Why Women May Need to Think Twice About Calcium

Do you take a calcium supplement? For years the experts have been telling us that calcium is a vital part of a healthy woman’s daily nutritional regimen, especially when it comes to maintaining bone health and preventing osteoporosis. And since not all of us can get our daily value through food sources, many of us turn to calcium supplements to reap the rewards of calcium.

But can calcium hurt us as well as help? Possibly. Recently published research suggests that calcium supplements may be harmful to postmenopausal women.

Although the current trend pushes the benefits of calcium, not everyone believes there is enough evidence to support those benefits. Wanting to gather more information on the health rewards as well as harm of calcium, the University of Auckland in New Zealand conducted research on the effect of calcium supplementation on strokes, heart attacks and incidences of sudden death.

The study involved 1,471 postmenopausal women, 55 years or older, who had previously taken part in research to discover the effects of calcium on bone density and fracture rates. The women were randomly selected to take either a daily calcium supplement or a placebo. The women’s dietary calcium intake was also tracked and the women were seen by the researchers every six months over a period of five years.

At each six-month visit, researchers recorded any adverse health events. What the researchers found was that heart attacks were more common in the calcium group, and the occurrence of any one of the three conditions (heart attack, stroke or sudden death) was also higher in the calcium group.

The researchers also checked hospital admissions and death certificates of the study participants to uncover any events not reported. When combining all the events, heart attacks were still more common in the calcium group, as were stroke and sudden death.

While the findings of this particular research study are not conclusive, they do suggest that calcium can do more harm than good when it comes to vascular health.  However, the researchers recommend that until more studies can be done to support the findings, any possible harmful effects of calcium should be balanced against the benefits of bone health. So don’t throw that bottle of calcium out yet!