If Calcium Supplements Aren’t Safe, What About Calcium in Food?

It seems like the medical facts and recommendations about diet, and what should be in our diet, changes all the time. Calcium has gone from an essential nutrient so critical that it should be supplemented in the food we eat, to the current recommendations that suggest calcium supplements are unnecessary. At one point, it was thought higher levels of calcium could have a minor beneficial effect on blood pressure levels. Another result of excessive calcium is fat malabsorption. When there are high calcium levels in the digestive tract, it can combine with fat to form soap. When this occurs, it lowers the absorption of fat into the body; keeping it in the digestive tract where it is eventually expelled via the large intestine. The health impacts of this were to lower cholesterol.

But further investigation into high calcium levels did not end with the results medical researchers expected. Heart attack risk did not drop in concert with increasing calcium levels. In fact, they saw an uptick in cardiac risk. After an intensive review of all the available data, doctors were able to confirm this puzzling result. Higher consumption of calcium did correlate with increased risk of stroke or cardiac arrest.

While the supplement industry isn’t pleased with this new information, for health conscious consumers it could be very important.