A new research project has found that drinking milk or taking calcium supplements will most likely not protect older bones.
• Consuming 1,000 to 1,200 calcium milligrams per day will not help seniors.
• Taking calcium supplements can damage one’s health.
• The researchers admit that people’s view of calcium will be hard to change.
A team of researchers from New Zealand say that telling seniors to consume a minimum of 1,000 to 1,200 calcium milligrams each day is not advisable. They reached this conclusion after analyzing more than 100 earlier studies that looked at calcium consumption.
Dr. Mark Bolland, study researcher and associate professor from the University of Auckland, the department of medicine, gave a statement informing that he and his colleagues didn’t manage to find any proof that increasing one’s calcium intake will strengthen older bones and prevent fractures.
He said that the researchers have gathered all of the available clinical studies related to dietary calcium intake and calcium supplements for bone density, as well as bone fractures. “Taken together, we think this is the strongest possible evidence that taking calcium supplements will not be beneficial unless there are clear medical reasons that a calcium supplement is needed”.
What’s worse, Dr. Bolland and several other field experts have discovered that taking calcium supplements excessively can be dangerous to one’s health – it can cause constipation, it can increase the chances of developing kidney stones and the chances of experiencing heart attacks. It’s a finding that will probably surprise both health experts and patients, but on that researchers can’t deny.
Dr. Bolland even admits that the attitudes the general public has towards calcium will be hard to change. He explained that since the media has been feeding people very strong positive messages on the matter for so many years, they have been taught to think a certain way.
And because most of these messages came from osteoporosis advocacy groups, guidelines for osteoporosis management, and other sources of authority, the importance of calcium is well rooted in people’s minds. Osteoporosis is a condition that makes bones weaker as people age, a change that sometimes results in fractures caused even by mild stress.
The research project was compiled of two (2) studies. One of them examined earlier research that compared older adults who were told to consume more calcium to older adults who were told to consume less calcium, as well as earlier research that looked at how long term diets that incorporated plenty of calcium, milk and dairy products affected the chances of experiencing a fracture.
The researchers concluded that calcium has no effect whatsoever on an individual’s chances of experiencing a fracture.
The other study examined earlier research that investigated the effects that calcium had on the bone mineral density of patients over 50, regardless of its source (food or calcium supplements).
This second study showed that boosting calcium intake leads to a 1 percent (1%) or 2 percent (2%) increase in bone density, however the researchers also said that this is not a percentage that’s going to make any difference in the real world.
The findings were published earlier today, September 30, 2015, in the journal BMJ.
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