Stoned To Death: Calcium Supplements Proven To KillSayer Ji, Contributor The results of this newest review, involving 24,000 people between the ages of 35 and 64, were even more alarming. Those participants who took a regular calcium supplement increased their risk of having a heart attack by 86% versus those who took no calcium supplements at all. Why Do We Obsessively Consume Rock, Bone And Shell Calcium? People really should not be so surprised at the idea that calcium supplementation may be toxic to cardiovascular health. After all, many subject themselves to coronary and cardiac calcium scans in order to ascertain their risk of cardiovascular events and/or cardiac mortality. This is because we know that calcium of the wrong kind in the wrong place can result in serious adverse health effects. There are, in fact, quite a few in the field of nutrition who have long warned against supplementation with elemental calcium; which is to say, calcium from limestone, oyster shell, egg shell and bone meal (hydroxylapatite). There are also those who have not needed to be experts, because they exercised common sense when it came to not eating rocks or shells. Suddenly, healthy women were being told they had a disease called osteopenia or osteoporosis, even while their bone mineral density was normal for their age, gender and ethnicity (which would have been clear as day, had the age-mediated Z-score been used). Moreover, the #1 and #2 cause of death in women are heart disease and cancer, respectively, with heart attack and breast cancer being the primary causes of morbidity and mortality. When you consider that the risk of death as a side effect of fracture associated with low bone mineral density is infinitesimal relative to that of dying from calcium-induced heart attack, and/or high bone mineral density associated malignant breast cancer (300% higher risk for those in the top quarter percentile of BMD), the justification for promoting osteopenia/osteoporosis prevention and/or treatment in womens health above far more serious and likely health threats completely falls apart. In fact, it appears that this myopic fixation may be significantly contributing to their premature death. Turned To Stone: When Calcium Goes To The Wrong Place The reality is that the habit of consuming inorganic, elemental calcium simply does not make sense. After all, have you ever experienced visceral disgust after accidentally consuming eggshell? If you have, you know your body is hard-wired to reject low-quality calcium sources (stones and bones as it were), in favor of getting calcium from food. Inorganic or elemental calcium, when not bound to the natural co-factors, e.g. amino acids, lipids and glyconutrients, found in food (which is to say other living beings, e.g. plants and animals), no longer has the intelligent delivery system that enables your body to utilize it in a biologically appropriate manner. Lacking this delivery system, the calcium may end up going to places you do not want (ectopic calcification), or go to places you do want (e.g. the bones), but in excessive amounts, stimulating unnaturally accelerated cell-division (osteoblasts), resulting in higher bone turnover rates later in life (this is explained in the article below). Or, the body attempts to unburden itself of this inappropriate calcium and dumps it into the bowel (constipation), or pushes it through the kidneys (stones). Worse, high levels of calcium can accumulate in the blood (hypercalcemia), which can contribute to destabilizing the atherosclerotic plaque through the formation of a brittle calcium cap on the atheroma, can contribute to thrombosis (clot) formation, hypertension (thats why we use calcium channel blockers to lower blood pressure), and perhaps causing arrhythmias/fibrillation and or heart muscle cramping, or coronary artery spasm (a rather common, though rarely recognized trigger of heart attack). The breasts too are uniquely susceptible to ectopic calcification, which is why we use the same x-rays to ascertain bone density that we do to discern pathological microcalcifications in the breast, i.e. x-ray mammography. Due to the fact that the hydroxylapatitate crystals found in malignant breast tissue may act as a cellular signaling molecule or mitogen (inducing cell proliferation), it is possible that certain breast calcifications may be a cause, and not just an effect, of the tumorous lesions (breast cancer) found there. This may also help to explain why women with the highest bone density (often obtained through massive, lifelong calcium supplementation) have up to 300% higher incidence of malignant breast cancer. Brain gravel is also an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, where autopsied patients have been found to have pebble-size calcium deposits distributed throughout their brains, including the pineal gland (the seat of the soul). The wide range of existing calcium-associated pathologies, and their increasing prevalence in calcium-fixated cultures, demand further investigation and explanation. One aspect of this, no doubt, is our obsessive cultural fixation on mega-dose calcium supplementation for non-existing conditions associated with bone mineral density that is normal-for-our-age, but not for our doctors and the experts who guide them with industry-friendly misinformation. I believe this new research puts the nail in the coffin of any remaining doubt that we should stay as far away from inorganic calcium supplements as possible, as well as the empirically and intellectually bankrupt disease models being used to coerce women into taking them in the first place. To learn more, read How Too Much Calcium Over-Medication Can Break Your Bones For a comprehensive list of Vegetables with high calcium levels, visit the NutritionData.com page on the topic. Notes: [2] Calcium supplements with or without vitamin D and risk of cardiovascular events: reanalysis of the Womens Health Initiative limited access dataset and meta-analysis. BMJ. 2011;342:d2040. Epub 2011 Apr 19. PMID: 21505219 This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo. Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 