What Does This Blood Marker Have to Do With Your Skin?
Glucose gets attention.
Cholesterol gets attention.
Thyroid markers practically have their own fan club.
And then there’s alkaline phosphatase.
ALP may be the beige cardigan of your blood chemistry panel.
It’s there. It’s perfectly respectable. And unless someone specifically points it out, you may scroll right past it without giving it another thought.
Which is a shame, because this unassuming little enzyme has a surprisingly interesting relationship with something your skin happens to need:
Zinc.
Wait. My Bloodwork Has Something to Do With Zinc?
Alkaline phosphatase, or ALP, is an enzyme found in several tissues throughout the body, particularly the liver and bones. And for ALP to do its job, it needs zinc.
That doesn’t mean a lower ALP result automatically means you’re zinc deficient. ALP can be influenced by multiple factors, and one number on routine bloodwork isn’t a zinc deficiency test.
But knowing that ALP depends on zinc opens a much more interesting nutritional conversation.
Zinc plays a role in normal skin integrity, cell growth, tissue repair, immune function, and antioxidant defense.
So somehow our beige cardigan has taken us from routine bloodwork to a mineral to the skin you see in the mirror.
But zinc has another surprise for us.
Eating Zinc Is Only Half the Conversation
Let’s say you decide to eat more foods containing zinc.
Pumpkin seeds make the list.
Excellent. Sprinkle them over something. Eat them by the handful. Turn them into pesto.
More on that delicious idea later.
* Ate pumpkin seeds.
* Acquired zinc.
* Job done.
Except...
Pumpkin seeds also contain phytates.
Phytates are naturally occurring compounds found in foods such as seeds, nuts, legumes, and whole grains. They can bind minerals, including zinc, in the digestive tract and reduce how much is available for absorption.
Wait a minute.
You’re eating pumpkin seeds because they contain zinc, while the pumpkin seeds themselves contain something that can make some of that zinc harder to absorb?
Welcome to nutrition.
This is why a nutrition label can tell you exactly how much of a nutrient is in a food without necessarily telling you the whole story about how much your body can ultimately access.
And before phytates get hauled off to nutritional jail, there’s another twist.
Phytates aren’t necessarily the bad guys.
The wellness world loves putting foods and nutrients into “good” and “bad” boxes. Phytates make that rather inconvenient.
Although they can interfere with the absorption of minerals such as zinc and iron, phytates are also being studied for potentially beneficial effects, including antioxidant activity and their ability to inhibit unwanted calcium crystallization.
Both things can be true.
Apparently, even pumpkin seeds refuse to give us a simple answer.
Fortunately, this doesn't mean crossing pumpkin seeds off the grocery list. How we prepare foods can change the equation. Traditional methods such as soaking, sprouting, and fermenting can reduce phytates in certain foods and affect mineral availability.
So our pumpkin seeds aren't going anywhere. In fact, later we'll put them to work in the kitchen. But first, zinc has one more complication for us.
You Thought Zinc Was Just Zinc?
And we’re still not finished.
Walk down the supplement aisle, and you’ll find zinc gluconate. Zinc citrate. Zinc picolinate.
Zinc glycinate. Zinc carnosine.
Apparently zinc has aliases.
Different forms have different characteristics. For example, research has found similar absorption between zinc citrate and gluconate, while zinc carnosine combines zinc with L-carnosine and has been studied specifically in relation to the gastrointestinal mucosa.
So grabbing any bottle with ZINC printed across the front isn’t quite the same thing as understanding what’s actually in it or why that particular form exists.
And more isn’t automatically better. Higher supplemental zinc intake over time can interfere with copper absorption.
From one boring little number on a blood chemistry panel, we’ve somehow arrived at skin, pumpkin seeds, phytates, food preparation, absorption, and an unexpectedly crowded supplement shelf.
Not bad for the beige cardigan.
Before refrigerators, drive-throughs and fifteen-minute dinners, people had another ingredient in their kitchens:
Time.
Beans were soaked. Dough was fermented. Grains and seeds could be soaked, sprouted, or prepared in ways handed down through generations. These weren’t wellness trends. They were simply ways people learned to prepare food.
And some of those old-fashioned methods change food chemistry.
Soaking, sprouting, and fermenting can reduce phytate in certain foods, which can increase the bioavailability of minerals such as zinc. NIH even includes soaking beans, grains and seeds among the food-preparation techniques that can improve zinc bioavailability from plant foods.
That doesn’t mean you need to become frightened of an unsoaked pumpkin seed.
It means how food is prepared matters, too.
So if you want to put some of this into practice:
Start with zinc-rich foods. Oysters are famously rich in zinc, while beef, crab, poultry and other animal foods provide it in relatively bioavailable forms. Plant foods including pumpkin seeds, beans, lentils, nuts and whole grains contribute zinc too.
Give traditional preparation methods another look. If you cook dried beans, soak them before cooking. Experiment with traditionally fermented breads or soaked and sprouted grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.
Try soaking your pumpkin seeds. Cover raw pepitas with 2 cups of water and ½ to 1 tablespoon of salt and let them soak for 6 to 24 hours. Drain and rinse thoroughly.
And you don't necessarily have to dry them. Wet soaked seeds can go straight into recipes where they'll be blended, including pesto, seed milk, creamy sauces, dips, and even soups where they can add richness and body.
Want them crunchy again? Dry them thoroughly before storing. You can use a dehydrator for 12 to 24 hours or a 170°F oven for 1 to 3 hours. They're fully dry when they snap rather than bend.
And if that sounds like more kitchen involvement than you bargained for, look for sprouted pumpkin seeds and let someone else do that part for you.
Because perhaps the most useful lesson ALP has given us isn't simply that zinc matters for skin.
It’s that what’s in your food, how that food was prepared, and what ultimately becomes available to your body are three different questions.
Maybe ALP really is the beige cardigan of your blood chemistry panel. But then again, a good beige cardigan goes with just about everything.
But what does any of this have to do with your gut—and what might your gut have to do with your skin? That's where things get even more interesting.
Read Blog: The “Skin” You Can't See
Ready to Take the Next Step?
If you’ve been reading along and thinking, “This sounds like me…” you don’t have to keep trying to piece it all together on your own.
During a Health Strategy Session, we’ll talk about what’s been going on, the patterns you’ve noticed, and the clues your body may be giving you. Sometimes it’s not one thing—it’s how the pieces fit together that begins to tell the story.
Let’s see what your story may be telling us.
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Take the Digestive Health Assessment to get a clearer picture of what may be going on beneath the surface. It’s a simple way to start connecting the dots.
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