The Calcium Red Herring

How great marketing can create an over-simplication of a modern health issue

One of the largest health concerns of modern cultures, at least in the last 30 years, is osteoporosis, the weakening of bones to the point of becoming fragile.

There was always something suspicious to me about the solution that was usually suggested for women and those concerned with bone loss: "Eat more calcium. Especially eat more dairy foods." The main suspicion was that this oversimplication was ignoring epidemiological studies that showed the geographical distribution of osteoporosis around the world. These studies showed two things:

1. Countries with the highest intake of dairy foods are invariably the countries with the most osteoporosis.

2. It's not just as simple as eating more calcium. Eskimos have an exceptionally high intake of over 2,400 mg/day of calcium, and yet their osteoporosis is some of the worst in the world.

The answer: looking at what bones really are

One of my earliest teachers, back in the early 1980s, was author Annemarie Colbin, who authored two important books in my life (and ones that fit well in any cleansing student's library):

In the 1980s, Annemarie created The Natural Gourmet school, in New York City, where people come from all over the world to learn not only natural cuisine, but using food as a major role in health and healing. I teach at the school once or twice a year for the past few years.

Annemarie recently wrote an article on calcium, describing part of the problem as how we perceive bones in the first place. "Even though strong and hard, bones are not the equivalent of stones or rocks."

"There is a fallacy in focusing on calcium alone to prevent fractures. Bones are composed of a latticed protein grounding or collagen matrix, which comprises about 35% of the bone and which gives it its flexibility. This matrix is laid down first, and then traps the mineral salt calcium phosphate, also known as hydroxyapatite, which occupies about 65% of the bone mass and which gives the bone its strength. In addition to the calcium salts, the bones are also the depositories of other minerals needed by the body, including magnesium, sodium, potassium, and others. The main component, then, to prevent fractures, is the bone’s flexibility, given by the collagen matrix, rather than the calcium. Instead, like the rest of the tissues in the body, they are constantly moving and changing. They are continuously being built up, and just as continuously being broken down."

Here is her article, Beyond Calcium, in full. Well worth the read. And it contains a delicious bone-strenthening recipe as well.

Scott