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calcium

Calcium Supplements and Heart Disease

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IS MY CALCIUM SUPPLEMENT GOING TO GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK??
It’s always funny the poor research that mainstream media picks up and the good stuff they don’t.
Here are a few things to consider. First, I usually don’t recommend calcium supplementation until someone becomes osteoporotic. At this point it becomes much, much more important to take calcium in order to protect the bones than worry about any additional increased risk to the heart.
Second, reading into the study, it appears that those with a higher dietary intake of calcium were at risk (my interpretation….more dairy intake), while those with lower levels of dietary intake were NOT affected by the calcium supplementation.
Further, we always have to look at the “how.” In this particular case, giving calcium without magnesium in a 2:1 ratio can cause a relative magnesium deficiency, which is NOT good for the heart….The higher quality calcium supplements all include magnesium.

Take Doctor-Recommended Calcium? This Tip May Save Your Life

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Of all the supplements that my patients take, calcium supplementation for osteoporosis prevention is one of the most popular.  Many have been told to take calcium by their doctors.

In all my years of practice, I have not routinely recommended calcium supplementation. When I do, it is only for those who, either in our office or at a bone density testing center, have been diagnosed with severe osteoporosis. I would not recommend calcium to someone with osteopenia, and certainly not to anyone else who was worried about bone health.

I have however, been a strong advocate of vitamin D.  Among the many functions of vitamin D and the one that was known long before others were discovered, is to aid the absorption of calcium from the gastrointestinal tract.

Here’s the kicker.  The active form of vitamin D is the form that does all the important stuff like cancer prevention and balancing the immune system.  This is not the supplement form of vitamin D.  One of the strongest triggers for the body to convert the supplement / sunshine form of vitamin D into the active form is a dip in calcium levels in the bloodstream.

To put this in reverse, if you have plenty of dietary calcium (such as taking calcium supplements) your body has no need to produce the active, more potent form of vitamin D.  This means you may not get the best benefits from vitamin D.

Which includes the ability to protect the heart.  Which brings us to this particular study.  In it, researchers looked at 190 premenopausal and 182 postmenopausal women with cholesterol issues and gave them either 800 mg of calcium per day or a placebo for 2 years and checked them for a variety of heart disease risk factors.  Here’s what they found:

  1. Total cholesterol levels increased in the calcium supplementation group.
  2. Carotid intima media thickness, a measurement of how much plaque you have in the blood vessels of the neck, increased (not a good thing).

The research is very solid that, in someone who has a good dietary intake of calcium (not from dairy–sources like green leafy vegetables and nuts), calcium supplementation has no benefit on bone density and risk of osteoporosis.  This information is now years old, so if your doctor continues to recommend calcium supplementation and you don’t have osteoporosis, it’s time to find a new one that actually reads medical literature.

The results of this study just reaffirms that you should NOT be supplementing with calcium.  Save your money and spend it on vitamin D and broccoli instead.

 

Dairy products, calcium, and prostate cancer risk – (09-24-01)

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Dairy products, calcium, and prostate cancer risk

“Milk it does a body good??” Brilliant marketing work of the years, I must admit. Sort of like “Pork–the other white meat.” (Comes from a pig!! When was the last time you called bacon “white meat?”). Milk is a common allergen, loaded with chemicals and hormones, may contribute to osteoporosis according to some studies, and now we see it may increase cancer risk. Can anyone see any good reason to continue to consume dairy products?

AJCN — Abstracts: Chan et al. 74 (4): 549

Read entire article here

Fractures, calcium, and the modern diet – (11-08-01)

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Fractures, calcium, and the modern diet

WOW!! How refreshing for an article in a major medical journal to cut through the PR from the dairy industry and lay some truths bare. Osteoporosis is NOT a disease of calcium deficiency. It is a result of a Westernized lifestyle. From a physiological viewpoint, the body wants to keep us alive for right now and that involves keeping pH and calcium levels of the blood in very tight levels. When a more acid-producing diet is eaten (i.e. more animal protein based) the body buffers with bicarbonate and calcium, causing the calcium levels in the blood to fall. The blood needs to get levels back to keep us alive for right now and where is the best source of calcium in the body?? Bone. Years of this pattern weakens the structure of bone.

AJCN — Abstracts: Hegsted 74 (5): 571

Read entire article here

Antacids pro bacteria – (07-09-01)

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Antacids pro bacteria

I must admit, sometimes it is so hard not to run around the room jumping up and down saying “I told you so!!” when issues like this pop up. We are so quick in medicine to suppress acid production in patients without giving thought to the ramifications. Stomach acid is absolutely essential for healthy nutrient absorption (especially iron, B12 and calcium), healthy digestion (not only does it digest things…HCl is needed to activate many other digestive enzymes) and protection from orally ingested bacteria. Besides, the patient that produces TOO MUCH stomach acid is actually very rare; most patients do not produce enough and further suppression is adding fuel to the (lack of..) fire…

Read entire article here

Pregnancy W/ Calcium Deficiency Release Lead Faster From Bones – (12-07-00)

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Pregnancy W/ Calcium Deficiency Release Lead Faster From Bones

There are two things to consider here. First, it brings to light the fact that lead exposure is high enough in the population to lead to its storage in bones. Next, calcium supplementation is very important in pregnant women who do not consume enough calcium-rich foods.

(article) Pregnant women who don’t consume enough calcium in their diets or through supplements show greater increases in lead in their bloodstreams than pregnant women with normal calcium levels, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.Bone tissue contains 95% of the body’s lead. In pregnant women who get less calcium, the bone tissue turns over, or “demineralizes,” more rapidly than bone in other pregnant women and releases locked-up lead into the blood, researchers found.Lead emerges from bone during the second half of pregnancy and might hurt both mothers and their babies, their work showed. The study, which was published in the November issue of the Journal of Epidemiology, also offers new evidence that calcium consumption can minimize bone demineralization in pregnant women.

Calcium and Heart Disease; What’s the Real Story?

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Sorry if I’m a little late on getting to this one, but I get to the studies as soon as I can.  When this study was released, there was quite a bit of hubub about calcium supplementation increasing the risk of heart disease.

In overview, this particular study found that, in men who took calcium supplements, there was a 20% increased risk of dying from cardiovascular causes. On the surface, this sounds a little scary and is vaguely reminiscent of the vitamin E and heart disease controversy, which I have reviewed in a previous blog post that can be read by clicking here.

It is likely that, as a result of this study, many doctors will tell their male (and possibly female) patients to stop taking calcium supplements. As is usually the case, this movement by physicians is likely to confuse patients and reinforce the mantra that what is “healthy” keeps changing. Here’s the problem…

We shouldn’t have been recommending calcium supplements anyway to our patients.

What?? According to the TUMS commercials, I need the extra calcium! And I need to wash down the calcium supplements with a tall glass of milk for healthy bones.

News flash: The research does NOT support the use of calcium supplements to lower your risk of fractures above and beyond what you will get from a good quality diet. This means that you probably should not have been taking calcium in the first place, making the results of this study moot. Just in case you think I’m crazy, here’s a few studies to back up this position. Note that some of these are older–this is not new information:

You get the point.

Ok. So calcium supplementation isn’t going to help your bones, but it’s not going to hurt, right? Wrong. An important transporter needed for healthy heart function requires both magnesium and calcium. With higher levels of calcium that are NOT backed up by comparable levels of magnesium (a very common mineral deficiency), heart rhythm problems may occur. Thus, the supplementation of lower quality forms of calcium that do not have good quality magnesium as well, could potentially lead to cardiac problems if the diet is magnesium deficient.

The bottom line?  Skip the calcium supplements.  Instead, opt for solid vitamin D supplementation and a good quality diet loaded with seeds and green leafies to make sure the calcium is there for your body to absorb.

Calcium, vitamin D, milk and hip fractures in postmenopausal women – (01-27-03)

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Calcium, vitamin D, milk and hip fractures in postmenopausal women

Better not let the dairy industry hear about this one…milk did not lower fracture risk. I still believe that dairy products do us much more harm than good and always strongly recommend patients staying away from them. The milk industry’s promotion of “milk it does a body good” has been one of the great examples of how much money and advertising can do to create behaviors and beliefs, even if there is little or no support for them.

AJCN — Abstracts: Feskanich et al. 77 (2): 504

Read entire article here