calcium scam?

[acker]

um, do we really 'need' all the calcium supplements and intake that is being pushed in health directives/ ads/ news - ?
i take an (1) advacal per week. i can't believe we could need one daily? is it really the best thing to prevent/ treat osteoporosis? i just sense it's overdosing. especially after reading about calcium deposits. is that overcalcification? would that be exacerbated by calcium supplements and intake? is dairy really a food way to get calcium?
(hm, i have more questions and skepticism about it than i thought!)
anyhoo, the popular word could be correct, i am just sometimes hypersensitive to being duped...
thankew!

[gymdandee]

Calcium supplements with or without vitamin D and risk of cardiovascular events: reanalysis of the Women's Health Initiative limited access dataset and meta-analysis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21505219

[allmymarbles]

I add trace minerals to my water, take a vitamin D supplement and, perhaps most important, take BioSil (a bioavailable form of silicon). No osteoporosis and I am 80 years old and female. According to my vitamin profile I have enough magnesium.

[Paxiled]

Personally, I wouldn't take anything with hydroxyapatite in it.  It was hot a few years back, but it proved, as I said, to harden the outside of the bones but not the inside, actually making them more brittle, at least according to some, so I'd avoid it.  I don't know that company, so can't comment on it, but it does sound like a bone building formula rather than just a calcium supplement.  If you just want basic calcium, find a good 2:1 Calcium citrate to magnesium citrate formula.  If you're looking for bone building, there a lot of formulas out there that will have that whole panoply of cofactors needed to assimilate nutrients to the bone, and they should all have a ratio of calcium to magnesium.  But as I said, absorption is another story.

[acker]

thanks, paxiled!! omg i know so little,
and this info on calcium should be front page news!
it's bioceuticals 'advacal'
150mg hydroxyapatite w boron and Ca citrate and other stuff.

[Paxiled]

Most Americans get too much calcium, too little magnesium and too little vitamin D now that everyone's indoors all the time, and too little of the trace minerals such as boron that used to be easily obtained in food but might not be if you eat chemically farmed food.  That's why dairy is a poor source of calcium -- although it does contain a lot of it, it contains very little if any magnesium, and the two need to be in electrical balance on the inside and outside of bone tissue to build strong bones.  Too much calcium leaches magnesium out of the body.  Whereas if you get your calcium from leafy greens (making sure to eat the hard parts, the stems, where hard minerals are plentiful), you will also get your magnesium.  As to any calcium pill where you only take one a day, that means it's not a well-absorbed form of calcium.  The better absorbed calcium pills will contain magnesium, and they will require 4-6 a day because the more absorbable forms take up a lot of space.  Can't squeeze it into one pill.  Now, if you're taking AdvaCal from Lane Labs, they have three different products.  One is just calcium, one is a bone building formula including magnesium and D and boron etc. and the third contains other cofactors.  This isn't just calcium.  And it's three a day, not one a week.  That would be useless.  Lane Labs is basically known for shark cartilage, not for calcium, and I don't like the form of calcium they use -- oxide and hydroxide, or what used to be called hydroxy apatite, which strengthens the outside of the bones but leaves the inside brittle.  Not the most absorbable form, though some will utilize it okay.  Probably left-overs from the shark cartilage.  It's not what I would take, but there are worse products out there.  At any rate, this product, if it's the one I think it is, doesn't actually overload you with calcium if you take the right one, it's just a case of there being more absorbable products out there.  Hope this helps.