Mom’s Soap Box

You are constantly being advised, by the media, to drink milk, eat low-fat yogurt, or cheese, and other dairy products, and to take calcium supplements and estrogen.

Why?

To avoid osteoporosis.

Here’s the bad news . . . . . despite taking calcium supplements, getting exercise and taking estrogen, at least 1.2 million women suffer fractures due to osteoporosis every year. And the number of these fractures has been increasing - more than twice as many fractures occur now, compared with 30 years ago.

A study by the Mayo Clinic reported that extra calcium supplementation tripled the risk of fractures in some women already suffering from osteoporosis. A 1972 study of autopsies showed a close correlation between osteoporosis and calcification of the abdominal aorta. What this means is the calcium is leaving one place, namely your bones, and ending up in the wrong place - your arteries.

According to researchers, osteoporosis is a disease of modern civilization. Skeletons from the 1700’s and 1800’s have been studied. Scientists found that the women living two to three centuries ago had stronger bones than the women today. In underdeveloped countries, there is also much less osteoporosis with a daily calcium intake much less than ours. So, clearly osteoporosis is not simply a lack of calcium in our diets.

Calcium is just one element in a delicate balance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and hormones. Many women actually have plenty of calcium but are very low in magnesium and/or other essential minerals. The first problem with taking calcium supplements is that you increase the need for other minerals, like magnesium, which helps to get the calcium out of your bloodstream and into your bones.

If you don’t have enough magnesium in your body to match the extra calcium, then the calcium you’re taking gets deposited in your muscles, arteries, and joints (causing fibromyalgia, blocked arteries, and arthritis). And if the calcium starts to clog the fine capillaries in your brain, guess what - your thinking and memory can be affected. If this happens in your arms and legs you may experience cold hands and feet.

Viral infections, fatigue, muscle aches and pains (fibromyalgia), diabetes, increased urination (so you may not have a bladder infection after all), constipation, flatulence, or serious depression are signs of too much calcium in your system.

Our bodies are very good at recycling calcium - that’s one of the great functions of your bones - they are a storehouse of calcium. And it’s a two-way street - when everything is working properly you can get calcium out of your bones or put more into your bones - kind of like a bank account - money in, money out. However, our bodies are not good at storing and recycling magnesium. Taking more calcium may be causing a magnesium deficiency.

Some other important minerals are:

· B-6 & ZINC (birth control pills are especially noted for depleting these)

· VITAMIN “F” or essential fatty acids like flax seed oil (if you get cold sores, fever blisters, canker sores, if you have itching, or if you get hives from going out in the sun you need more vitamin “F”; this vitamin unloads calcium out of your bloodstream and delivers it to your tissues)

· MANGANESE (at least half of the manganese in your diet is lost by eating breads with refined flour instead of whole wheat flour),

· COPPER

· PHOSPHORUS

· VITAMIN K (known for blood clotting, it’s also necessary for strong bones - it’s depleted by using antibiotics).

· HYDROCHLORIC ACID, a normal stomach acid, is also essential. Having adequate hydrochloric acid is more important for your bones than calcium, because stomach acid helps you to absorb nutrients from your food. Most nutrients must first be dissolved or put into solution. Calcium dissolves easily in stomach acids, but dissolves hardly at all in water. If you have low stomach acid you won’t be able to break down all the calcium you’re taking.

Knowing what to do is much more complicated than just swallowing a few calcium tablets. If you want to see how your minerals are doing, one of the best tests I know of is a hair mineral analysis.

FOUR THINGS YOU MUST DO IF YOU WANT STRONGER BONES AND BETTER HEALTH

#1) Find out which vitamins and minerals, besides calcium, are important to maintain YOUR bones.

#2) Find out if you need natural progesterone. Estrogen is not the only hormone that influences your bones.

#3) Reduce your body’s burden of heavy metals such as aluminum, cadmium, and lead.

#4) Reduce bone robbing foods in your diet. (There are five major “bone mineral robbing” bandits: sugar, caffeine, refined grains (white bread), soda, and smoking.)