Life in every form seems dependent on Calcium

Happy Monday Everyone!  I hope you all had a great weekend as I was away, and you are ready to jump into this week’s health tips!  This week is about the role of calcium.  I’m finishing reading up a book about Teeth health, root canals, cavities, ect, and I came upon a chapter about the role of Calcium, which I thought was very interesting reading its relation.

Calcium, as we most know is very important for bone health, but it also has plays many other roles.  Dr. Weston Price found that every cell in the body is dependent on ionic calcium.  It is used in teeth and bones, in the movement of muscles, rhythmic action of the heart and intestines, coagulation of blood for cuts and surgeries, in metabolism, during pregnancy, maintenance of acid alkaline balance in the body, presence or absence of tooth decay and immunity and susceptibility!

Let me explain a little about Calcium and how its tested.  When a blood test is run on Calcium, two of the items determined are the amount of calcium and the amount of phosphorous in your blood.  Most state the normal value to be 8.5 to 10.5 mg/dl and phosphorus 2.5 to 4.5mg/dl.  Some will also list the amount of ionic calcium, which is the calcium carrying an electric charge.

Say someone has a normal 10mg of calcium, approximately 4mg is actually part of the protein enzyme, thrombin, which helps to clot blood.  This amount is always constant, so no matter what your blood level calcium is, 4mg will have to be used to help clot your blood regardless.  Less that 1mg is contained in various blood cells.  The rest is ionic calcium.

So say, your blood panel turns out to be 7.5 mg calcium.  I say below 9.2 is actually getting low.  When you subtract the 4mg, and then the 1mg contained in blood cells, your left with 2.5 mg ionized calcium.

In addition, that phosphorus calcium balance is crucial as well and can be related to many disease conditions.  In order for us to utilize calcium it has to be 2.5 times greater than the amount of phosphorus.  
What causes the imbalance?  Numerous studies have shown that the diets in most American’s causes them to have significant imbalances between calcium and phosphorus.  Key foods?  Sugar, caffeine products, refined grain, and soft drinks.

1tsp of sugar or a cup of coffee causes the calcium in the body to go up and the phosphorus togo down.  So, where does the extra calcium do to one’s body?  Well we have a huge storage house for such emergencies: our skeleton.  The extra calcium is pulled from your bones.  But keep in mind, calcium that can’t be used because of insufficient phosphorus acts as a foreign toxic substance which can end up being deposited in body tissues.  There’s also different forms of calcium, so most calcium supplements use an insoluble form of calcium, which our body can’t use either.  That’s why you HAVE to work with a health professional to know which supplements are good for you.  Don’t go out and buy calcium from your local store, it could be very toxic.

Such free calcium becomes a pathologic substance. becoming deposits in your gallbladder, or calcium in your elbow or shoulder when bursitis and tendonitis are present, cataract in the eye, AND it becomes the main constituent that builds up in arteries.  I bet you were NEVER told, but the build up in arteries in atherosclerosis is composed of 95% calcium and only 0.5% cholesterol.   

Soft drinks are another problem, but in the opposite direction. They are primarily made of phosphoric acid plus some sweeteners and chemicals.  Calcium goes down and phosphorus rises.  If there is free phosphorus floating around in your blood looking for calcium, it finds the calcium ready and waiting in your bones.  Once in awhile that is fine, however if imbalances happen day after day, it can be a prime factor in the development of rheumatoid arthritis, rickets, osteoporosis and osteomalacia.

Dr. Price found that infections influenced calcium balance as well.  He stated that in most cases it is not so much the presence or absence of an available supply of calcium, as as calcium bearing foods, as it is a disturbance of the mechanism which governs its metabolism.  

He also found that those people with normal to high levels of calcium in the blood and saliva enjoyed freedom from dental carries, because dental infections actually lower the ionic calcium levels.  Of course we don’t want it too high, as mentioned earlier.  But interesting, none the less as to the many roles of calcium and the balance between that and phosphorus that is essential for us to utilize it.

Magnesium and potassium are also huge nutrients that have to be in balance as well, as for magnesium has more receptors in the heart than anywhere else, and most all of us are deficient in magnesium.

Calcium also has a huge role in immunity as previously mentioned, the release of ionized calcium is essential in natural cell death.  You want this to kill naturally old diseased cells or else they linger and cause problems.  So it’s great for cancer prevention, auto-immunity and just overall immune support.

And no… by now you know that you don’t really get calcium from drinking milk….Sorry kids!  We actually have zero need for milk.  Cows get their calcium from the grass and nutrients in the ground.