Osteoporosis, Calcium and Magnesium

  (What is this?)

Consider the following: What country has the highest rate of pasteurized milk consumption? That’s right—America.



Now, what country has the highest calcium supplement consumption? Correct again! America.



So, America must have the lowest occurrence of osteoporosis, calcium loss and bone fragility. Right? Wrong! We have the highest rate! Why?



Excess calcium combined with low magnesium. Taking more calcium will rarely remedy a calcium deficiency. This is clearly evident from recent research studies.



One study concludes that neither milk nor a high-calcium diet appears to reduce the rise of osteoporotic hip fractures in postmenopausal women.(1) Another study concluded that findings “do not support the hypothesis that higher consumption of milk or other food sources of calcium by adult women protect against hip or forearm fractures.”(2) It is magnesium that will handle the calcium deficiency as well as the lack of adequate magnesium, and it will dissolve excess calcium from the body while helping any needed calcium to assimilate.



Today we have diets dangerously low in magnesium. Factor in the recent addition of nutritional calcium via supplements and food fortifications that are meant to stave off osteoporosis, and many of us are getting inadequate magnesium plus too much calcium. Magnesium is crucial to increasing bone mass, as it is magnesium that allows calcium to assimilate.



People taking supplemental calcium should accompany their calcium with the magnesium necessary for absorption. Women taking calcium supplements to ward off osteoporosis, without adequate magnesium nutrition, can further exacerbate the effects of a magnesium deficit. (Calcium supplements taken without sufficient magnesium can actually LOWER the bone mineralization process.) Magnesium is as important as calcium in the prevention of osteoporosis and is vital to increasing bone mass.



References: 1. Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (DF, WCW, and GAC), and the Departments of Nutrition (WCW) and Epidemiology (WCW and GAC), Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. 2. Diane Feskanich, Walter C. Willett, and Graham A. Colditz, “Calcium, vitamin D, milk consumption, and hip fractures: a prospective study among postmenopausal women, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 77, no. 2 (February 2003): 504–11.