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Beyond the Skeleton
Calcium Health for Your Whole Body
By Dr. Aneema Van Groenou
You know that your body needs calcium to maintain strong bones. You may already include milk, yogurt and, yes, even ice cream in your diet to get your daily calcium. You are also aware that, during pregnancy and while breastfeeding, your body needs extra calcium for your growing fetus and newborn. What you probably don't know is that calcium benefits a lot more than just your bones and pays off well beyond pregnancy – these benefits last a lifetime. And there are plenty of other tasty sources of calcium that you can use to enrich your calcium intake.
The advertisements marketing calcium supplements may lead us to believe that bone strength is a somewhat cosmetic issue, like lean muscles or white teeth. However, osteoporosis is a serious and deadly disease.
Osteoporosis, or pathologically decreased bone density, affects more than seven million Americans, most of them women. Seventeen million Americans suffer from a milder form of the illness, called osteopenia. Osteopenia refers to calcium-poor or thinning bones.
Lack of calcium, in the long term, can lead to a slow deterioration of our bone's structure, until bones are so fragile that they break very easily. In fact, in advanced osteoporosis, the bones in the spine, called the vertebrae, can collapse onto each other, without any trauma, causing the characteristic hunched spine.
Lack of bone density means that even minor trauma can cause fractures and a fall can result in serious injuries, like a broken hip. Because these fractures happen in people who do not have good calcium reserves, and they tend to be older and less healthy, breaks heal very slowly. People suffering from osteoporosis can become bedridden as a result of their injuries, and, as a result, can develop other serious complications, even death.
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