Vitamins and nutritional supplements affect your health just as medication does. You expect your supplements to have a positive affect by enhancing your immune system, promoting heart health, or in the case of calcium supplements, helping to build healthy bones.
If you’re taking a couple of calcium tablets a day, you may not be getting the maximum benefits they have to offer. For calcium to have a significant impact on bone density, it needs to partner with Vitamin D, and it needs time to be absorbed into your system without interference from other supplements or medications.
Your body searches for the calcium it needs to maintain bodily functions such as blood clotting and regulating the heartbeat. It also, of course, uses calcium to contribute to bone regeneration. If there’s a shortage of calcium, though, your bones do not get the first bite.
Bone cells called osteoclasts eat away at the bones to allow the bone cells known as osteoblasts to regenerate the bones. After menopause, this rebuilding process begins to falter, due to lack of estrogen among other factors.
The osteoclasts continue to take away bone, but the osteoblasts are unable to regenerate your bones as quickly. This results in a decline in bone mass, the condition known as osteoporosis.
After menopause, you need a higher quantity of calcium to aid in bone regeneration.
Your skin is also drier after menopause, and so does not process Vitamin D obtained through sunlight as efficiently as it used to. This leads to a Vitamin D deficiency. Without a sufficient amount of Vitamin D, your body cannot properly absorb its calcium intake. Without Vitamin D to aid the body in absorbing calcium, the calcium is expelled from the body through perspiration and waste.
Some calcium supplements now have Vitamin D included, and this does help alleviate this situation. Menopausal women should take 400 IUs of Vitamin D daily. However, if your body is not properly absorbing and processing Vitamin D, the intake with your calcium supplement won’t help.
To compound the problem of calcium absorption, a higher intake of fiber is usually recommended for menopausal women, as fiber helps promote heart health, lowers cholesterol, and encourages intestinal health. But a high fiber diet interferes with calcium absorption.
With all of these issues, how can taking a calcium supplement have a positive affect on your bone health?
One of the ways to make calcium supplements work better for you is to take them with food. The calcium will then get into the stomach; the necessary nutrients, including the calcium and Vitamin D, are extracted and directed to various parts of the body.
The body has a better chance of absorbing the calcium and Vitamin D if they’re processed along with food. This is due to calcium absorption being dependent on the acidic levels in your intestines. With the presence of food, the acidic levels are higher, thereby promoting faster absorption of the calcium.
On average, the menopausal woman needs 1200 to 1500 mg of calcium of day to aid in the maintenance of healthy bone mass. But since your body can’t absorb that much at one time, you need to take the calcium in smaller doses.
Limit your intake to 500 or 600 mg at a time and allow approximately two to four hours in between taking the supplement. This will allow your body to process the calcium and accompanying Vitamin D, as well as the nutrients from the meal you eat when taking your supplement.
Timing is important when taking calcium. If you’re also taking medication for osteoporosis, such as Boniva, wait at least two hours before taking the supplement. The supplement will interfere with the medication. The medication is working to maintain bone mass and allow for resorption of calcium to the bone. If the supplement is taken too soon, the medication ceases to slow the osteoclasts from breaking down the bone.
Calcium can also interfere with thyroid medications, antacids, and some antibiotics. If you are taking any other medications, your physician will most likely advise you to take the calcium at least an hour after taking the medication. For thyroid medications, you will most likely need to wait four hours before taking any supplement.
As to fiber intake, the same cautions apply. Limit your high fiber foods to meals at which you do not take your calcium. Use high fiber foods as part of your snacks. This will allow the calcium to be absorbed separately from the more fibrous foods.
Calcium is essential to your health, and in particular to maintaining bone density after menopause. But it’s necessary to take calcium supplements properly. Absorption is dependent on acidic levels in the stomach and intestines, the level of Vitamin D in the blood, and the level of other supplements and medications in the body.
If you take calcium supplements separate from your other supplements and medications, and with food and a sufficient amount of Vitamin D, your body will have an easier time absorbing and retaining calcium for bone health.
