How to get rid of Cacium Carbonate build up in your mucles?

I was recently made aware that Calcium Carbonate can build up randomly in the muscles and cause a great deal of pain. Fibromyalgia to be exact.  Since, in America, everything we eat, drink and drink out of contains Calcium Carbonate and the body is unable to absorb this form of calcium, it makes perfect sense.  I am a vegetarian and have no problems getting the proper nutients from my, rich in vitamin and mineral, natural diet.  However, I was not always a vegetarian and growing up I had a very bad diet.  In fact both parents have severe heart disease.  I am aware this is very diet related ands have made drastic corrections in my own diet to prevent this in myself if I can.  Mineral build up in the body is difficult to deal with because I understand that the body doesn't always know what to do with elements it does not absorb.  It does not absorb Calcum Carbonate, it just shoves it some where, arteries, bone spurrs,muscles, ect. I recently purchased some Zeolite to get ride of the heavy metals in my system.  Will this work?  Do you recomend not using the Zeolite, and if so, what do you recomend using to get the metal build up out of the system along with the Calcium Carbonate build up?  I am a 44 year old active femail with chronic pain.  I do not let it stop me from doing much, but the concept of having less pain looks good to me.

[J T Junig, MD PhD]

I have an impression about Zeolite and related 'cleansing products' that is not very positive, but to give it the benefit of the doubt I did a quick literature search.  There is no scientific evidence that zeolite does anything, which was my suspicion after seeing that the internet sites that sell it also have ads promising that you will 'get rich quick' by selling zeolite!

The thing is, you are saying on one hand that calcium carbonate isn't absorbed-- and then thinking it gets in the muscle.  Yes, calcium is hard to absorb in some forms-- but that means that it stays in the bowel, and passes in the stool.  Only absorbed calcium gets into the bloodstream, and from there into tissue.

The literature on fibromyalgia is vast and unsettled.  We don't yet know why some people have painful muscles and 'triggers'.  But I have not seen evidence for Calcium deposition in muscle tissue beyond the non-medical articles across the web that don't 'jibe' with reality.  In everyone except those with severe disease (e.g. metastatic multiple myeloma), calcium levels are maintained in a very narrow range by the actions of parathyroid hormone.

A recent, large study found that even something as popular as multivitamins do not offer much if any health benefits.  For fibromyalgia, the best 'medicine', according to both research and my medical experience, is aerobic exercise.  I would avoid the various 'wonder preparations', that tend to empty the wallet and have often been found to be harmful in the long run.  To a person's body, zeolite is just another additive.