White Spots in the Fingernails

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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In most cases white spots in the fingernails indicates a zinc deficiency.

You cannot eat “right” and obtain enough zinc. Everyone in America that does not take a zinc supplement is zinc deficient to some extent. (If requested, I’ll post several sources for that gem of information)

The scientific term for white spots in the fingernails is:

leukonychia (canities unguium)

Inasmuch as it has nothing to do with medicine, I doubt there is a dozen doctors in America that would even recognize what it is.

It should be one of the very first thing a doctor looks for in a patient. It would immediately tell the doctor that there are over 300 enzymes (some sources say 200 and others 400) being adversly impacted due to zinc deficiency. I split the difference.

Here is the response from one mother,
when I suggested zinc with calcium and
magnesium for her ADD diagnosed son (on an ADD
AD/HD Chat Room):

Quote:

OK, I have had my son on zinc, calcium and

magnesium supplements since reading about

it here on this site. The results are amazing.

He not only suffered from a lot of food

allergies but attention and focusing problems.

The white flecks in his nails are gone,

his bedwetting stopped, his behavioral problems

at daycare/school are minimum to none. He is

working very hard on his school-work and his

emotional feelings seem to be much more stable.

We are very happy with the results so far

and I am so glad I found this group!

Unquote

None of these comments surprise me.

Two of the clinical manifestations of zinc deficiency are:

Depressed mental function and behavioral disturbances.

I have coined the phrase “zinc facilitates rational thought.”

Imagine the impact across America if all students were

supplemented with zinc.

I have 25 years of research and 100-plus terrifying pages

on the subject.

Just one teaser: Zinc deficiency at puberty can affect the

size of the male penis. I talked to a District School Counselor

and he informed me he had 31 troubled students and all

31 had subsized penises. If requested, I can site the health care literature on

this aspect of zinc deficiency and what it says about girls entering

puberty.

Dave (a Life Member of Mensa)

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I think this is the column being referenced: Link

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David, I’ll call…cite? :dubious:

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I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and have since I was a child - I have white spots. Are you trying to say that Zinc will cure those AND my RA?

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Is that a proxy for actual formal training in an accredited institution?
(Back in my day all you had to have for Mensa was a decent SAT score and a few bucks. You didn’t have to actually be able to think. 100% of my Med School class would have been eligible and some of them were dumber than mud fences.)

Is your research peer-reviewed by folks from accredited institutions, and if so, may we see the cite?

Also, any chance you can reassure us you don’t make money selling or recommending supplements?

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So this District School Counselor inspects the penises of all his male students?

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Sources would be nice, but that little gem is a little hard to swallow from the git-go. You claim that none of the 300 million people in the U.S. get enough zinc from their diet aside from supplements. Has it always been this way? Is something missing from the modern diet that was present in pre-industrial diets, or were our hunter-gatherer ancestors also zinc-deficient, 50,000 years ago?

It seems odd that a species would evolve a “need” for a particular mineral that exceeds the amount available in the species’ environment.
Incidentally, I qualify for Mensa; I’d imagine a majority of posters here do. Doesn’t cut much ice.

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I understood those little white marks on fingernails were due to injury to the cuticle during the nail development.

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Yeah, I made the connection between banging the base of my nail and developing a white spot when I was six. I’m going with “trapped air because of delamination of the nail caused by a sharp blow,” but what do I know, not being in MENSA and all.

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Supersize Me!!

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Sub-sized, eh? Well, a 6" sub would be nothing to write home about, but a foot-long would be pretty neat. Hooray, zinc.

Signed,
OneCentStamp
hoagie sized

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I sell no zinc or other supplements. I do take a lot of zinc. 42-1/2 mg daily. It cured a skin problem I had (which is what started me on the subject after being told by a Dermitologist at Kaiser Permanente is was a psoriasis and I would have to learn to live with it.). It CURED my dandruff and athlete’s foot - both of decades standing.

Two of the many clinical consequences of zinc deficiency is “behavioral disturbances,” and “depresses mental function.” There are over 300 more consequences of this deficiency.

It is known that "zinc is widely distributed throughout the central nervous system of the human body where it participates in diverse neuronal/glial metabolic processes, many of which directly influence the electrical excitability of the brain and subsequent behavior. In people with adequate intake of zinc, "there exists within the hippocampal mossy fiber system a unique pool of zinc. Above taken from the below desk reference (Autopsy of Alzheimer’s Disease reveal the "unique pool of zinc has been replaced with aluminum.)

The Manual of Clinical Nutrition, by Nutrition Publications, Inc. Fourth Printing November 1983 Library of Congress Cat card No 82-62508, Edited by David M. Paige, MD, MPH, Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Hygiene and Public Health and joint appointment in Dept of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, The John Hopkins University.

This 1000-plus page desk reference manual states:

“The zinc content of a mixed diet in the United States, for example, is about 3 mg/1,000 calories. An adult would have to consume 5,000 calories to ingest 15 mg level of zinc as specified by the RDA.”

The New Nutrition, COLGAN, Dr. Michael, C.I. Publications, San Diego, c. 1994, states:

Studies of zinc intake in average diets show it is only 8.6 mg per day, well below the male RDA of 15 mg. Deficiency is rampant."

Michael Hambridge of the University of Colorado in Denver said at a National Institutes of Health conference in 1998 that, “Zinc is considered one of the most essential trace elements. There are more biological roles for zinc than for all other trace elements put together.”

The Journal of Soil Science Society of America, Volume 65, January-February 1997, pages 184-193, contains a comprehensive report on “zinc in the soil” availability. It states there are thirty states that are considered zinc deficient in the soil. It goes on to say the food grown in that soil is also zinc deficient. This is not on the reading list of medical students.

The nations of Iran and Egypt are considered zinc deficient nations.

There have been over 50 ice ages in North America prior to the dawn of man (followed by over 50 periods of global warming. Zinc was leached into the sea. Oysters are the best single source of zinc. (Twenty times better than the best land source - beef. I came from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. It is a zinc deficient valley.)

I’m temporary on this web site and will be off at the end of the month. Would love to answer any and all questions. davidgunderhill@lv.rmci.net

Just yesterday, a neighbor kid that had white spots in his nails received his final grades. When his mom asked me to help (after the school wanted to put him in an IEP (individual education program) he was 14 months behind in reading and failing in all subjects except math. His final grades were all “A’s” for the year accompanied by a certificate for exceptional academic performance.

I suspect that if we continue this, every person will be taking zinc, with cal and mag. They go together and are sold in that combination as a single pill/capsule/caplet.

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It takes about 6 months for white spots to grow out. As long as you take zinc (with cal and mag) they will not reappear (unless, some literature says you hit them with a hammer, slam them in a car door, or tap them too hard on a desk.

If you have PMS, zinc is like a magic pill for the disorder. The flow will be a little more profuse, but the discomfort will be nil.

Drop me a line and I will address RA when I have time. My personal experience.

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By the way, it takes a little more than a descent SAT score to qualify for Mensa. It takes the 98th percentile. By the way, I was recognized BIG TIME when I was appointed Chief of Admin in General Douglas MacArthur’s old office at the UN Command in Tokyo at the ripe old age of 21 with four years of servce behind me. It called for two grades higher than the grade I held.

I’ll post what he had to say on Youth and Age. It is something to live by.

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No! He read the psychiatric evaluation of all 31 students.

I didn’t mention this before, but I had one of these type guys in my unit in Japan. He could function with the local girls. They would cover their mouth, point and laught.

He attempted suicide. Inasmuch as he held a security clearance, I read the psychiatric evaluation. The last thing the psychiatrist said in al caps

‘IT IS SMALL’

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Why in the world would the psychiatric evaluation of all 31 students mention their penis sizes?

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What are your medical qualifications?

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What caused you to conclude that it was the zinc that cured your skin problem and your dandruff?

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Would you mid providing a cite? I have trouble believing a qualified psychiatrist would be writing such things, and I’m having trouble believing that there is no client/patient confidentiality in these cases.

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Surf the web sites of USDA. They list the nutritional content of thousands of foods so that a person can plan menus. Stay away from oysters and you come up short every time in planning a weeks menu. By the way, zinc is not one of the required item to be included in planning a school lunch menu. Could it be it is not included because it cannot be provided. I talked to a School District Dietitian who previously taught Nutrition at Stanford. She said she is well aware of the shortcoming in the area of zinc, but has to comply with Federal Guide Lines.

The last time I tried, they had discontinued the web site I was using, and there was nothing in paticular that I was looking for so stopped.
>>Is something missing from the modern diet that was present in pre-industrial >>diets, or were our hunter-gatherer ancestors also zinc-deficient, 50,000 years >>ago?

Life span was short. Have no direct answer, but the problem is getting worse due to changes in diet and continued depletion of zinc in the soil.

Supplements have served me well. I had three older and three younger brothers and an older sister. They, and my mother and father all wore glasses. I don’t. There is a study by the National Institute of Health (blind division) that shows the part zinc plays in loss of eyesight in the elderly. Will be glad to send an extensive summary to anyone that asks.

I have outlived three of my oder brothers and one younger brother. I’ve outlived them by eight to twenty-two years.