Vitamin Information Guide and Discount Coupons
Calcium Information
1. What is Calcium?
There are so many important ideas about calcium. We all know that calcium is an essential mineral in the human body, and generally, it is there to maintain the total body health. In fact, calcium is badly needed everyday for a certain structural function, and that is basically to keep our bones and teeth strong over a lifetime.
According to some studies, about 99 percent of the body’s total calcium is present in the bones and teeth, where calcium definitely plays a large structural role. The remaining 1 percent then is in the body tissues and fluids where calcium is also important for the purpose of cell metabolism, muscle constriction, and nerve impulse transmission. Thus calcium also guarantees the proper functioning of the muscles and nerves in the body. And essentially, calcium aids blood clotting.
As calcium plays a vital structural role, it is considered that in the process, there is basically a continuous movement of the mineral between the skeleton and blood as well as the other parts of the body. Such movement is finely monitored by the hormones. And in this case, the metabolites of vitamin D is said to be important specifically to enhance the re-absorption of this mineral by bones.
2. Benefits of Calcium
Calcium is very important in the body for the fact that an inadequate intake of it may cause certain calcium deficiency which may lead to osteomalacia or softening of the bones in adults and rickets in children. The calcium deficiency in adults may also be related to repeated pregnancy with lengthy breast feeding.
Aside from that, the deficiency of this mineral may result to osteoporosis which include loss of calcium from the bones and decreased bone density. Such disorder may cause the bones to frail and responsible to fracture. This bone loss usually occurs with age in all human beings. This is accompanied with the shrinking of the skeleton and this typically occurs after 35-40 years. It is also interesting to know this deficiency is mostly common in women following the menopause due to the decreased level of hormone estrogen.
3. How to Take Calcium
Calcium is generally present in a wide variety of foods. The good sources of this mineral are dairy products, leafy green vegetables, nuts and seeds like almonds, brazils, and sesame seeds, tofu, and dried fruit. And since most flour is prepared with calcium carbonate, the experts suggest that cereals are also good source of this mineral. In addition, hard water may also give certain amounts of calcium, but meat is a very poor source of this important mineral.
Today, there is the Reference Nutrient Intake or RNI, which is the amount of nutrient that is adequate for at least 97 percent of the population suggesting that during pregnancy, the calcium absorption from the gut enhances and no supplementary element of this mineral is generally needed. Those breast feeding women need an extra 550 mg of calcium for better health, and since the absorption of this mineral decrease with age, it is therefore necessary for the elderly to acquire adequate dietary calcium.
