In adults and particularly for the elderly, pneumonia can be deadly.

It is one of the leading cause of death for those over 65. Pneumonia causes around 1 million hospitalizations a year in the US alone and leads to over 50,000 deaths.

Needless to say, anything that can help us reduce the number of pneumonia cases and deaths will be of great benefit to society.

One of the least studied interventions for pneumonia happens to be nutrition. While taking large doses of vitamins may not necessarily help, repairing nutritional deficiencies can potentially help boost the immune system.

Your immune system is one of the most complex systems in nature. A diverse team of cells depends on adequate nutrition, vitamins, and minerals, in order to keep functioning at their maximum levels. Not getting enough nutrients can potentially hinder your immune system as it fights off infections.

One nutrient that has been zeroed in on and studied has been zinc. Zinc is a metal that you consume as you eat food. It has been shown to play significant roles in supporting your immune system.

It helps the cells that fight off viruses, it supports the cells that eat up bacteria, and it helps your body modulate inflammation as part of the immune response.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should go and take a big dose of zinc. Rather, it supports the importance of eating a balanced diet to ensure that you get enough nutrients.

In order to see whether zinc helps pneumonia prevention and recovery, researchers perforned a study across several nursing homes in New England.

Nursing home residents are very high risk of pneumonia as they live in close quarters with other people and they tend to be much older with other health conditions.

Researchers split residents into those who did not have enough zinc in their blood and those who did have enough zinc.

They then examined medical records to see whether there were any differences in their pneumonia rates and recovery.

They found that overall, those who get enough zinc were 50% less likely to get pneumonia compared to those who did not have enough zinc.

Additionally, they found that those who have enough zinc also recovered much faster from pneumonia compared to those with zinc deficiency.

It's still too early to declare zinc as a treatment for pneumonia. The study was not a randomized clinical trial, the gold standard of medical studies. However, it does offer some initial evidence for the potential benefits of getting enough zinc when it comes to preventing pneumonia.

At this point, experts don’t yet emphasize zinc as a preventative measure for pneumonia. However, it has been generally supported as a nutrient that helps immune system.