some thoughts on calcium?
I know that there is a study that says women who were high calcium/magnesium, low salt/potassium swayed pink. And another that said women high in lots of vitamins INCLUDING calcium swayed blue. So what are we to believe, right? But calcium has been part of a pink sway...so I've been thinking hard on this.
I was reading about vegetarian diets and came across this:
most clinical studies support the relationship between protein intake and calcium balance. Under experimental condiitons, the effect of protein on calcium nutriture can be quite marked. For example, when subjects were fed 142 g of protein they were in a negative calcium balance despite consuming 1400 mg of calcium per day, but they were in a positive calcium balance when consuming only 500 mg of calcium and 48g of protein. Researchers at the UNiversity of Connecticut found that increasing a person's protein intake by 50g caused and extra 60 mg of calcium to be excreted.
Support for the effects of protein type on calcium excretion comes from Breslau et al. They found that when subjects consumed diets with similar amounts of calcium and total protein (75 g) they excreted 150 mg of calcium in their urine per 24h when the protein was derived from animal products, but only 103 mg when protein was derived entirely from soy."
It gets more complicated because in the human body, phosphorus in a meat diet kind of changes this, but not totally- some studies refuted the above info, but essentially only proving the effects were less dramatic.
My thought is- the higher calcium in the study where the women had more boys with higher calcium didn't mean they had a higher BALANCE of calcium. Potassium and an alkaline boy diet also significabtly helps in calcium retention- but that doesn't mean that its even enough calcium... You can have less calcium, but a greater *balance* in your body. This ties into the vegetarians have more girls findings as well, possibly indicating those women had higher balances of calcium.
It is my thought that we need calcium for many of the processes that go on inside our uterus and fallopian tubes for the sperm making it to the egg, so we can't get too low in calcium, and we are doing things (acidic diet, no potassium) that put us at a HUGE calcium disadvantage in the first place.
Vegetarians also have lower blood estrogen levels, another reason to avoid meat.
†he other interesting thing is that high salt intake also equals high urinary calcium excretion, linking both protein and salt to calcium.
I say go low protein, and go plant based protein, and keep the calcium?.
Whaddya all think?
