Study Adds Weight to Link Between Calcium Supplements and Heart Problems

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2011) — New research published online in the British Medical Journal adds to mounting evidence that calcium supplements increase the risk of cardiovascular events, particularly heart attacks, in older women.

The findings suggest that their use in managing osteoporosis should be re-assessed.

Calcium supplements are often prescribed to older (postmenopausal) women to maintain bone health. Sometimes they are combined with vitamin D, but it’s still unclear whether taking calcium supplements, with or without vitamin D, can affect the heart.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study — a seven-year trial of over 36,000 women — found no cardiovascular effect of taking combined calcium and vitamin D supplements, but the majority of participants were already taking personal calcium supplements, which may have obscured any adverse effects.

So a team of researchers, led by Professor Ian Reid at the University of Auckland, re-analysed the WHI results to provide the best current estimate of the effects of calcium supplements, with or without vitamin D, on the risk of cardiovascular events.

They analysed data from 16,718 women who were not taking personal calcium supplements at the start of the trial and found that those allocated to combined calcium and vitamin D supplements were at an increased risk of cardiovascular events, especially heart attack.

By contrast, in women who were taking personal calcium supplements at the start of the trial, combined calcium and vitamin D supplements did not alter their cardiovascular risk.

The authors suspect that the abrupt change in blood calcium levels after taking a supplement causes the adverse effect, rather than it being related to the total amount of calcium consumed. High blood calcium levels are linked to calcification (hardening) of the arteries, which may also help to explain these results.

Further analyses — adding data from 13 other trials, involving 29,000 people altogether — also found consistent increases in the risk of heart attack and stroke associated with taking calcium supplements, with or without vitamin D, leading the authors to conclude that these data justify a reassessment of the use of calcium supplements in older people.

But in an accompanying editorial, Professors Bo Abrahamsen and Opinder Sahota argue that there is insufficient evidence available to support or refute the association.

Because of study limitations, they say "it is not possible to provide reassurance that calcium supplements given with vitamin D do not cause adverse cardiovascular events or to link them with certainty to increased cardiovascular risk. Clearly further studies are needed and the debate remains ongoing."

Millie;  There is almost no absorption from supplements, no enzymes that would allow digestion and assimilation.  Supplementation with Iron and Calcium are dangerous, very hard on the organs and cause the body to dump calcium from the bones to protect the organs.  They also wreak havoc on the digestion.  Supplements basically give you expensive urine..  It’s better to use your hard earned cash to buy high quality food, real food…not stuff in bottles, packages and boxes.  Not “health food junk food”…real food.  It shouldn’t need a label for you to know what it is. 

Cancer IS Not a Death Sentence, It’s a Wake-Up Call

nour·ish- 1. to sustain with food or nutriment; supply with what is necessary for life, health, and growth.  2)  to provide with the materials necessary for life and growth.

Cancer is preventable and curable.  It’s not real complicated; it takes a healthy immune system to prevent it.  It takes a healthy immune system to cure it. A healthy immune system is achieved by properly nourishing the body. 

Sitting in Shand’s Science Building hospital lobby last week, in the food court I saw a Wendy’s, Subway, McDonalds, TCBY, Chick-Filet, didn’t pay any attention to the other 4 or 5.  I was struck at how bizarre it was to be sitting watching people scarf fast food…one of the causes of cancer, while upstairs they are treating cancer.  I was there to stay with my little sister while she underwent emergency brain surgery for a tumor.  I glanced around…over 70% of the people sitting around me were overweight  I saw a 6 months old swilling coke out of a straw not too long after the mom had breastfed her (figure that one out!?)

I heard the word nutrition used ONCE  the whole time I was there; by the Oncologist while she mentioned treatment options to my sister.  Meanwhile the nursing staff was delighted that my sis’s appetite was good…for milkshakes, fast food hamburgers..not once did my sister eat a veggie while we were in there…they did serve them; carrots, canned green beans.  Breakfast the first morning was pancakes, juice, white bread was plentiful at each meal.  Jell-O was dessert on several meals.

Aaarrrgghhh…I lost a friend last week to cancer.  I lost my other sister two years ago, her doctor (she said) told her that nutrition had NOTHING to do with whether she recovered from cancer or not.

No one tries to make thier car work by putting water in the gas tank, yet we try to run our bodies on insufficient nutrition; the Standard American Diet (SAD).  The average American diet is mostly empty carbs, too much sugar, too low in fat, to low in protein, not enough essential nutrients.

The dumbing down of America regarding their health is truly astounding!  Most Americans do not have a context in which to place their individual health and tend to view statistics that report approximately 1.5 – 2.0 million Americans die every year of heart attacks, cancer, strokes, etc., as facts that don’t apply to them.

What is remarkable about this health crisis is that neither a famine nor starvation caused it since America is the breadbasket of the world. Nor is the health emergency due to a contagious plague, lack of medication, sanitation, or medical treatments, for we are the most technologically advanced nation on the face of the earth. The chief cause of this health crisis is poor and imbalanced diets.

Dying of an inadequate diet in a land where there is a surplus of food is unheard of in the annals of history! People classically died of plagues, famines, and wars, not of a poor and imbalanced diet.

This spiral downward in American’s health is even more pronounced because there appears no hope of reversing the trend, in spite of the fact that the U.S. spends $1.4 trillion dollars per year on heath, being the richest and most powerful country on the face of the earth.

America spends more money than any other nation on health. Yet America ranks the lowest of all the major industrial nations of the world in terms of its citizen’s life expectancy. According to the most recent World Health Organization report, the United States ranks 24th with a life expectancy of 70.0 years out of 191 nations. Japan ranks number 1 with a life expectancy of 74.5 years. Now the rest of the top 10 nations with high life expectancies follow: 2. Australia, 73.2 years; 3. France, 73.1; 4. Sweden, 73.0; 5. Spain, 72.8; 6. Italy, 72.7; 7. Greece, 72.5; 8. Switzerland, 72.5; 9. Monaco, 72.4; and 10. Andorra, 72.3.

Who can fix America’s health problems?

At the beginning of the 20th century the U.S. ranked 1st in health among the major industrial nations. As we will see later, the cause of our health decline is simply the American diet.

All major degenerative diseases are increasing for all ages, including children, and there is an explosion to occur with the babies born around WWII as they approach retirement age.

For example, the number of people getting cancer has increased from 1 in 33 in 1900 to 1 in 2.5 people today. It is estimated that in about 20 years 1 in 2 people will be diagnosed with cancer and half of them will die. According to the American Heart Association (AHA) statistics, there are 53 million Americans with cardiovascular diseases, which includes arteriolosclerosis, high blood pressure, and strokes.

What is startling about the increase in these diseases in America is that those individuals who are aware of the situation think that modern medicine will be able to turn the health crisis around. Many see allopathic medicine as the "silver bullet" or sole protocol necessary for health. However a few glaring issues need to be addressed.

First of all using modern technology to cure degenerative disease is very expensive. Some experts in the field of medicine realize that with all this technology, there has been no decline in the health crisis. Writing in June 1997 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. John Bailar and Heather Gornick stated the following. "The effect of new treatments for cancer on mortality has been largely disappointing. The most promising approach to the control of cancer is a national commitment to prevention, with a re-balancing of the focus and funding of the research."

Second, Medicare is very near bankruptcy and most war-born babies have not reached retirement age.

Third, the primary cause for a majority of diseases running today rampant is the American diet. The former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop stated in 1988 in his Surgeon General Report that the American diet was the cause of approximately two-thirds of the deaths due to disease in America. He goes on to say that Americans are not starving from lack of food as people are in many foreign countries, but they are malnourished by simply not eating the proper food. Americans are eating food full of empty calories that make them fat.

Quoting from the Report he states the following. "Food sustains us,… Yet what we eat may affect our risk for several of the leading causes of death for Americans, notably, coronary heart disease, stroke, arteriolosclerosis, diabetes, and some types of cancer. These disorders together now account for more than two-thirds of all deaths in the United States. …

Here is the nutrition breakdown of one days nutrition I observed my sister eat one day in the hospital;

Protein- needed for growth and repair is dangerously low at only 13% of her intake. It should be at 30% of caloric intake for the day.

Vitamin A- crucial for development of an intact immune system, extremely low at 2553 IU.  It needs to be a minimum of 50,000 IU a day!

Vitamin C is dangerously low at only 32 mg, you need 3000 mg a day!  It’s crucial for healing, repair, a healthy immune system, for prevention of free radical production.

Fats are way too low, carbs are too high.  Calories were way too high at 3369 calories.  Dietary fiber is way too low. 

We seem to accept that cancer is a death sentence except for those “lucky” few who go into remission, react well to chemo-therapy.  We passively accept our doctors recommendations, never think about our responsibility to keep ourselves healthy.

re·spon·si·bil·i·ty –The ability to respond appropriately to a situation.

Cancer is a wake up call, it’s your bodies way of asking you to make changes, respond appropriately , change the conditions that led to the breakdown in the immune system. In other words, respond appropriately…nourish the body.