Heart Attacks From Regular Calcium Supplements Could Happen

There has been so much research carried out onto the effects of taking calcium supplements. Heart attacks, kidney stones, high blood pressure and Osteoporosis have all been linked with the taking from normal supplements. Below are some of the examples of the tests that have been carried out.

 

Yes, calcium supplements are useful to our bodies when it gets into our bones and is coupled with vitamin D and other nutrients needed for bone formation. Calcium alone that does not get into the bone but only into the bloodstream causes more problems than it helps; this is why taking a Tums for daily calcium intake is not good for you.

The study we are looking at, which was published online in the British Medical Journal on July 29, 2010 (M.J. Bolland et al, BMJ, 341: c3691), was a meta-analysis. Meta-analysis studies combine the results of multiple published clinical studies and is usually thought to be a strong way of analyzing said data. However; the validity of a meta-analysis is limited by the studies that it excludes. You can come to a very misleading conclusion if you exclude too many perfectly valid studies.

 

In this case the authors excluded all studies using calcium supplements containing vitamin D because, as the authors stated in their paper, "vitamin D supplementation has been associated with decreased mortality." With this exclusion criterion, their meta-analysis only included 15 out of 11,363 clinical trials of calcium supplementation! Because of this it wasn't only vitamin D that was excluded.

 

Available supplements shows that when you exclude vitamin D you also exclude magnesium, vitamin K, viactiv and all of the other nutrients needed for bone formation. What you are left with is just calcium alone - calcium carbonate, calcium citrate, calcium phosphate, "chelated" calcium (calcium combined with amino acids) or some combination of the four. It seems with all these exclusions the authors had a certain direction they wanted the results to go from the beginning.

 

The problem is most companies evaluate calcium supplements by how much calcium gets into the bloodstream - not how much of that calcium gets into the bone. The excess calcium not able to be absorbed by the body will be released by urine. This is fine as long as you are getting enough water, magnesium and vitamin B6 to prevent kidney stones. The rest is deposited into your soft tissue and arteries. Calcium that is deposited in your soft tissue can lead to inflammation and arthritis. The calcium that is deposited in your arteries causes hardening of the arteries, which can increase your blood pressure and your risk of heart attack and stroke.

 

A supplement that contains 600 mg of vitamin D along with magnesium, vitamin K, boron and all of the trace minerals required for bone formation, in addition to the calcium, has been shown to be twice as effective in preserving bone density in post-menopausal women than 800 mg of calcium from calcium carbonate. (Look to Shaklee's published list of clinical studies for the exact reference of this study).

 

What's the bottom line? Getting a lot of calcium into your bloodstream is not necessarily a good thing unless that calcium is actually incorporated into your bones. Supplements containing calcium alone are only effective at getting calcium into the blood stream which will deposit in all the wrong places and cause more trouble than its worth.

The danger of the false conclusions with this study is, there are literally thousands of clinical studies showing that calcium supplementation increases bone density and decreases the risk of osteoporosis. The inaccurate reporting of the conclusions of this one study may deter many people from taking the calcium supplements they need to prevent the crippling effects of osteoporosis later.

 

Calcium Supplements With No Health Risk?

However there are new studies that prove if the calcium doesn’t have to enter the human system through the arteries, and goes directly through the bones, this could be very beneficial. I found a company that helped me get sufficient calcium without the old methods of taking calcium supplements orally.

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