Calcium – It’s Importance In Our Diet

Did you understand the importance of calcium in your diet before the extensive news of the effects of calcium deficiency was published? Probably not. Chances are you still don’t fully understand the effect of calcium on the functioning of your heart and on your digestive processes.

Calcium is one of the necessary elements that must be present during the metabolism of our food, and during the beating of your heart. The deficiency of calcium in these two areas will lead to heart disease and osteoporosis.

Effects of Calcium Deficiency

When you don’t take sufficient calcium in through your daily intake of food and vitamins, your body to maintain the enough body process, will draw on the calcium reserves in your bones.

For this reason older women often develop osteoporosis and don’t even begin to realize they are at risk. When the amount of calcium in your blood falls to a low level, the body will draw calcium from the bones.

This causes your bones to become more porous and fragile. This explains the rise in broken hips in older people, especially women. Estrogen and exercise will help us to absorb calcium into our bones.

Estrogen & Exercise

Estrogen and exercise are in short supply during our later years, chiefly because your body doesn’t produce estrogen after menopause, and as we age, we lose the ability to exercise.

Vitamin D is a backup to the estrogen and exercise problem; however, because Vitamin D does continue to help our body absorbs Calcium. Hence, we have the addition of Calcium to milk, naturally high in Vitamin D.

Calcium Supplements

If you have determined that you need Calcium supplements, there are certain calcium supplements that are more easily digested. The best calcium supplement comes is the pills in the form of calcium salt like carbonate or phosphate.

There is a further warning to some forms of calcium that are available on the market today. Both the bone meal calcium and dolomite calcium have been found to contain toxic metals such as arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium.

One added piece of advice, it is correct that antacids contain calcium, which you can use as a supplement instead of vitamins. However, you’d have to take a handful of antacids and quite often they contain substances that disrupt the digestive process.

The best advice to date is to purchase a good calcium carbonate or phosphate as a vitamin supplement and make a regular habit of taking these supplements first thing in the morning with breakfast.

If you suffering with heart, kidney, liver disease, or high blood pressure, you should consult a physician before taking calcium supplements as the medicine may cause a reaction when combined with calcium or you’re already taking may contain a built in supplement.

The recommended daily intake of Calcium for children is 800 milligrams each day. This level is fairly accurate for women until they reach the post-menopausal age and the level of estrogen production is reduced or eliminated. At that point, calcium dosage should reach a level of 1500 milligrams per day; almost double that of pre-menopausal women.

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