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While supplement manufacturers and the popular media might make you think that to prevent or help osteoporosis all you need to do is take calcium, that’s far from the whole story.

Yes, bones are largely composed of calcium and yes, you do need calcium for your bones, but simply shoveling calcium pills down your throat in and of itself is not going to do very much for your bones.  There are actually a few steps to the process of how calcium gets deposited into your bones to increase their strength and density. 

First, there is intake (which is the part that people tend to get focused on).  Obviously if you don’t consume any calcium, there will be none to get into the bones.  And actually, if you don’t get ANY calcium in, your body will take the calcium out of your bones to maintain a certain level in the blood, because calcium is necessary for muscle function, including heart muscle function.  So you need to consume some calcium.

This brings me to absorption.  Different kinds of calcium are abosorbed to greater or lesser degrees.  While I will reserve a discussion of what type of calcium and how much is needed for overall health, including bone health, for a future post, I will point out here that the cheapest form of calcium supplement, oyster shell (calcium carbonate) is the least absorbable (particularly in older individuals), so cheap though it may be, it’s also pretty worthless.  I have seen a good number of X-rays over the years where a patient’s calcium carbonate supplements were visible completely intact in the colon (and once it’s in the colon, you’re not going to be getting much use from your supplement).  I suggest investing a little more and going for a good quality citrate and/or malate supplement at least.

Finally, we come to utilization.  Even if you take in and absorb plenty of calcium, there are various factors that determine what your body does with that calcium.  Weight bearing exercise is absolutely critical for stimulating the deposition of calcium in the bones to keep them strong.  Without exercise, the calcium will not be deposited in the bones to any great extent, so no matter how good your calcium intake is and no matter how good the quality of your calcium supplement, without weight bearing exercise, it’s mostly going to waste. 

In future posts, I’ll cover this information in detail.  The main point here is to make you aware that weight bearing exercise is key to strong, healthy bones. 

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