Is Your Calcium Supplement Deadly?

Here we have more helpful comments on the latest calcium studies – this is from Monte Kline at the Pacific Health Center in Oregon…one of my resources for honest information for many years.

Calcium supplementation has really been pushed for many years now, with conventional medicine typically recommending as much as 1500 mg of supplemental calcium per day.  Such recommendations usually do not indicate a preferred source of calcium, nor the necessity of including other synergistic minerals.  Now, a 2010 study involving over 8000 people suggests that taking over 500 mg/day of the wrong kind of calcium — limestone (dolomite, calcium carbonate), oyster shell, bone meal — increases the risk of heart attack by 27% (details available at:  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/30/calcium-supplement-on-heart-attack.aspx?e_cid=20120130_DNL_art_1)

For many years I have told clients and seminar audiences that our bodies were not made to eat rocks, though the calcium supplements most often used by Americans are just that — calcium carbonate.  For this reason we have always told our clients to only use chelated minerals, that is, minerals that are bonded with an amino acid to make it more like the minerals found in food.  Chelated minerals are identified on labels with names including:  amino acid chelate, citrate, aspartate, orotate, malate, et. al.

The other big error with mineral supplementation concerns calcium only supplements.  My counsel is never take a calcium only mineral supplement.   Our bones aren’t just made of calcium, but rather of many minerals and trace minerals, all of which are fundamental to bone health.  This is especially true of magnesium, which has a tandem relationship with calcium — increasing calcium levels create relative magnesium deficiencies and vice-versa.  Magnesium is probably the most significant nutrient for cardiovascular health in general and for preventing heart attacks in particular.  Thus, it’s no big surprise that the people in this study who were taking “calcium only” supplements had increased heart attack incidence.  Robert Thompson, M.D., in his book, The Calcium Lie, echoes this sentiment, noting that bone is composed of at least a dozen minerals. He states that exclusively focusing on calcium may not only worsen bone density, but also increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, kidney stones, gallstones, arthritis, obesity, thyroid disorders, and type 2 diabetes.

Besides magnesium, other minerals that are key to bone density are boron, vanadium, silicon, and strontium.  Consequently, a multi-mineral from chelated sources is what we have always recommended at Pacific Health Center.   As always, our individualized LSA testing will best indicate the most compatible chelated mineral supplement for your body, but even without testing, be sure to you’re using a good chelated multi-mineral such as our Mineral Complex, Osteogenesis, Multi-Minerals, Spectramin Chelate, Mega Min, etc.  Your questions and comments are always welcome.

– Monte Kline, Clinical Nutritionist

www.pacifichealthcenter.com

Article at: http://www.pacifichealthcenter.com/blog/?p=644