Calcium: Another Perspective - Part 1

By: Bill Evans

Here we go again... more confusing news. I can hear the rumbling frustrations of the millions of women who have been diligent with their calcium supplements in the belief that it helps prevent osteoporosis; a dangerous, sometimes crippling condition primarily associated with post-menopausal women.

In recent news, it was suggested that perhaps all those years of religiously taken your calcium supplement may not have done much good. A report published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Vol. 354, pp. 669-683) is the source of this recent hubbub. The study organizers followed more than 36,000 women, and they have concluded that supplementation did not actually improve the risks of hip fractures during the course of the study. But the news report is quite misleading.



The study focused on calcium and vitamin D supplementation, and concluded that although they did record an increase in bone density, they did not notice any substantial difference in actual hip fractures over the course of seven years. However, my concern with this broad generalization is the same concern I had in all the years of the “experts” telling women just the opposite; they CAN minimize their risk of osteoporosis by taking a calcium supplement. The bottom line is… it is just not that simple, but how we wish it were.



As is the case with many health issues, there is no such thing as a magic bullet. Consider any sub-standard health condition and you know that there is no “one size fits all”. Lifestyle choices, hereditary issues and environmental factors often conspire against achieving wellness. And this “calcium push-pull” is a classic example.



For many years, I have answered questions from our customers asking about calcium supplementation; should they or shouldn’t they. I usually begin my response by asking a lot of my own questions about their personal habits, general health condition, specific symptoms or concerns, and desired outcome or goals. When I receive an inquiry about calcium supplements, I begin my response by verbalizing a rhetorical question:

Article Source: http://appliedhealtharticles.com

Bill Evans is President of Applied Health Solutions, Inc., specialists in anti-aging formulas to help reverse the effects of Time. For more information, please visit www.appliedhealth.com This article is available for viewing in its entirety in the Applied Health Journal Archive.

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