We Geeks often hear other “experts” recommending you get your daily calcium intake from diet alone. They act all pious as if this more “natural” way is so much superior. And generally this is true.

So it seems like it should be easy enough to get enough calcium from your diet alone, right? Well, let’s dig into this a bit…

The recommended daily allowance for calcium is:  

Women                                                                       
Ages 19 – 50 = 1,000 mg per day
Ages 51 and older = 1,200 mg per day                  

Men
Ages 19-70 = 1,000 mg per day
Ages 71 and older = 1,200 per day

Milk and dairy are the most common ways to get calcium from food sources.  For example, plain, low fat yogurt has 415 mg of calcium, 2% milk has 297 mg, and 1.5 ounces of cheddar cheese has 306 mg of calcium.  So, looking at this, a 50-year-old woman should be able to get her calcium from a cup of yogurt and two glasses of milk each day, right? And if you’re really careful, that should be about 300-400 calories.

Well, that sounded good to me, too, until I learned that researchers found that people only absorb about 30% of the calcium in foods.

30%!  Think about that for a moment…  Here you are, eating yogurt and drinking milk, and you’re only absorbing thirty percent of what you’re taking in!

How are you going to make up the difference?

Looking at the example from above, you would need to have 3 cups of yogurt each day, plus 6 glasses of milk.  And that would come out to about 900 to 1,200 calories alone, just to get enough calcium.

Are you ready to do that?

It turns out that a lot of women aren’t.   In fact, researchers found that women over 50 years old are falling below the desirable intakes of calcium when only food sources are taken into account.  And, according to the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines, because consumption of foods like milk and milk products are lower than recommended, calcium and vitamin D are now low enough to be a public health concern.

What can we do?
Instead of attempting 1,200 calories from calcium alone, we can supplement our diets with a highly absorbable form of calcium.  And, we can even do better than what diet alone provides, by finding a supplement that includes other vitamins and minerals that help us absorb the calcium.

For example, you may have heard that vitamin D is critical to calcium absorption.  However, have you heard about magnesium?  It turns out that magnesium is vital to the absorption of calcium and vitamin D.  However, magnesium has to be in the right ratio – there has to be twice as much calcium as magnesium for both to be absorbed.  Can you imagine trying to balance that in your diet, plus include vitamin C, vitamin K and lysine – all of which help the body absorb calcium?

Fortunately, there is a calcium supplement that includes a highly absorbed form of calcium, plus vitamin D, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin K and lysine.  Find out more about this calcium supplement – the only one we recommend.