Better than calcium supplements

False headlines and; the truth about vitamins and minerals, Calcium.... Today's Post: Tuesday, 4-24-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more. Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements.

 Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs. The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

 (Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective. But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

 So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.” But the truth is far different. Very different!

 1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial. There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you. This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

 2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012. We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012. We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C on Thursday, 4-12

 Last week, on Tuesday, 4-17 we covered vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

 This week we cover calcium. There is important news about calcium!

There are supplements you should take if bone health and strength and avoiding osteoporosis are important to you. There is also something you must do and something you must NOT do.

But the new information is that taking calcium supplements may NOT be a safe way to improve your results!

For calcium, and for most people, eating foods high in calcium is much safer and will give you enough calcium. Unfortunately, taking calcium supplements and particularly taking them on an empty stomach worsens and may help cause heart disease.

It seems that calcium goes into your blood stream fast enough that it tends to add calcium to plaque in your blood vessels new research found.

Did you know that how calcified your plaque is has been found to be a more accurate predictor of future heart attacks than most other measures?

Conceptually that makes sense. If your blood vessels are flexible even if they are narrowed and there is a clot it may push aside the narrow blood vessels and not stick anywhere.

But if your blood vessels are so much less flexible they are like stone pipes, the clot will stick and shut down blood flow.

Having inflexible blood vessels also increases your blood pressure which makes heart attacks and obstructive strokes more likely. NOT good!

Many doctors don’t yet know this information. And many women had their doctors tell them to take 500 or 1,000 mg a day of calcium or more to keep their bones strong. Many women and doctors are still doing this.

Worse, taking calcium by itself without the other things we list below is ineffective at strengthening bones or doing much to prevent osteoporosis!

 Ouch!

 So the rest of this post has two parts.

1. The main one is what does work to strengthen your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. (Taking calcium supplements is NOT needed by most people for these things to work.)

 2. What if you have unusually low blood calcium &/or have high blood pressure which too little calcium can make worse or your doctor who you find worth keeping otherwise insists you take some anyway?

 Isn’t there a safe way to take some calcium? There might be. And we say what that is.

 1. What does work to strengthen your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. (Taking calcium supplements is NOT needed by most people for these things to work.)

 a) Eat FOODS that contain calcium most days of every week.

 Lowfat dairy protein foods work. Nonfat yogurt, nonfat cottage cheese, 2% lowfat milk and yogurt, occasional high fat but high flavor cheese like parmesan, and cheese from cows fed only grass all work. As long as you don’t do it more than a few times a month, full fat cheese is likely OK but with the saturated fat and omega 6 from grain fed cows, you should limit it to that.

 Nuts if you aren’t allergic, broccoli florets raw or cooked, most dark greens, and beans and lentils and black-eyed peas also have calcium.

 b) Besides the lowfat dairy, and nuts if you aren’t allergic, and the beans and lentils and black-eyed peas, eat other health OK protein foods, several times a week. Eggs, wild caught fish, and occasional beef from 100 % grass fed cows or lamb from grass fed sheep and some skinless poultry of lean and fat trimmed meat a few times a month all can work. Like everything else in your body, your body needs protein to build new bone. And many of the foods such as lowfat dairy, and nuts, and beans and lentils and black-eyed peas have both protein and calcium.

 c) Take 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3!

 Research found that people who have enough protein and calcium from food and take that much vitamin D3, tend to build and maintain strong bones. People who are deficient do not.

 Extreme vitamin D deficiency makes bones so weak they named the disease rickets. Even healthy bones otherwise tend to bend instead of staying straight! Since people live inside so much now, you will likely be somewhat deficient if you take less than 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. And the Vitamin D Council that tracks the latest research on vitamin D, just recommended taking 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 as likely enough to put you close to or into the optimum blood level of vitamin D. (A blood level of 30 or less is quite deficient and NOT good for your bones. 30-49 is somewhat deficient. For strong bones you want to be at 50 or more.

 d) Regular exercise is critical to bone health! Strength training and weight bearing exercises such as walking and hiking and running or using a NordicTrack doesn’t just build muscles and fitness, the regular extra stress on your bones causes them to grow and get denser and stronger in a way that both leaves them healthy and a bit flexible and stronger. (The medications for osteoporosis tend to make bones denser but weaker and brittle and no longer able to self repair. Most people should never take them.)

 Strength training and interval cardio, even bursts of fast walking not only work directly on your bones, they cause your body to release several kinds of growth hormone. So, taking calcium supplements is NOT needed and looks to be harmful.

 BUT regular and vigorous exercise for at least 10 or 15 minutes most days of every week is ESSENTIAL to have and keep strong and healthy bones!

 e) Come as close to never drinking any kind of soft drinks again as you can possibly manage!

 The phosphoric acid in them makes soft drinks, both regular and diet, have a brisker, sharper, mouth feel to make them seem more refreshing.

 But every exposure leaches calcium from your bones and tends to directly cause osteoporosis in anyone who fails to do everything else right. Oops!

 Since both regular and diet soft drinks are proven fatteners and causes of many other chronic disease according to the research. I think it’s well worth trying something else to drink!

 Try filtered water, tea, green tea, coffee, lowfat milk, and occasional real fruit juice or vegetable juice. Try iced coffee or tea or real juice with water that’s carbonated only with no sweeteners or phosphoric acid. Even red wine, dark beer, and whisky is better for you than soft drinks -- as long as you drink little enough at a time you avoid accidents that break your bones!

 f) Eat foods high in magnesium and take 200 to 800 mg a day of magnesium. Magnesium is like vitamin D3 in that your body strengthens and maintains your bones dramatically better when you get enough. And most Americans do NOT get enough magnesium. Worse if you have to take heartburn or acid reflux drugs you must supplement with magnesium since the low stomach acid give you less from the foods you eat. Foods high in magnesium include nuts if you aren’t allergic and most dark green vegetables.

 g) Getting enough nonstarchy vegetables and drinking tea or green tea tends to give you enough vitamin K1. But also taking a vitamin K2 supplement has also been found to add to your bone strength.

 h) Taking 3 mg a day of boron also strengthens bones. Doing so also helps you stay a bit more alert all day which is why I began taking it. One source even says that like eating raw broccoli, taking boron cuts the chances in men of getting the aggressive form on prostate cancer in half. (It might do the same for women for breast and ovarian cancers though I know of no direct test of that.)

 i) Taking menopause reversal hormone drugs that are not natural compounds was found to be less heart protective than initially hoped and to increase somewhat the amount of cancers women got.

 But for women where menopause caused a drop in bone strength, it may be safe to take bio-identical hormone replacement. A doctor who has successful experience using this treatment might be worth trying. This might make sense for some women with osteoporosis where menopause clearly helped cause it.

 It makes sense that this way of doing it would be less likely to have negative effects. (Vitamin E is a proven example: Taking the artificial version of vitamin E in high doses increased the incidence of prostate cancer. But the test of real vitamin E found less!)

 j) What if you need some extra bone strengthening at first? Is there a supplement for that?

 Yes. It has two drawbacks -- one is certain and one it may or may not have but might.

 Strontium is in the same group of elements as calcium and tends to appear with it in smaller amounts in nature.

 That means if you eat lowfat dairy, you will likely get some.

 But when taken in larger amounts, as a supplement, strontium has been found to make bones denser and stronger.

 Taken on an empty stomach, strontium can cause stomach upset. So if you take it, take it after one of your larger meals each time.

 Some people have more problem with this than others.

 The other potential problem is that denser and stronger may not be enough if it makes your bones more brittle.

 Because strontium is a natural substance your body and bones in you and your ancestors likely have adapted to it so this may well not happen.

 And, doing all the other things first and for sure also doing them will make this potential drawback far less likely I think.

 If your bones have lost enough density, you might need to use very light weights in your strength training and build up quite slowly. But if you can walk safely, you should at least do that and the very light strength training.

 If I had low bone density, I’d try strontium. But I’d do everything else listed here first and keep doing it! 

2. What if you have unusually low blood calcium &/or have high blood pressure which too little calcium can make worse or your doctor who you find worth keeping otherwise insists you take some anyway? 

Taking smaller amounts of calcium after your 2 largest meals is far safer than taking twice that on empty stomach. 

So consider taking 250 mg right after one of your two largest meals and again after the other.

 Doing this instead of taking 500 or 1,000 mg of calcium once a day on an empty stomach is much safer! 

Doing this slows the release of the calcium enough it may then be safe to do.

 Also, there are now several marine calcium supplements that essentially give you the calcium as a food component in a concentrated food high in calcium.

 As I understand it, they are concentrates from seaweed high in calcium.

 That would also make the calcium more bioavailable for bone making while minimizing the powdered rock in your blood vessel effect you get with calcium carbonate or calcium citrate.

 For women with existing osteoporosis or who eat too little or are unable or unwilling to eat dairy foods, taking smaller amounts of calcium after large meals from this kind of supplement might be safe and effective.

Note though, it’s not worth doing at all without the 3,000 iu plus of vitamin D3 because without the vitamin D it has no bone strengthening effects at all according to what I’ve read.