The Importance of Calcium – References

“Calcium Reduces Tumors”

Phoenix Republic wrote an article about cancer entitled “Calcium Reduces Tumors” that the New England Journal of Medicine reported “adding calcium to the diet can keep you from getting tumors in your large intestine”.

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“Calcium reduces risk of colorectal polyps”

People who have had colorectal polyps — benign tumors that can develop into cancer — have less risk of developing recurrent polyps if they take calcium supplements each day, according to a report in the January 14th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine……Approximately 9 months after treatment started and again approximately 36 months later, the investigators performed colonoscopy …… The reduction of risk became apparent even earlier, the study group found. Between the beginning of treatment and the first colonoscopy, the risk of developing at least one adenoma was 25% lower in the calcium group than in the placebo group. The average number of polyps was 30% lower.

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“Supplemental Calcium for the Prevention of Hip Fracture”

“Osteoporotic hip fractures are largely preventable with the intake of recommended levels of calcium and vitamin D”…. “nearly 300,000 American women and men suffer hip fractures….. in 1995, 290,327 patients age 50 or older were discharged from U.S. hospitals with a primary diagnosis of hip fracture, at an estimated direct cost of $5.6 billion……direct medical costs would have been avoided in 1995 if hip fracture patients age 50 or older had consumed about 1,200 mg/day of supplemental calcium for 34 months.”

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“Calcium’s Powerful Mysterious Ways”

“Researchers are increasingly finding that the humble mineral calcium plays a major role in warding off major illnesses from high blood pressure to colon cancer” and that “You name the disease, and calcium is beginning to have a place there.”

“High Calcium Intake May Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk”

Preliminary study findings suggest that women whose diet includes plenty of calcium-rich dairy foods may have a lower risk of ovarian cancer. The researchers from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu found that women with the highest intake of dairy products were 54 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer than their peers who consumed the least dairy food. They say that while more research is needed to identify the specific components in dairy foods that might benefit women, the results suggest that intake of low-fat milk, calcium, or lactose may reduce the risk of ovarian cancer. The study is reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology. (Reuters 03/09/02)….Goodman added that the daily recommendation that women include 1,000 milligrams (mg) to 1,200 mg of calcium in their daily diet might be enough to lower their ovarian cancer risk.

“As part of their general health, women should be advised to monitor dietary calcium intake levels to reduce osteoporosis and other diseases related to this nutrient. If women maintain recommended levels of calcium intake, a concomitant benefit might be to reduce their risk of ovarian cancer,” he said in an interview with Reuters Health….Higher intake of both calcium and lactose–the primary type of sugar in dairy foods–also appeared to lower ovarian cancer risk. Lactose, Goodman’s team explained, may increase calcium absorption and promote the growth of bacteria that keep cancer-causing compounds at bay.

“The ‘Superstar’ Nutrient”

February, 1999 issue of the Readers Digest wrote in an article entitled “The ‘Superstar’ Nutrient” that the Journal of the American Medical Association published the following “when the participants consumption reached 1500 milligrams of calcium a day, cell growth in the colon improved toward normal”.

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“Calcium During Pregnancy Could Save Lives”

“Consuming sufficient calcium during pregnancy can reduce the risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) and pre- eclampsia, a potentially fatal disorder of high blood pressure and kidney failure……increasing calcium intake reduced the risk of high blood pressure by 70 percent in pregnant women.”

“Calcium citrate supplements lowers cholesterol levels”

A new study published in the April issue of The American Journal of Medicine found that otherwise healthy postmenopausal women who took calcium citrate supplements lowered their cholesterol levels. According to the researchers, calcium citrate has a positive effect on heart health…..”This is exciting news for women,” says Miriam Nelson, PhD, author of the Strong Women series of books and Director, Center for Physical Fitness and Associate Professor of Nutrition at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. “We all know calcium is essential for strong bones. However, this study also showed calcium citrate may play a role in reducing heart attacks and cardiovascular related deaths in postmenopausal women.

“Calcium Leads To Weight Loss”

The findings, published in December issue of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, support previous research showing that, ” individuals who consume the most calcium have lower body fat…..They recommend that young women who want to lose weight consume about 1,950 calories a day, 5,000 international units (IU) of vitamin A, and 1,000 mg of calcium.

“Calcium may become a dieter’s best friend”

At the Experimental Biology 2000 meeting last week in San Diego, scientists from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville reported dramatic findings from a weight-loss study in mice. How much calcium the animals consumed-and its source-greatly affected what share of their meals turned to fat……Under low-calcium conditions, the Tennessee scientists find, the agouti gene directs calcium channels to open. “That turns out to be a bad thing,” Zemel says, because it activates fat synthesis while suppressing fat breakdown…….When endocrinologist Robert P. Heaney of Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., first learned of preliminary data by Zemel’s group last year, “I thought they made sense-but I still had a degree of skepticism,” he says. So, he reanalyzed data from five calcium-supplement trials he had conducted in people over the years.

“And in all five,” he says, “we found a significant weight effect that we had ignored.” These data, to be published soon, show that women consuming the least calcium weighed the most.

“Calcium may be the key to taming premenstrual pain”

“The research, funded in part by the maker of Tums, a popular antacid and calcium supplement, studied more than 400 premenopausal women across the United States….Within three months, there was a 50 percent reductions of symptoms,…..Symptoms such as mood swings, tension, headaches and cramping were all alleviated with calcium……Food cravings also dropped by half, and water retention decreased by more than one-third….PMS may be an early warning sign for osteoporosis….We’ve never really had a marker for this bone loss,” Thys-Jacobs said. “Now I think we have it…..Now we have a premenstrual syndrome that is manifesting as a calcium deficient state.”

“Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)”

Reported that the Metabolic Bone Center at St. Lukes Hospital believes that “a chronic deficiency of calcium is largely responsible for premenstrual syndrome (PMS)” and that “a lot of women are avoiding the sun and their vitamin-D levels may be very low”. In the same article, the Digest reported that “in 1997 the large federally financed trial found that a diet containing 1200 milligrams of calcium significantly lowered blood pressure in adults”.

“Calcium Takes Its Place As a Superstar of Nutrients”

“It is the primary building block of our teeth and bones. It provides the electrical energy for the heart to beat and for all muscle movement. It is the calcium ion that is responsible for feeding every cell. Without calcium, DNA cannot replicate itself. As a result, low calcium means low body repair and premature aging. But, most important of all, calcium controls the pH of the body.”

“Calcium is fast emerging as the nutrient of the decade, a substance with such diverse roles in the body that virtually no major organ system escapes its influence. A research team at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles reported in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that adding calcium to the diet lowered blood pressure. Dr, Susan Thy-Jacobs, a gynecologist at St. Lukes Roosevelt Hospit.al Center in New York believes that ” a chronic deficiency or imbalance of calcium is largely responsible for the disruptive symptoms of PMS suffered by women “. Dr. Martin Lipkin of the Strang Cancer Research Laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York said that “Animal research indicated that increasing calcium levels to protect epithelial cells from cancer might also help prevent cancer in such organs as the breast, prostrate and pancreas .”

“Panel Addresses Osteoporosis Prevention, Diagnosis, and Therapy”

“About 10 million people in the United States have osteoporosis, making it the most prevalent metabolic bone disorder in this country. An additional 18 million individuals already have low bone mass, placing them at increased risk for this disorder…… Achieving optimum bone mass early in life reduces the impact of bone loss related to aging. Genetic factors exert a strong influence on peak bone mass, but controllable environmental and lifestyle factors also play a role. These include good nutrition, particularly adequate calcium and vitamin intakes. Only 10 percent of girls and 25 percent of boys between ages 9 and 17 obtain an adequate amount of calcium in their diet through the consumption of dairy products and vegetables.”

“FDA recommends more calcium”

“According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals,” an estimated 90 percent of adult women don’t get enough calcium in their diets……Eighty-eight percent of teenage girls fall short, as do 73 percent of adult men and 68 percent of teenage boys……And 30 percent of children five and under fail to meet the necessary minimum”. The Food and Drug Administration recently developed a pilot education program, funded by the agency’s Office of Women’s Health, just for girls ages 11 to 14. “Calcium! Do You Get It?”…..small changes today for better bones tomorrow may be more important than you might guess… even a 5 percent gain in bone mass can reduce the risk of osteoporosis by 40 percent.”

“Protein and Calcium Interplay Important to Bone Health”

It’s no secret that the incidence of bone fractures increases among the elderly. Adding to that concern, some scientists theorize that high-protein diets may leach calcium from bone, itself leading to bone loss. Now scientists funded by the Agricultural Research Service have released a three-year study suggesting that bone mineral density (BMD) may actually benefit from high-protein diets–with one caveat. The high-protein diet must also meet the recommended dietary allowance of calcium and vitamin D.

The study’s design, which looked at 342 men and women older than 65, included prescreening the amount of calcium each consumed. Only those who did not normally consume high amounts of calcium were chosen. In addition, the study included only participants whose baseline BMD measurements proved average for those over 65.

The researchers supplemented half the participants with 500 milligrams (mg) of calcium and 700 International Units of vitamin D daily. The other half were given placebos. Halfway through the study, dietary intakes of protein, calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients were assessed using a self-administered, but staff-monitored, food-frequency questionnaire. The results showed the mean protein intake for all participants was 79 grams per day. For the calcium- and vitamin D-supplemented group, the mean daily calcium intake was 1,346 mg per day. For the placebo group, calcium intake was just 871 mg per day–well below the recommended 1,200 mgs daily for those over 50.

The participants were tested every six months–six times total–for BMD. The study, published in April’s “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,” showed that a high-protein diet had favorable effects on bone density in the calcium-supplemented group, but not in the unsupplemented group. This suggests that the calcium worked synergistically with the protein to mitigate bone loss. The researchers agree the report proves more research is needed in this area.

Could diet attack bones? It’s a beef about meat.

Few crises of old age are as widely feared as a broken hip. A calcium-poor diet, lack of exercise, and, in older women, loss of estrogen can all contribute to osteoporosis, which weakens bones. But those factors don’t fully explain the 350,000 hip fractures each year in the United States, researchers say. They suspect a surprising new culprit: Americans may be washing away their bones in a tide of acid, made as their bodies metabolize protein-rich foods like meat and cheese.

Endocrinologist Deborah Sellmeyer of the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) will publish some of the latest evidence early next year. She divided more than 9,000 women 65 and older into five groups according to the overall acid load of their diet and found that women in the most acidic group suffered hip fractures 3.7 times more often than those in the least acidic group during the study’s seven-year period.

Looting the bones.

Our kidneys ordinarily regulate the acidity of our blood by dumping excess acid in the urine, but the typical, protein-rich American diet overloads them. Protein contains sulfur, which our livers turn into sulfuric acid. The body has to neutralize some of it–by looting the bones. They’re composed primarily of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate, which are excellent bases for neutralizing acids. “An acidic environment actually stimulates cells called osteoclasts, which resorb bone mineral,” explains David Bushinsky, a nephrologist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. Over many years, this process could weaken the bones.

Calcium-rich foods can help the body make up for some of the loss, but a growing number of doctors think fruits and vegetables can also help, because they produce acid-neutralizing bases. Anthony Sebastian of UCSF recently surveyed diet and hip fracture rates in 33 countries. He found “an absolutely phenomenal correlation,” he says: Differences in the ratio of plant to animal food accounted for 70 percent of the variation in fracture rates.