Calcium Myths
Let’s continue our nutritional quiz by taking a closer look at calcium.
People generally think that they need calcium in their diet (and they are right), but they also think that they need a lot of calcium and that milk is the only way to get enough.
There are many reasons why you might want to consider removing milk and milk products from your diet. Studies are starting to show just what kind of negative impact our love affair with the cow has on our health and even on our bones. When I suggest to people that they stop milk, I can almost guarantee that the next thing out of their mouths is, “yes, but where do I get my calcium?” There response speaks to the power, effectiveness, and tragedy (for our health) of advertising.
My answer to their question of where do you get enough calcium is to ask another question: “Where do cows, moose, and even elephants (who all have very strong bones) get their calcium if all they eat is grass?”
Foods high in calcium
While you might think that the only good source of calcium is milk, there are others. Yes, milk does contain calcium (1 cup has 296 mg of calcium), but milk is, by far, not the only good source of calcium. Take a look at these other foods:
- Sesame seeds (1 cup = 702 mg)
- Flax seeds (1 cup = 416 mg)
- Cabbage (1 cup = 380 mg)
- Collard greens (1 cup = 266 mg)
- Spinach (1 cup = 245 mg)
- Orange (1 cup = 104 mg)
- Kale (1 cup = 94 mg)
- Broccoli (1 cup = 62 mg)
What the Doctor Says
If you check with your medical doctor, they often give you the advice that people don’t get enough calcium. It is probably because of our doctor’s advice that calcium is the fourth most consumed supplement taken in the United States. Not only do calcium pills fly off the shelves, but you can also get calcium in your cereals, breads, soy drinks and even in your orange juice and chocolate bar.
But of all the nutritional guidelines a doctor might want to recommend, calcium makes the least sense.
How Much is too Much?
It is very common for doctors to suggest that you get 1200 mg of calcium every day, but where is the precedence for this? Where in our past history have humans consumed that much calcium? The answer is: nowhere. Imagine the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, or Native peoples around the world spending all their days gathering calcium in order that every person receives their 1200 mg a day. It just didn’t happen.
Where does this 1200 mg a day suggestion come from? It comes from research that shows that 1200 mg is the amount of supplemental calcium you need in order to increase the density of you bones.
And yes, it is true, if you supplement with that much calcium, you will increase your bone density. But here is the real question: does it really make any difference to your health to supplement with that much calcium?
Bone Research
A funny thing happened in the bone research lab.
Scientists wanted to find a way to reduce bone fractures, so they started to look for ways to make bones stronger, but the only way they could measure osteoporosis is through a bone density test. What they found out what was that supplementing with calcium did indeed make bones denser, but no one (until recently) questioned whether supplementing with that much calcium made any difference to bone fractures.
Here are the results of a study done in 19861
Yes, supplementing with calcium did increase bone density, but it does not reduce bone fractures. As you can see from the chart above, the countries with the most calcium consumption have the largest chance of hip fractures. Why is this?
Too much calcium in the bones actually makes bones more brittle. So you get denser bones when you supplement with calcium, but you are just as likely to break those bones as you were before you 30-year, 1200mg-a-day, odyssey.
More Studies on Milk
But it doesn’t stop there; more studies show that milk and calcium have an effect on fractures (but the opposite of what our milk education said it would).
For example, a 12 year study in 1997 that followed 77,000 women showed that women who drink 2 or more glasses of milk are actually almost 50 percent higher risk of fracture than those who don’t drink milk.2.
How to Get Enough Calcium
Stop focusing on calcium as your source for good and healthy bones. The health of your bones has more to do with other factors than it does with how much calcium you can shove into your mouth.
Here is how to optimize your bone health:
- Calcium: Get your calcium from foods. This means that you eat more green leafy vegetables.
- Vitamin D: Make sure you get enough vitamin D. This will be the subject of a future post, but for now, get outside as often as possible and you might have to think about supplementing.
- Exercise: Yes, you have to get out and move your buns around.
- Foods: Both high salt and high protein will reduce the amount of bone you have. Consider a vegetarian or mostly-vegetarian diet.
- Hegsted DM. Calcium and osteoporosis. J Nutr. 1986 Nov;116(11):2316-9. [↩]
- Feskanich D. et al. Milk, dietary calcium, and bone fractures in women: a 12-year prospective study. Am J Public Health 1997;87(6);992-7. [↩]
Hi Doc,
I must say I enjoyed your article and agreed with everything right up until the very last point. That is the statement that protein will reduce the amount of bone one has. To be as brief as possible I point you towards:
Bess Dawson-Hughes, Susan S. Harris, Helen Rasmussen, Lingyi Song and Gerard E. Dallal, ‘Effect of Dietary Protein Supplements on Calcium Excretion in Healthy Older Men and Women’, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 89, No. 3 1169-1173
The abstract of which can be read here – http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/3/1169
Also:
Lowery LM, Devia L. Dietary protein safety and resistance exercise: what do we really know? J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2009 Jan 12;6:3.
Abstract – http://www.jissn.com/content/6/1/3/abstract/
The long and the short being that data used to justify such dissuasive messages typically stems from nonathletic older women or parts of the general population that lead an average Western lifestyle. What if one isn’t a member of these populations?
One thing you won’t hear often is that, despite searches through hundreds of studies, the sum total of subjects used in all accessible athlete-protein safety studies is around 40 individuals (see Lowery & Devia above). Further, the protein seekers in these studies were compared to subjects rather unlike themselves.
According to Lonnie Lowery Ph.D he has seen examples of people who lift weights who’ve consumed an average of 195 grams of protein daily for 22 years. These guys have significantly denser bones than their counterparts who don’t go out of their way to take in extra protein. They also have no reliable differences in gross kidney function or damage, nor do they appear to lack fiber in their diets.
I just wanted to point out that there is more to this particular picture. Otherwise this was a fantastic article. I particularly like the fact that the lowly cabbage has so much calcium in it. Naturally fermented cabbage is an awesome food!
Stephen
Outstanding and my thoughts exactly! Especially on the overdoing it bit. We are so fed the lines that we need ALL this calcium, and the truth is, we don’t. The problem with poor bones, I am so much more convinced now comes from the highly acidic diets people eat, not how much milk they consume.
This needs to go out to as many people as possible as the majority lives still under the fog that “milk does a body good”. Well not quite.
And to add to this research there is also the issue with cassein, animal protein and the acid/alkaline issues.
So when one looks back, it is not that crazy to start wondering, “and why was I drinking milk again?”
I put together a research paper a few months back looking at all the recent literature on nutrition and osteoporosis. What it comes down to is a lack of consumption of fruits and vegetables.
Many will often talk about the “acidity” of foods like meat and dairy. This is the stress foods put on your body to maintain proper pH balance. The pH balance is tightly regulated, but the body pulls from the Calcium resources in the bone to help maintain a proper pH.
Research has historically been “mixed” (real life is dynamic and can’t be portrayed in a randomized clinical trial)on this relationship but what they found was that the larger factor was the amount of vegetable and fruit consumption in one’s diet. Therefore you could eat meat (in moderation, no more than 15g of protein at a sitting) and be fine as long as you countered it with high consumption of fruits and veggies.
Stephen,
Thanks for your comments! The issue of protein is an important one for building bone, but I disagree about the amounts that are suggested in those studies.
I think that we have to get away from the notion that increased bone density is the same as avoiding fractures as we grow older. Research shows that this simply is not true. The healthiest bones are those that are flexible and not just dense.
Eating that much protein does cause (as pointed out by other commenter’s) an acid/base imbalance, where calcium is being pulled from the bones to counter the acidity caused by high protein intake.
It would be interesting – as you point out – to see studies that include many more subjects, to see what effects protein consumption has on our health.
Many in the weight-lifting community say that we cannot build strong muscles/bones without protein, and to them I simply point out the gorilla’s vegetarian muscles.
I think this issue comes down to what you think humans should be eating. Either you see us as hunter-gatherers who ate meat all the time, or you see us as hunter-gatherers who only ate meat every once and a while.
Not to insult the purists out there, but I consider myself a vegan who eats meat every once and a while. This, I think, is the healthiest dietary blend and mimics a hunter gatherer eats nuts, leaves, fruits and vegetables and then occasionally catches something to eat.
I just realized that Dr. Scott said within his article what I’ve been trying to say:
“Stop focusing on calcium as your source for good and healthy bones. The health of your bones has more to do with other factors than it does with how much calcium you can shove into your mouth.”
My poorly expressed point was that this also goes for protein. Other factors such as load-bearing exercise (e.g. weight lifting) is much more influential on bone strength than calcium and protein intake. For example I currently deadlift up to 170kg for reps several times a week at a body weight of 80kg and I’m closing in on a body weight military press. I also consume a decent amount of protein (grass fed beef, organic chicken, hormone free eggs, fish, kangaroo and so forth) along with a lot leafy green and other vegetables, a good amount of raw nuts, some fruit (mainly apples and berries) and some dairy such as organic plain yogurt. My only supplements are OMEGA-3 fish oil and vitamine D3 and I hardly ever eat grains or grain products.
Given this I highly doubt my protein intake is going to negatively affect my bone strength. At worst the calcium pulled from my bones to maintain ph would be replenished through my diet.
On the subject of what hunter-gatherers ate I highly recommend Western A. Price’s fascinating book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Online I was reading this yesterday -
Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 71, No. 3, 682-692, March 2000
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/71/3/682
And finally on the subject of gorillas the GI tract of a 65 kg human is just a little over half the size of the GI tract of a similar sized primate. I refer you to a fascinating paper:
The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis, 1995, Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 2, http://www.scribd.com/doc/20045146/The-ExpensiveTissue-Hypothesis
Regards,
Stephen
Stephen,
Great points! I couldn’t agree more. I’m a big fan of Westen Price! Thanks for the article on gorillas.
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I am new here. Is there a print option for this article? I would like for my daughter to read this.
I consume quite a bit of dairy, but it’s mostly raw & from A2 casein animals like goats. I enjoy these products for the fats, proteins and pro-biotic properties. They’re very nutrient dense, but I never consume them for “calcium” and laugh at people when they say, “I get lots of vitamin D from milk!”
Seems people are getting way too worried about micro-nutrients these days. Just a short time ago, man didn’t even know what a “micro-nutrient” was. We were healthier too! Eat real food and you won’t have to worry about it much.
I eat a reasonable amount of cabbage. Hilarious that it has more calcium than milk.