The Best Time Of Day To Take Zinc Might Not Be When You Think

A lot of it comes down to personal preference. “It does not matter what time of the day a zinc supplement is taken,” says Deborah Cohen, DCN, RDN, associate professor in the Department of Clinical and Preventive Nutrition Sciences at the Rutgers School of Health Professions. “No matter what time, the body metabolizes zinc exactly the same way.” 

Ferira adds the caveat that, “For some individuals, taking zinc on an empty stomach can make them queasy, and this can be true for those people in the morning generally. A chelated zinc is more gentle, but regardless, it’s an important individual consideration, as with most nutrition queries.”

Also, there is some data to suggest that taking zinc at night “may help with quality of sleep,”* says Vijaya Surampudi, M.D., a professor of internal medicine at UCLA Health. One randomized controlled trial in older Italian adults with difficulty sleeping found that those who took a combination of melatonin, magnesium, and zinc one hour before bed over the course of eight weeks reported “considerably better” sleep quality scores than those who took a placebo.*

Another double-blind randomized controlled trial on sleep quality in ICU nurses found that the nurses reported better sleep quality when they took 220 milligram zinc sulfate capsules (i.e., 50 mg of zinc) every 72 hours for a month.*

Furthermore, Ferira notes “this clinical trial in young women around the time of their menstrual cycle revealed that zinc supplementation at 30 milligrams per day significantly improved quality of life, and sleep quality was one of the parameters seen to improve (albeit modestly).”*