CALCIUM AND OSTEOPOROSIS
Nowadays, with so much emphasis being put on the need to reduce the fat in our food and to increase our dietary intake of fiber and bulk-producing vegetables, care must be taken to avoid a deficiency of calcium.
Fat-containing dairy products, especially milk and ice cream, used to provide us with most of our calcium, whereas the vegetables and cereals, which we are now taking in their place, bind with calcium in the intestines and thus interfere with its absorption, Medical World News (25#12:41) reports. The net result, if we are not careful, is a calcium deficiency that leaves our bones weaker and more brittle than usual and unusually prone to be fractured, even in response to minor trauma.
While no one denies that low fat and high fiber diets benefit us by greatly reducing our liability to heart disease and stroke, we must take care to compensate for the decreased availability of calcium they bring about. We can help ourselves by taking, in addition to our one vitamin-mineral pill a day, half a gram (500 mg) tablet of calcium carbonate three times daily (or four times if one is big) as well.
It is important to note that it matters when we take these tablets. Since the calcium in pills can only be absorbed if there is a normal amount of acid in the stomach, the Journal of the American Medical Association (257:541) reports that older people, whose stomachs no longer produce much acid, cannot benefit from taking calcium between meals. Taken with food, however, calcium is absorbed, regardless of the lack of gastric acid.
Another article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (247:1106) emphasizes that taking calcium alone is not enough and, even in optimal amounts, can do nothing to prevent the bones from becoming osteoporotic in people who are inactive. Both exercise and calcium are needed to restore osteoporotic bones. Because exercise (e.g., walking two miles every day) can be difficult or impossible for those who have already become disabled by osteoporosis, prevention is truly better than cure.
Also, according to the Mayo Clinic Proceedings (61:116), it has been discovered that the density and amount of calcium in an older woman’s spinal bones correlates very closely with the strength of her back muscles. Thus, it is believed, older women may be able to protect themselves against collapse of the spinal bones by regularly performing exercises that increase the tone of the back muscles. Although it will take many years to obtain final proof that this works, it is reasonable for women to perform daily back exercises (sit-ups or with a rowing machine), so long as they do not overexert or hurt themselves.
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