Calcium: You Need More Than You Think!

Hey there, I'm Amy Connell. Welcome to Grace Health, the podcast for women who want simple and grace-filled ways to take care of themselves and enjoy a little chocolate. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who wants you to know your eating, movement and body don't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to do what you're called to do. If you have been listening for the last few weeks, you know that in episode one of this season, which is season 18, I went through the 10 simple essentials for aging with grace and strength. One of the very last things that I mentioned was nutritional insurance or supplementation. That included the four main things that I think women in menopause and beyond need to be focused on. Making sure that they are having enough of Calcium was one of them. As promised, I am coming back today to talk a little bit more about calcium. I did a group on about four years ago for a DEXA scan. Dexa is like it measures body composition. It measures bone health. If I'm totally honest, what I did was I did that because we have some biometric screenings that we have to take for our insurance every year. My BMI is often high. It's even higher now. I'm on the higher end of what they consider normal, which all of this stuff I wish we weren't doing. Anyway, I wanted to arm myself. I was ready to go in there kind of fighting. You're telling me that, according to this stupid chart, that I need to lose weight, but I want to show you what my muscle mass is. Actually, I will say they have stopped talking about that. I'm very grateful for the progression that they have there. One of the things that I learned in that was I have very strong bones. I think some of this is genetic. Some of it is because I have been doing a lot of strength training. I was a runner for a long time. I was like all right, that was my ticket to just not worry about my calcium intake. My bones are strong, I'm continuing to do strengthening training and I don't have to worry about my calcium. The other thing is I don't do dairy very well. I can have a little bit of cheese I've been but I just dairy milk, all of that stuff that just irritates my stomach. I just haven't been having hardly any calcium at all. I was 45 at the time when I did this dexa scan. I'm now nearing 49. Since then I have entered perimenopause. Clearly, menopause is right around the corner. Because I'm a continual learner, I have been educating myself on the physiological effects that menopause creates. I want to talk some about calcium as it relates to menopause and beyond, and why this is something that I do believe is a simple essential for aging with grace and strength. I know I have some younger women who listen to this. I want you to hear it as well, because this is your time. Actually, if you're not interested, you can cut out after I say this it is vitally important for you to build your bones as much as you can before you are 26 or 27. That's what's called peak bone mass. So just like we got our molars in the back of our mouth when we were like around six and then you just get, and then that's what you have, those are the molars that you have, your bones are the same way. So you want to spend the time to really strengthen those up as much as possible through that mid 20 area, and one of those is by having enough calcium, which is why my pediatrician always wanted to make sure that my kids were drinking calcium when they would go in, and she didn't care if it was chocolate milk. And I'm just gonna say I don't care if it's chocolate milk either, but get your calcium in one way or the other. So let's break this down a little bit. What is calcium? So calcium is an essential mineral and that just really does play a crucial role in maintaining the health of our bones, our teeth, our muscles, our nerves and so much more. I mean, probably you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. So we'll go ahead and go on there. Where do you find calcium? Dairy products? Milk, cheese, yogurts, all of that kind of stuff. Leafy greens like kale, spinach and collard greens. Fortified plant-based milk and I'm gonna come back to that here in a second. So that's like soy milk, coconut milk, almond milk, tofu has calcium. Sardines, the ones with bones not for me, but great for you if you like it. Now, if you drink plant-based milk, like I do, don't assume that it is fortified. Some of them are and some of them are not. So turn it around and look at the label. The plant-based ones that I've been having have around. I think it's like 400 milligrams of calcium. We'll get into that here in a little bit of how much you need, but you need about 1250. So make sure, if you are having plant-based milk that it is fortified with calcium. So just do like the half-second thing, turn it around. Now let's talk about how the hormonal changes in menopause affect the way that our body uses calcium, because this is what was very surprising to me and this is why I'm on here begging you to make sure that you're having enough calcium. So we've got a lot of different hormones, right? Estrogen is probably the one that we are most focused on in this age. Estrogen plays a crucial role in maintaining your bone health and regulating your calcium balance. So it inhibits the activity of those osteoclasts that I talked about in episode one. Those osteoclasts break down your bone and then, during menopause, your estrogen levels decline, right, we kind of eventually get to zero, I think. But that leads to an increase in your osteoclasts, which accelerates your bone loss. So less estrogen, more osteoclasts, more bone breakdown, more bone loss. So this has an impact on your long-term bone health, particularly as it relates to osteoporosis. Then you have your parathyroid hormone, otherwise known as PTH. So that's produced by your parathyroid glands and it regulates calcium levels in your blood. So when blood calcium levels drop, pth is released to stimulate the release of calcium from bones. So it starts pulling the calcium from your bones if you don't have enough in your blood, and then it's increased into the intestines. So all of the calcium that was in your bones are now leaving and then the osteoclasts come in. You see what I'm talking about here. So again that can lead to a crease of loss of calcium from your bones and bone breakdown. Then there's calcitonin. I hope I said that right. Calcitonin is another hormone that's involved in that calcium regulation. It helps lower blood calcium levels by inhibiting calcium release from your bones, so it keeps that release from your bones and it promotes its excretion by the kidneys. So the decrease in your estrogen levels after menopause can also influence this and you may not be able to regulate your calcium levels effectively, which, as we're learning, when that calcium level gets off, then it starts pulling from your bones. And then again osteoporosis. There's a theme here, right? Okay, let's talk some about vitamin D as well during menopause. So vitamin D, they say, is a hormone. I don't really know what it is, but it plays a role in calcium absorption from the intestines. So after menopause your skin's ability to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight also decreases, which is why vitamin D was one of the four nutritional insurance things that I believe that we should be doing after menopause. You want to make sure you're getting plenty of vitamin D, so this can impact your calcium absorption. So making sure that you get enough vitamin D will help your calcium absorption and just kind of help keep everything regulated. And then, just like everything, like I've been talking about this calcium absorption well, that becomes less efficient as we get older, as we age. I mean that's kind of what happens with everything. Everything is a little bit less efficient. But you want to be able to absorb calcium from the digestive tract and so that way it can take it to the places that it needs it, like your muscles, like your bones. So you want to make sure that you're having that, because things just aren't operating quite as well as they used to. The other thing that calcium is essential for is proper muscle function, including your heart. Remember, your heart is a muscle. So you want to make sure that you are having enough calcium to prevent your muscle cramps, spasms, having cardiovascular health. Now, one thing I actually figured out recently. If you've been with me a while, you've heard me talk about my muscle twitching. I was taking plenty of magnesium and I was still getting this muscle twitching. And so I start digging around and I realized that I wasn't having enough calcium and my muscles were probably twitching because they also needed calcium. So once I started being intentional about getting enough calcium in my diet, the muscle twitches were significantly reduced. So that was great news and I definitely recommend that. Now, how do you get enough calcium? Okay, so how much do you need? Our RDA for women over 50 is 1200 milligrams of calcium a day. This is also the same for women up to age 27, because again, we're in that bone building phase, and then it goes down to 1000 milligrams just in the space between that. So the first thing you can do is obviously get it in your dietary sources. So again, all of the things that we mentioned earlier. But that is one way to get it. You can get some in your nutritional insurance, your supplementation. I would say have a healthcare professional guide you in that, and I'm going to put a pin in this and come back to it here in just a second. Make sure you're getting enough vitamin D, because that will help with your calcium absorption and bone health. So you can be having your yogurt and your milk and taking your supplements. But if you're not getting enough vitamin D then your body is not going to be able to use that as much as you would like to. This isn't totally calcium related, but if you're talking about overall bone health, strength training, higher impact stuff very important to help promote that bone health, to help prevent too much breakdown of your bones and then also stick with your doctor, keep going to them, have regular checkups with your provider so they can talk about your bone health and your calcium levels and all of that kind of stuff. This is somewhat of a personalized thing, but also, you know, there's some generalities in there too, because we've had the research. Now, what do I do? Just for whatever it's worth, I have started having. I do coconut milk or almond milk and I will have that with, definitely with a dinner, and I'm talking like just a little eight ounce glass. I will do one of those with my dinner and then also with my, sometimes with my lunch, and then when I make oatmeal in the morning I will add that in. So that will get me to about 1200 milligrams. If I don't do that, then I will supplement with some pills. I was actually just talking with my girlfriend about calcium and she was saying that she doesn't take it and she's metapost. She's my age and I said you really need to take some calcium if you're not eating enough dairy, like you need to do that. She goes Amy, that is one more pill and I take so many pills already and I get that. So explore how you can make some simple changes into your diet. To do that Again, maybe you just need to add in a small glass of coconut milk or regular milk or whatever you want. One time I like to say you know, kind of do that habit stacking thing that James Clear had with atomic habits, like add it in when you're already doing something. So I'll do that. That's kind of the balance that I have found is I have it in my diet some, and then of course I do have the leafy greens and all of that kind of stuff, but I don't really know how much is in all of that and my diet changes every time. So that's just how I ensure getting enough calcium. So there is our essentials, our calcium, and I would like to know if this was helpful. Head over to the Grace Health Community group and let me know. And then also like how are you getting your calcium. What works for you? Do you have a brand that you like? I do think that it's helpful having those third party tested, like I talked about in episode one. But let's share, you know, maybe there's something else out there. I know that there are some that you can drink it. I haven't. I don't do that, but that's you know, that's an option. So that is all for today. Go out there and have a great day.