Cal-EZ Blog

What you can do to keep your bones healthy when you have to use them

Asthma, lupus, skin rashes, arthritis. These are just some medical conditions that use CORTICOSTEROIDS as a treatment.

Corticosteroid drugs such as prednisone, cortisone, and hydrocortisone do 2 major things:

Bones – we think of them like we think of scaffolding and beams – hard permanent things. Unfortunately we also think of bones as something that fail as we get older. That’s not the whole story. There is a natural cycle and recycle of bone.

Let’s take a closer look at bone so we can better understand how they work.

This is “Celia.” Celia is an OSTEOCLAST. Osteoclasts, chew up bone. Let’s not blame Celia for being hungry all the time, that’s just what she does. She travels along the surface of bones, which look like this.

When there is a rare or underserved disease in your life it can be extremely difficult to know where you are on the scale of doing well or doing poorly. I know that sounds strange but let's explore some hypothetical "what ifs" for a moment.

Dietary supplement use among adults in the US rose from an average 24.5% in the early 1970s to 56% in the mid-2000s. Supplements have grown into a $30 billion a year industry as of 2011.

(Stephen Dickter/Flickr)

Can supplements really help your health? Well that's an ongoing debate but when Americans were asked

• Almost half the people who take supplements say they do it to improve their health
• About a third say they do it to maintain their good health
• Less than a quarter say it is to supplement the nutritional value of their diet.[1]

Yet with all that supplement use, there seem to be a few things that most people don't consider.

Absorption of your calcium supplement is crucial for getting enough calcium into your body for it to work. Anything you eat has to be digested in order to be absorbed. When we eat food, chewing is the first step in absorption because it breaks food into smaller bits, saturates it with saliva which moistens it, and begins the digestion process. You can't chew your calcium supplements (YUCK!) unless they are labeled as "chewable" (DOUBLE YUCK!), so how do we best absorb our calcium?

Calcium supplements have gotten a lot of pounding in the press in recent years. One question that seems to be asked is, “Should I take calcium in smaller doses?” The simple answer to this is yes.

It is known that the body absorbs calcium best at amounts of 500 mg or less at a given time.

When taking calcium supplements, the recommended dietary allowances are a good starting place but it's not unusual for doctors to prescribe more or less depending on lab test results or specific needs. When trying Cal-EZ calcium and vitamin D supplement for the first time, you should work with your doctor to get you started on the right dose. You can do that by testing the amount of calcium in your blood both before and after you start Cal-EZ and by paying close attention to your body. For patients with high calcium requirements it's probably safest to start off matching milligram for milligram. 

Are you taking too much calcium? Having too much calcium in the blood is called hypercalcemia.

It can be brought on by a number of things including

• Taking too much calcium or vitamin D
• Elevated vitamin D levels
• Overactive parathyroid glands (hyperparathyroidism)
• Certain medications (eg, lithium, which can cause hyperparathyroidism)
• Dehydration
• Certain cancers (eg, bone, breast, parathyroid) 

So how do I know if I'm taking too much calcium? 

Because of the way calcium is digested and absorbed, taking calcium at the same time as certain other medications may reduce, increase, or otherwise change the effectiveness of those medications. Listed below are some of the medications that calcium is known to interfere with. If you are taking one of these medications, talk with your doctor to learn about the right way to take your calcium supplement.

Calcium is known to interfere with—

There are a lot of calcium supplement choices out there from algae calcium that comes from ocean to calcium phosphate. It can get to be a bit mind boggling. Here are the four most common calcium types and a bit of information on each to help you and your doctor decide what might be best for you.