Calcium - Do I Really Need to Take a Supplement?

Should you take a calcium supplement or not? A research report published recently (2008) in the British Medical Journal suggested that if you are a woman well past menopause, and taking high quantities of calcium supplements, you may actually increase your risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke.

The researchers proposed that it was the sudden increase in blood calcium levels from high doses of calcium that promoted atherosclerosis and increased risk of vascular events like heart attack or stroke. The participants in the study took a large dose of calcium (1g) in a highly absorbable form (calcium citrate is one of the easiest forms of calcium for your body to absorb).

The research has sparked some heated debate in the scientific community. This kind of debate is normal when contentious findings are published, but it may leave elderly women wondering whether they should continue to take their calcium supplement. And without a supplement, will their bones crumble?

Remember that bone structure is influenced by the amount of estrogen in your system, the amount of weight bearing exercise you undertake, your vitamin D status, your stress levels, and your calcium intake. Bone tissue is constantly being re-modelled in a healthy body; Special cells labour constantly to remove old bone tissue and replace it with new bone tissue. In osteoporosis the cells assigned to remove bone (osteoclasts) vastly outnumber the cells assigned to build bone (osteoblasts), resulting in a gradual decline in the total amount of bone tissue available to support your skeleton.