What I Wouldn’t Give To Have Known: Health Books on Nutrition Don’t Always Give You the Entire Picture
My Mom swore by Dolomite to treat the arthritic pain in her shoulder caused by a car accident years prior. Dolomite has a high amount of calcium carbonate and magnesium in it, as well as micro amounts of other minerals.
The Ancient Wisdom Website states the following:
Magnesium ions regulate over 300 biochemical reactions in the body through their role as enzyme co-factors. They also play a vital role in the reactions that generate and use ATP, the fundamental unit of energy within the body’s cells.
My mom had read about the benefits of calcium and magnesium. At the age of five, my mom gave Dolomite to me as a home remedy to stop tooth grinding. Not only had it been touted for arthritic pain, but also for nervous tension. I was a pretty anxious child and it was well-known by then, that this combination promoted calm and ease.
The dolomite actually worked really well. I stopped grinding my teeth within a couple of weeks and at that time, my mom stopped giving me the dolomite.
Magnesium has calming properties in it and is needed, as stated above, for hundreds of other biochemical processes within the body.
Including placing calcium where it needs to be; in the bones.
Doctor Mark Sircus States in “Life Enthusiast”
It is magnesium that controls the fate of potassium and calcium in the body. If magnesium is insufficient potassium and calcium will be lost in the urine and calcium will be deposited in the soft tissues (kidneys, arteries, joints, brain, etc.). Magnesium and calcium have competing effects on many of the body’s chemical pathways.
My Mom swore by taking calcium and magnesium for the arthritis pain in her shoulder.
The problem, in retrospect, and armed with more information now, is that my mom had been taking more calcium than magnesium as well as the wrong kinds.
My Mom had initially gotten me interested in reading alternative health and nutrition books in my early twenties.
Before that, I had known relatively little about nutrition other than what we were taught about the food pyramid in school (which today, I now understand is all wrong too).
The books of twenty years ago didn’t always have (as we can probably assume they don’t today either) complete and accurate information.
Nutrients work in teams. They most certainly have symbiotic and interdependent relationships.
Homeostasis within the body is created by having balanced minerals and nutrients in the correct ratios.
Too much-uncontrolled calcium in the body without the needed co-factors has detrimental effects on our health.
Neither my Mother nor I myself would learn of the detrimental effects of taking too much calcium until it was too late.
It was about 6 months prior to my Mother’s passing that I read about the possible consequences of taking less magnesium than calcium.
I don’t know the exact ratios that existed in the supplement Dolomite, but she had moved to take two different supplements; Calcium and Magnesium.
As soon as I had learned of this important information, I tried to convince my Mother that she needed more magnesium. To be exact, at least a 2:1 ratio, or else the calcium would not be steered into the bones, but the arteries, kidneys, brain, and other soft tissues within the body.
She had already been taking it though, in the wrong proportion for well over 30 years by this time though.
The types we take, matter as well. Only 10% of Magnesium Oxide, for example, (the main type sold in pharmacies and stores) is actually absorbed into the body. We had also not been aware or properly educated on this. The quality and type of magnesium and calcium also matter. Mom was taking the Oxide type; not a quality brand.
Magnesium Oxide (the type generally lined up on store shelves and pharmacies) is mostly useful to help people go to the loo easier. It is not absorbed well by the body. So the proportion of calcium to magnesium ratio in her body, I can imagine, would have to have been even more unbalanced.
The problem in the United States here is that as usual, fear-mongering about osteoporosis was pushed, and calcium was promoted as the cure for years and years. Drink your milk. Get your calcium. Eat the (processed) cheese. Prevent osteoporosis. Take the supplements. A lot of these problems have more to do with changing hormone levels in menopause and diet as a whole.
The answer is not an overload of calcium supplements. People interpreted the mass campaign though, to fight against osteoporosis, as a need for more calcium and started taking supplements to prevent it.
After learning this information, I try to get calcium from foods and I steer clear of taking any supplements with calcium in it.
Calcium supplements
In this study, from John Hopkins Medicine, it was found that…
Intake of calcium from food sources has not been shown to increase CVD risk, whereas a signal for increased risk of myocardial infarction (MI) among calcium supplement users has been reported.7 In a similar fashion, dietary calcium intake may decrease risk of kidney stones, whereas calcium supplementation may increase risk.16 One explanation for this apparent paradox may be that large boluses of calcium intake through supplements may transiently elevate serum calcium concentrations,17, 18 which, in turn, may lead to vascular calcification and other adverse health effects.
It is calcium in supplemental form, that was found to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Natural foods high in calcium seemed to be protective.
Magnesium
The above study did not report on the importance of magnesium or the role played in calcium regulation though; only the effects of natural versus supplemental calcium.
Nevertheless, it is estimated that up to 75% of the world’s population is deficient in this mineral. We need magnesium in the right proportion, a 2:1 ratio, to control where calcium lands in our bodies. We certainly don’t want it in our arteries or accumulating in our kidneys or soft tissue.
Calcium intake from supplements (not whole foods), plus a magnesium deficiency appears to be a peril lying in wait for many of us. Add to that, cheap forms of magnesium, and we are not meeting the 2:1 ratio. This allows calcium to build up in soft tissues.
Diets high in processed carbohydrates also deplete magnesium, as well as other important nutrients in our bodies. For many, high (processed) carbohydrate diets are the daily norm for many in Western Culture. This increases insulin in the body as well, increasing the risk of inflammation, heart disease, and diabetes.
This is why I am writing about this
I don’t want this to happen to others. My Mom had a sudden heart attack. There were initially no serious or outstanding red flags that anything was seriously wrong, though we (her family) did nudge her to get a check-up at the doctor's. In retrospect, her family (myself included) could sense that all was not really well.
She’d always re-assure us that she was feeling perfectly fine, but a couple of months before her heart attack I had noticed that she was losing muscle mass quickly and was appearing incredibly frail and fragile.
Bypass surgery, though initially a success, failed because the calcium and deposits throughout her body were too excessive to allow her heart to push blood through her arteries and veins any longer. It caused her heart to completely fail, and she was on life support for approximately 7 days.
It breaks my heart to think of everything I could have done to save her but didn’t know enough about to change on time. My Mother would not want or allow me to wallow in thoughts and “what-ifs” though like this forever, so I don’t allow myself to stay in this space for long.
I share this because I believe it’s vitally important information to look into before downing calcium supplements, or multivitamins with calcium, without complete and whole information. It’s very important to understand what we as unique individuals need.
Though I cannot be completely positive that the years of calcium supplementation were the complete cause of what happened to my Mom, I cannot at the least, suspect that it played a major part. Both of her parents had lived into their 90s. All of her siblings are still alive. 6 to be exact. Her family is heartbroken still. We miss her dearly.
I have come to the understanding that the most important thing we can do for our health, is to eat mostly whole foods. Stay away from processed as much as possible. Get nutrients, not from supplements but from the diet when possible unless otherwise indicated after proper investigation by your healthcare teams and self-education.
If you cannot afford a Doctor or Nutritionist to get accurate information from, (regular Doctors are not required to learn about nutrition in college) learn about the vitamins and minerals from books, and relevant resources online. Look at multiple sources, and studies and not just one. Become your best advocate for personal health.
Personally, I like to learn about each nutrient and mineral individually first, then learn about the co-factors and teams of nutrients that are needed for that vitamin or mineral to work properly within the body.
Arm yourself with knowledge about how the body works. Why we need certain amounts, ratios, and in what proportions before going on a regimen of pills.
Taking too much of one mineral, for example, can cause a deficiency in others. Take zinc and copper as an example; one can deplete the other if taken at the wrong times or ratios. These two minerals compete. So it would be important to know when to take each, and with what other nutrients to promote proper absorption and decrease the risk of other deficiencies.
Also, iron, for example, needs vitamins E, A, C, and copper to be absorbed properly if you have iron deficiency anemia.
Another good example is that of people who have the MTHFR gene. People with this gene cannot do anything with the synthetic form of folic acid. They need methylfolate in its natural form to be able to utilize this nutrient properly in the body. Despite an estimated 40% of the population having this gene, the synthetic form of folic acid is put into prenatal vitamins and added to processed foods across the board. Should someone develop anemia due to a lack of this vitamin, the synthetic folic acid would not show a deficiency in a blood test. An accurate diagnosis for the underlying cause of the anemia would be missed and the wrong treatment (most likely iron supplementation) would be implemented.
I am currently on a mission to get tested for the MTHFR gene myself, as I have suffered from anemia to some degree throughout my life and have found that it is the methylated B vitamins that have changed my health for the better.
Disclaimer: I am not a Doctor or Health professional and nothing in my article should be construed as medical advice. Please seek the support and advice of a trusted and licensed health professional.
Sources: John J.B. Anderson, Bridget Kruszka, Joseph A.C. Delaney, Ka He, Gregory L. Burke, Alvaro Alonso, Diane E. Bild, Matthew Budoff, Erin D. Michos. Calcium Intake From Diet and Supplements and the Risk of Coronary Artery Calcification and its Progression Among Older Adults: 10‐Year Follow‐up of the Multi‐Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Journal of the American Heart Association, 2016; 5 (10): e003815 DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.116.003815
url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Djsag0FWSClw
url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ahajournals.org%2Fdoi%2F10.1161%2FJAHA.116.003815
url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.emedicinehealth.com%2Fdolomite%2Fvitamins-supplements.htm
