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Deficiency Diseases and Good Nutrition Calcium

There is more calcium in your body than any other mineral. Ninety-nine percent of this calcium is in your skeletal system. The other one percent is in your blood, the fluid surrounding your cells, and the cell membranes themselves, which all works to help your body carry out vital reactions.

Though you need the most calcium as a child when your skeleton is growing rapidly, your body also needs a great deal of calcium later in life. Your skeletal calcium is in constant movement with your blood and other bodily fluids. In the span of seven years, your whole skeleton will have been broken down and built up again with new minerals and other bone materials.

If your body doesn't get an adequate supply of calcium when you are growing, your bones cannot form correctly. A calcium deficiency later in life can lead to osteoporosis. Because your skeleton always needs calcium to stay in good health, you should make sure you eat an adequate amount.

If a 20 year old woman consumes 500 mg of calcium a day, (half of what is recommended), at age 55, she will have lost 1/3 of her calcium. When your body loses this much calcium, your bones become porous and brittle. They are not as strong, and can break under very little pressure. Women are prone to lose more calcium than men, because of the loss of blood (containing calcium) in menstruation each month. A woman also loses much calcium with each pregnancy. A pregnant mother loses 4 times as much calcium to her baby, as she would in nine menstrual cycles. (Women, get your calcium!) One of the worst things about osteoporosis is that there really isn't a way to detect it. X-rays only show a decrease in bone mineral content when the loss is at least 60%. Sometimes doctors detect eggshell like bones when they are doing surgery. Patients most often don't even know they have osteoporosis until the condition is serious. Warning signs of osteoporosis include backache, back muscle spasms, thigh bones aching, difficulty in twisting and bending.

When you don't get enough calcium in your diet, your body takes calcium from your bones and uses it in your body. On some of your long bones (arms and legs) you have rough, crystalline, bumps called trabeculae. (The protrusions you feel on the sides of your knees and elbows are examples of trabeculae.) These trabeculae act as storage sites for calcium and can hold up to 700 mg of the mineral. If your diet is so inadequate in calcium that you don't have much store of it in your trabeculae, then the mineral must be drawn from the more stable bone. This causes osteoporosis.
There is another frightening aspect of a low calcium intake. When your bones don't get enough calcium, they use dangerous heavy metals to fill in the "spaces" not filled by calcium. This can cause cancer. Even if you eat enough calcium, you might not be getting the full benefit from it. Simple carbohydrates from refined white flour and refined white sugar tamper with the hydrochloric acid in your stomach. Your body needs the hydrochloric acid to fully utilize the calcium you eat.

If you don't have enough complete proteins in your diet, your body cannot absorb calcium properly. Remember that vitamin D stimulates the production of calcium binding proteins in the digestive tract. If you don't have enough protein in the fist place, it can't make the protein transporters needed to absorb calcium.

Your body also can't absorb calcium without balanced amounts of magnesium and phosphorus. (2 parts calcium with 1 part magnesium and 1 part phosphorus.) Magnesium changes calcium to its soluble form so the body can absorb it. Too much phosphorus in the diet takes calcium from the bones and brings it into the rest of the body, making the bones soft. Calcium and magnesium are carried throughout your body by the blood component, albumin.

Some particular circumstances can cause your body to lose more calcium than usual. Alcohol is a diuretic and draws out a lot of calcium and magnesium from your body with the increased amount of urine. Just drinking a lot of water can also cause your body to lose more than usual amounts of calcium and magnesium. Exercise and lots of sweating increases calcium and magnesium losses. Calcium is also involved in producing the stress coping hormones produced by the adrenal glands. If you are stressed, then your body will be using some calcium it would normally direct to the bones, in the extra production of hormones. Your bones get stronger when you put pressure on them (walking, weight lifting, running, ect.). If you are immobile, or just don't move that often, your bones will lose calcium.

When you have a lot of calcium in your blood from what you eat, your body releases a hormone (calcitonin) to direct the calcium to your bones. When you don't eat enough calcium, your body has to take it from your bones. Sometimes the body goes overboard and takes too much calcium from your bones. Calcium is needed to store glycogen, which is the energy source for muscles. If we could not store glycogen, we would have to eat constantly. Calcium is also important to muscle contractions. When you don't get enough of it, you can suffer painful muscles spasms, like charley horses, especially in the middle of the night. Calcium helps your nerves relax, and is a vital component of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The calcium level here is kept constant no matter what is happening to the calcium levels in the rest of your body. Calcium is an ingredient in bile, which helps your body to digest fats.

Calcium is something that everyone should consider a vital nutrient, and make sure that you have adequate amounts though supplementation with a good quality multi vitamin - multi mineral.