Calcium supplements are harmful and not needed to protect your bones....

Today's Post: Friday, 4-22-2011

This is quite newly discovered. Many doctors do not yet know of the new research that found this.

But the research looks quite solid.

Oddly, I remember posting on this subject. But it must have been inside a longer post on preventing heart disease.

So, given how important it is and how many people it affects – mostly women, I decided -- after a recent set of news articles on this topic reminded me of the research – to do a clear stand alone post warning women and some men to avoid calcium supplements.

Since most supplements are extremely safe and very beneficial to your health, to make sure these types of supplements are left alone and available to everyone, I believe it is extremely important to find out about the few exceptions and to let everyone know right away!

Recent research has found that taking calcium as a supplement is one of these.

Because calcium supplements surge calcium into your blood so fast compared to the much more gradual effect of calcium in foods, supplemental calcium winds up adding calcium to the plaque in your blood vessels. That makes your blood vessels harder, less healthy and responsive, and such calcium deposits have been found to be one of the most accurate predictors of future heart attacks.

The recent research DID find more heart attacks in women who took calcium supplements compared to women who did not. It also found more strokes in the women who took calcium supplements compared to women who did not.

For many years, it was thought that simply giving older women calcium supplements would help prevent osteoporosis or bone thinning.

The most important way to do that is to do regular weight bearing exercise and strength training. Another is to avoid excessive intake of cola soft drinks as their very high phosphorous content tends to remove calcium from your bones.

It’s also true that women who ate foods high in calcium in their youth, teens, and twenties were found to be less likely to get osteoporosis. That’s particularly true if they were also active and walked or exercised during those years.

It’s also true that eating foods high in calcium AND getting 4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 plus strength training or weight bearing exercise such as walking can help older women maintain their bone strength.

Eating foods high in magnesium and taking magnesium supplements also tends to help.

Nonfat and very low fat dairy foods from cattle fed grains and even full fat dairy foods from cattle fed only grass such as milk, yogurt, and cheese are high in calcium. Goat cheese is also high in calcium.

Sardines, always wild caught, and wild caught salmon cooked with their bones are high in calcium. (Farmed fish are not as nutritious and are very heavily loaded with unsafe pollutants. Do NOT eat them.)

Beans and lentils and some vegetables such as broccoli are high in calcium.

Some seaweeds that are used for food are also high in calcium.

So, if you have been taking calcium and NOT eating these foods or very much of them, consider not taking the calcium and eating more of these foods.

That will cut your risk of heart attacks and strokes. And, it may work BETTER than the supplement to strengthen your bones.

It definitely will if you also do a lot of walking and do strength training every week and take 4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.

Lastly, dairy foods are also high in an element, strontium, which is related to calcium. It’s little known -- but strontium is much more critical to and useful for bone density and strength than calcium.

If you do want to take calcium or your doctor wants you to continue to do so, consider doing all of the above to keep your bones strong. (More calcium—whether from food or supplements --- without exercise and adequate, over 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3, is ineffective in strengthening bones.)

Consider taking 250 mg of the calcium once just after each of your two largest meals each day instead of taking 1,000 mg a day or more on an empty stomach each day.

By having the calcium supplements be digested slowly with your food, the calcium supplements may then be much safer to take. The smaller amount plus the increased Calcium in your foods will likely also help.

Also, do every lifestyle upgrade proven to prevent heart disease.

Completely avoid all tobacco smoke! (We posted a bit on that last time.)

Never eat shortening or any other food made from trans fats or hydrogenated oils.

Virtually eliminate eating foods made with refined grains and eating or drinking stuff containing high fructose corn syrup. Eat very little sugar and not every day in addition.

And, be totally sure to get moderate and vigorous exercise every week on most days each week. Walk as many days a week as you can even if the walks are short.

(Vigorous exercise can be safe. But avoid overdoing it, particularly at first, and build up from easy to challenging just a little bit each week over many weeks.)

Why do these things?

The foods and drinks to avoid lower your HDL and increase your triglycerides and increase your amount of small particle LDL that causes plaque.

And, regular exercise, particularly regular vigorous exercise – even in brief sessions each time does the reverse. It directly reduces the amount of small particle LDL that causes plaque in your blood -- which you can see by the increase in your HDL and drop in your triglycerides.

Onions and fish high in omega 3 oils and purified fish oil omega 3 supplements help lower triglycerides also.

And, moderate drinking tends to boost HDL. The red wines zinfandel, pinot noir, and burgundy also tend to lower your LDL. Red wine also has resveratrol which though not very much is very well absorbed due to ingesting it with alcohol. Resveratrol is also heart protective.