After refractive surgery, the doctor suggested taking 1000mg of vitamin C daily to help minimize scarring. When I went to pick up the vitamins, I also noticed that there was a supplement claiming to be designed to support eye health that also included vitamin C. Specifically, it has:
- 250mg vitamin C
- 200 IU vitamin E
- 40mg zinc (as 50mg zinc oxide)
- 1mg copper
...per tablet. The recommended dosage is 1 tablet/day, and I'd have to take 4 times that amount to get 1000mg of vitamin C/day.
From what I can determine 800 IU of vitamin E and 4 mg copper are within safe/tolerable limits, however 160mg of elemental zinc is quite high. There are only a few conditions I can find where dosages around that level are recommended for therapeutic purposes:
- Acne (for up to 8 weeks)
- Wilson's disease (ongoing)
- Macular degeneration (ongoing)
So my question is, what's the safe maximum dosage of zinc over a course of 4-6 weeks? From what I can find, it seems like the biggest risk is that high dosages of zinc lead to copper deficiency (hence why it's used to as a treatment for Wilson's disease). Does it therefore follow that 160mg/day should be okay as long as it's supplemented with some extra copper and not continued on a long-term basis?
