Calcium-mineral Supplements - Is there really a difference?

It's been well substantiated that calcium is an essential nutrient. After protein, fat and carbohydrates, calcium is the body's most abundant nutrient. Calcium carries the highest RDA of any other nutrient for a good reason. Calcium is required to form bones and teeth and is also required for blood clotting, transmission of signals in nerve cells, and muscle contraction. Decades of research have linked calcium's association with lowering high blood pressure and balancing cholesterol levels. Calcium is crucial, but what's the best source of calcium? Is one source of calcium better than another? Is there really a difference? Naturally, the most ideal source of balanced calcium, as well as other minerals and trace minerals, is from the foods we eat. But our daily Calcium needs often cannot be met by food alone - especially considering today's busy lifestyles and the depleted soil our in which many of our modern foods are grown. It can be difficult to get a balanced source of any essential nutrient.

A Brief History of Calcium Supplementation

In the early years of supplementation, all calcium was pretty much the same: a ground up inorganic substance (typically oyster shell) packed into hard tablets that early nutritionists hoped the body could absorb. Problem was, the body absorbed very little of this substance-much of it passed through the body untouched and unused. Thus the search for the perfect calcium began. Other sources and processing techniques have been explored: sulphate, lactate, phosphate, citrate; chelated and "micro," but not all sources of calcium are ideal for all blood types. And what about absorption? With all the new technology, have we seen much improvement? In fact, studies reveal that the body absorbs less than 10% of the most popular calcium tablets containing calcium lactate, calcium phosphate, or calcium carbonate. Through the years, the challenge with all of these approaches remained the same: Either the calcium sources were unfriendly to some blood types, or the inorganic source of the calcium remained the same, and regardless of processing the body still had to deal with absorbing an inorganic substance and attempting to convert it to a useful substance in the cells. This processing of nutrients requires energy from the cells - energy that could be better utilized in other important cellular tasks. What's more, even though those single-nutrient hard calcium tablets remain popular at the drug store, it's become standard knowledge that calcium must be taken daily with the appropriate complex of supporting nutrients, such as magnesium.