Cal-EZ Blog

Everyone knows that milk is good for your bones. But what about broccoli? Is it rich in calcium? Should you eat it for bone health? Download this printable list of calcium-rich foods and next time you're at the store, you won't need to wonder if you can get your calcium from something other than milk.

There’s been a lot of information about calcium and kidney stones on the internet. Don’t take calcium supplements. Take more calcium. Yes, no. Maybe, maybe not. It can be so confusing! And any one that has had a kidney stone knows that you don’t want another one. I know. I’ve suffered from a couple. And after having 2 children without an epidural, I can say that those kidney stones were worse than any childbirth I experienced. (Sorry ladies, I know you want your husbands to think that childbirth is worse than kidney stones, but really, for me, it wasn't!)

Have you ever looked at the supplement fact label of a multivitamin? If not, take a quick look. And while you're looking, notice the amount of calcium in a full serving. You might be surprised to see that the calcium in your multivitamin is considerably below the recommended daily allowance of calcium, which is usually 1000 mg, depending on your age and sex.

Swallowing is not as simple as we think it is. It is a complex process involving coordination between muscles and nerves in the throat and esophagus. When this process does not happen as it should, problems with swallowing result. Medically this is known as dysphagia (pronounced \dis-ˈfā-j(ē-)ə\.

Hello readers! So much has happened in my life since my last blog post, I can hardly figure out where to begin. Life it seems has a funny way of giving you the highest of highs followed by the lowest of lows. In one moment you can go from celebration to mourning. Without going into too many personal details here, let me just say that the past few weeks have been exactly that! I am sure some of you can relate to what I mean.

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.

Dental health and calcium are not often, if at all, discussed together. In our newest tip sheet, learn how calcium affects dental health and what you can do to keep your pearly whites healthy.

As an athlete, I push my body to its limits. In any one week, I am swimming, biking, running, and doing strength training. I usually put in 10+ hours of exercise a week on top of the demands of working and raising children. It can be exhausting, but I love it nonetheless.

A few months ago, I had a bone density test. Something my doctor recommended since I have Hypoparathyroidism. I found out that my bones have had some changes due to the hypopara, but one thing I found to be quite shocking was that I actually have some small osteoporosis signs in my wrists! How on earth do I have those changes in my forearms? My doctor reminded me that, despite my athleticism, these changes can and do happen. She said that it is possible that my wrists are showing the changes because they don’t get the same level of exercise as the rest of me. So she suggested that I ensure I’m getting adequate calcium and vitamin D (something that I have to do for hypopara, but a reminder anyway) and to increase the strength exercise that puts resistance on my wrists (like pushups, oh joy!)

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.