Calcium: Important Update

As most would be aware, I have been highly recommending Magesium for all scoliosis patients with an elimination or drastic reduction of all calcium supplements. This advise will correct the imbalance that is usually associated from a society that drinks too much milk and puts too much emphasis on Calcium. Excess calcium causes calcific deposits, wrinkle, arthritis, most degereative and age related changes.

Below is the updated advice on Calcium by Dr Andrew Weil.

New: My Latest Calcium Recommendations

Due to growing evidence that high doses of calcium do not prevent bone fractures and may even encourage the growth of prostate cancer cells, I recently reduced my supplemental calcium recommendation. I now advise that women take no more than 700 mg of supplemental calcium a day to get a total of 1,000 to 1,200 mg of calcium from food and supplements, and I now recommend that men do not take any supplemental calcium.

I’ve based my new recommendations mainly on research conducted by Walter Willett, MD, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Diane Feskanich, ScD, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. These scientists and their colleagues looked extensively at clinical trials and analyzed data from two large observational studies: the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) of more than 70,000 women, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) of 55,000 men.

They concluded that calcium promoted bone health in the clinical trials, which lasted only two to three years, but not in the long-term observational studies. “This may be because the small part of the bone, called the remodeling space, sponges up calcium in the initial year following a boost in intake, but then fills up and additional calcium no longer adds much benefit,” says Dr. Willett. In several clinical trials, most of the reduction in bone loss with calcium supplementation took place only during the first year or two; after this, no lasting benefits were seen in bone mineral density.

This short-term effect may help explain the observational studies. When researchers looked at the relationship between postmenopausal women’s hip fracture risk, calcium and vitamin D intake, and milk consumption in the NHS, they observed a significantly lower risk of hip fracture among women with higher vitamin D intakes, but calcium and milk intake didn’t appear to be associated with hip fracture risk (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February 2003).