I think zinc use probably traces back to studies by Dreno et al where they used zinc gluconate (at about 90% of the 100 mg/day considered the upper limit for safety).

I'm not sure how long it's safe to do that for because there may be concerns about zinc potentially being a cumulative toxin that I haven't seen in the literature. I'm still pretty ignorant about zinc safety although such concerns shows up in places like safety warnings on products like paint.

I've been more comfortable to try and err on the side of caution, using about 60 mg/day for the twelve weeks, or even considerably lower doses if I think I'm going to take it for longer.

I haven't been picky about brand so I've tried different brands with the same result. I did try zinc citrate once but it was kind of unpleasant, I got sort of a mild burning in the face and a bad metallic taste in my mouth so I didn't stick with it very long and went back to zinc gluconate.

Here's a medical paper abstract on zinc:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22004878
includes: "Patients were treated for 3 months with zinc gluconate at a dosage of 90 mg/d."

One of the books on HS (the one by Jemec et al) I think has a chapter by the same researchers, that's where I first learned about zinc and HS.

I dunno... There are definitely some aspects to that research that sound nearly miraculous in terms of corrections made at the molecular level, yet all I've gotten from zinc is mild improvement like with a lot of things for HS that unfortunately I haven't been able to combine to get a lot of improvement.

I couldn't tell you how exactly - zinc and turmeric are two of the hardest things I've ever seen to try and troubleshoot when they don't give better results, you can make such long lists of things they do or contribute to in the human body - but somehow I feel like zinc is still missing a very important underlying cause of HS.

Still, if you don't overdo it, it might be worth a try - zinc gluconate is probably one of the most easily available and least expensive things I've found that I can usually expect to get small improvement from. Sometimes small improvements can be a blessing... heck, usually it's quite a blessing when things just aren't getting worse.

I take 50 mg zinc gluconate 1 time a day. And I take it indefinitely. I have found with the zinc and the Tumeric that it really takes about 4-6 months for there to be a major difference. Zinc 1 time a day, Tumeric 2 times a day.

I haven't found much of a difference between brands. I went to a health food store and purchased capsules though, the tablets do not go down very easily.

The zinc brands seem to work equally well. The Tumeric is more tricky, you will want to read online which ones are more pure. I use a brand I buy at Costco for that.