After analyzing 10 years of medical tests on more than 2,700 people in a federally funded heart disease study, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and elsewhere conclude that taking calcium in the form of supplements may raise the risk of plaque buildup in arteries and heart damage, although a diet high in calcium-rich foods appears be protective.

In a report on the research, published Oct. 10 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the researchers caution that their work only documents an association between calcium supplements and atherosclerosis, and does not prove cause and effect.

But they say the results add to growing scientific concerns about the potential harms of supplements, and they urge a consultation with a knowledgeable physician before using calcium supplements. An estimated 43 percent of American adult men and women take a supplement that includes calcium, according the National Institutes of Health.

“When it comes to using vitamin and mineral supplements, particularly calcium supplements being taken for bone health, many Americans think that more is always better,” says Erin Michos, M.D., M.H.S., associate director of preventive cardiology and associate professor of medicine at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But our study adds to the body of evidence that excess calcium in the form of supplements may harm the heart and vascular system.”

The researchers were motivated to look at the effects of calcium on the heart and vascular system because studies already showed that “ingested calcium supplements — particularly in older people — don’t make it to the skeleton or get completely excreted in the urine, so they must be accumulating in the body’s soft tissues,” says nutritionist John Anderson, Ph.D., professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and a co-author of the report. Scientists also knew that as a person ages, calcium-based plaque builds up in the body’s main blood vessel, the aorta and other arteries, impeding blood flow and increasing the risk of heart attack.

For more information be sure to look at the article on Johns Hopkins Medical site.

The recommendation of calcium for the prevention of osteoporosis is one of a multitude of examples of how often the current practice of mainstream medicine is missing the mark. Many people are deficient in calcium because the standard acidic processed diet is high in hidden phosphates from processed foods which inhibit the absorption of calcium. In addition, by eating large quantities of meats and sweets, this makes the body acidic. This acid requires a huge amount of buffering. When the plasma buffer reserves are exhausted, the body calls upon calcium from the bone to buffer. Hence, eating phosphate laden processed foods causes calcium loss from bones.

To build bone, calcium is laid down in bone only when enough of the complementary minerals are present, such as zinc, copper, boron, and magnesium. When these are not present in optimal amounts, taking extra calcium merely deposits the calcium in the toxic waste heap of the body, the blood vessel wall. So instead of building bone, the calcium is used to accelerate arteriosclerosis, aging and disease.

In other words, by haphazardly recommending calcium to a nation of people who are already consuming vast quantities of cheese, milk, ice cream and meats, and without measuring the blood levels of zinc, copper, magnesium, we are potentiating the development of vascular calcifications instead of bone calcification. We are enhancing the deposition of extra calcium in the vessels of the heart and brain that hastens coronary artery disease, arteriosclerotic and nutrient-deficient depression, and senile brain disease.

Beware if you are supplementing with Calcium as it cannot get into the bone unless you have enough of the other minerals needed to incorporate it and hold it in the bone. These include magnesium, manganese, selenium, molybdenum, zinc, copper, etc. Taking calcium without assessing and correcting for deficiencies of these minerals, forces the calcium into the arteries of the body in the brain and in the heart. When you are deficient in the minerals that hold calcium in the bone, calcium cannot be taken up into the bone. SO instead it gets taken up by the toxic waste site; the cholesterol patches of damaged arteries. Hence the term hardening (calcification) of the arteries.