Vegan Calcium Supplement - The Ugly Truth

Todays #askgojiman question is from Dan Smith and he says as a vegan should I take a calcium supplement and if so which one should i take? Great question - lets get to it - roll them titles.

Welcome back its good to see you all again.

If we haven’t met before then I’m goji man. Im currently finishing a masters in nutrition and qualifying as a nutritionist and next year I’m doing a phd in nutritional science.

I do daily videos in which I answer your health and nutrition questions under the # ask goji man.

So if you have a question for me then #askgojiman in the comments below and I will pick one of these for my next video. So without further ado to the question.

So in answer to your question Dan, Calcium is the number 1 supplement that you should avoid at all costs.

Now with more and more people developing osteoporosis in the western world, more and more advice is being pushed out there that we need to take calcium supplements to avoid this and other bone diseases. 

Which is ironic considering the amount of calcium people are consuming, but that’s a topic for another video.
 
Now this advice is probably one of the worst and most dangerous things that people can follow and let me explain why. 

So if you look at basic biology, one of the body’s natural processes for killing off old cells that are no longer needed is to increase the calcium concentration in those cells. It’s a tightly regulated process for cell suicide that’s called apoptosis.
 
Now I am sure you all know that the vast majority of calcium in the body is located in the body, approx. 99%. Only 1% of all calcium found in the body is found in the blood, that is because only a tiny amount is needed circulating in the body for cellular health and enzymatic reactions etc.
 
Now people need to understand that if you osteoporosis or similar bones diseases it is simply that your bones are leaking calcium because of diet and other processes occurring in the body. 

This then causes high amounts of oxidative stress inside the bones, which obviously causes the calcium to be released into the blood stream where most of this is then excreted from the body to avoid apoptosis. So your bones are literally being destroyed from the inside out.
 
Now what people stupidly deduced back in the day (no doubt the dairy industry was behind this), is that if the bones need calcium then we need to give the body really high amounts to avoid diseases such as osteoporosis. And this theory as we know today is so floored.
 
Now we know that if you want healthy bones there are lots of different co-factors needed.

For example, you need lots of vitamin C in the body because vitamin C helps pull calcium inside the bones and it also helps with building the strong outer collagen layers of the outer bone that helps keeps them strong, which will help people avoid fractures etc.
 
Now obviously when the medical profession does bone density tests today, and these come back low, you will be diagnosed with osteoporosis etc and you will be advised to take calcium supplements etc and usually at high doses.
 
Now while I will concede that taking high dose calcium may improve the bone density score when retested, the problem is that you are not getting a good quality type of bone by supplementing.

 Yes, on the scan the bone density will show up brighter, leading everyone into thinking that the bones are improving, but what they don’t tell you is that you still have the same high risk factors for bone fractures etc.
 
A good analogy for this medical approach to calcium supplementation is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on a mouldy rotten piece of wood. It may be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but you lean on that fence and you’re going to end up in your neighbour’s garden.
 
So not only is calcium supplementation not improving bone health, you are also ending up with higher levels of calcium circulating in the body.

And higher calcium levels in the cells and blood not only cause increased apoptosis in terms of cell death, but increased calcium in the body also drives and fuels many other diseases.
 
For example, heart disease, when you look at the coronary calcium artery score, which is an indication of how much calcium has been dumped around the heart. So obviously if you have a high score on the coronary artery score then clearly you have a much higher risk of having a heart attack.
 
But what we know from the science today is that not only does this indicator put you at an increased risk of heart disease, but having higher concentrations of calcium circulating in the body also puts you at an increased risk of death from all other types of diseases.
 
So if you are someone who has bone problems, or you have bone diseases in your family, avoid calcium supplements like the plague. I have done a video on the best vegan sources of calcium, so be sure to check it out here.

Видео Vegan Calcium Supplement - The Ugly Truth канала GojiMan