste with the
gluconate pills? I liken it more to sucking on chalk. Either
way, it unmistakably works for colds. And yes, shifting them
around your mouth is good - leave them in one spot overnight and
you'll get a mild local skin reaction. Nothing uncomfortable for
me at least, just an increased surface bumpiness that fades in a
couple hours. Better to avoid it though.
Henry