Fit Fare

Youth may not be the only intangible item that is wasted on the young. Opportunities for peak health may be another. When we are young, our bodies are primed to stay healthy in many facets of our physiology, including calcium absorption. Young people can absorb between 50% and 70% of the calcium they consume. As we age that number easily erodes to 30% before continuing to decline off to 20% or less. While there are many factors affecting our ability to absorb calcium, we are powerless to change many of them. In fact, we can probably only increase our absorption, when increasing calcium intake, by about 11%. However, we have ample opportunities to decrease calcium losses, such that we may reduce our losses by up to 51%.

Tips to Increase Calcium Absorption

Get sufficient vitamin D (either from sunlight or supplement)

Get your daily recommended intake of magnesium

Eat yogurt (plain with active cultures is best, also look for added inulin and fructooligosaccharides)

Take a calcium supplement (preferably a liquid solution), but don’t take more than 500 mg at a time. Evening is the best time to take your supplement.

Tips to Decrease Calcium Loss

Exercise

Don’t smoke

Don’t consume excess sodium (avoid processed foods)

Limit soft drink intake (avoid phosphoric acid)

Limit sugar intake

Limit caffeine intake

Reduce meat intake

It has been shown that vegetarians and vegans require less calcium consumption for calcium maintenance, due to their avoidance of animal proteins, their low total protein consumption, and their low sodium intake. Vegetarians and vegans are less likely to need calcium supplementation, which is a good thing because over-consumption of calcium can interfere with the body’s ability to absorb magnesium. This presents a catch-22, because magnesium is necessary for proper absorption and utilization of calcium.

Some nutritionists advise that fresh fruits, vegetables, and grains ought to be sufficient sources of calcium. Not all vegetables are good sources of calcium, because they contain oxalate, a compound that interferes with calcium availability. Meanwhile, with whole grains and soybeans, phytates present a similar problem for calcium absorption. Both oxalates and phytates bind tightly to calcium, rendering the calcium useless to the body. A study worth noting has shown that whole wheat bread may actually provide more useful calcium than a serving of milk (when both are equivalently rationed for calcium content), but that the same whole wheat in cereal form offers less bio-available calcium than milk. With regard to calcium availability, whole wheat is probably more nutritious in bread form because the yeast enzyme, phytase, breaks down phytate during bread rising.

Meanwhile the benefits of yogurt are not only that it presents a source of calcium, but that it affords at least two other important factors which make its calcium more useful to the body. Yogurt contains lactoferin – a protein that aids bone building while also discouraging bone loss. Furthermore, the beneficial bacteria found in active cultured yogurt assist the body’s uptake of calcium during digestion. Recently it has been found that adding inulin and fructooligosaccharides to the diet increases calcium absorption. Yogurt that includes these naturally derived additives is an even better option.