This study documents that modern medicine has no authority in nutrition. Its methods of reductionism and partitioning the body into units that can be treated separately are deeply flawed.
by Heidi Stevenson
8 August 2010
In a finding that should come as no surprise, the British Medical Journal reports that taking calcium supplements results in heart attacks. A supplement that doctors routinely tell women to take to prevent osteoporosis is implicated in heart disease. What's a woman to do?
A good place to start is to realize that your doctor most likely does not have a good understanding of nutrition. A combination of reductionist thinking about how health is produced, with an attitude that parts of the body can be partitioned from the whole, is a recipe for disaster—as this study documents.
Mainstream medicine has simply assumed that, since calcium is a major part of bone composition, then a lack of calcium must be a cause of osteoporosis. That assumption does not consider that calcium is part of a synergystic balance in a host of body functions, including heart beat, nerve function, muscle contraction, and blood clotting—and that it interacts with other nutrients.
The Magnesium Connection
Nutrients are synergystic. They don't act by themselves, but as part of a process, or more accurately in the case of calcium, many processes. Calcium is not taken into a void. In fact, studies have documented that excess calcium can interfere with magnesium absorption, and that magnesium may be a more significant factor in osteoporosis than calcium.
Calcium and magnesium compete for the same absorption mechanisms. Excessive amounts of calcium can prevent adequate absorption of magnesium.
Magnesium is required by every organ in the body. It helps regulate blood sugar, energy production, protein synthesis, blood pressure, and heart rhythm. Anything that interferes with the body's ability to absorb adequate magnesium can obviously have a negative impact on heart health. Excess calcium does just that. Obviously, supplementing calcium on a just-because basis is, at best, a bad idea—and it's certainly not surprising that it can lead to heart attacks.
Why We're More Likely Require Magnesium Supplementation
Our ancestral pre-agricultural diets did not include significant grains or dairy. The hunter-gatherer diet provides approximately equal amounts of calcium and magnesium. We must have evolved to achieve optimal health with that balance. However, the modern diet usually provides a far higher amount of calcium, about twelve times as much as magnesium.
Therefore, since calcium and magnesium compete for absorption, we are far more likely to lack adequate magnesium than calcium.
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