Latest / The Brain Dump / The Mineral Files Part 2: Everything Your Doctor Didn't Tell You About Calcium | Episode 33

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The Mineral Files Part 2: Everything Your Doctor Didn't Tell You About Calcium | Episode 33 · The Brain Dump

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get started, I am a licensed therapist and functional medicine educator, not a physician.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing in this episode constitutes medical advice, and listening to this podcast does not create a clinical relationship between us.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Please talk to your own health care provider before making any changes to your supplements or treatment plan.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Sandy Boone, therapist, coach, and nervous system educator with 30 years in health care and mental health.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I built two practices, got diagnosed with ADHD at 50, and learned the hard way that healers need healing too.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I help female therapists and healers regulate their nervous systems, reclaim their lives, and stop being everyone's everything.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Braindump with Sandy Boone.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium is the mineral we think we understand.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's for bones and it's in dairy.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And your doctor probably told you to take a supplement at some point, especially if you're a woman of a certain age or if you've been pregnant.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was told to take one when I was pregnant, and I did, because most of us do what we're told.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: What nobody told me, and what the drink your milk and take your calcium messaging has left out for decades, is that calcium is one of the most context dependent minerals in the body.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where it ends up and what it does when it gets there depends enormously on what else is present.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Take it without the right cofactors, and it may not go to your bones at all.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It may go somewhere you do not want it to go.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll get to that soon.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: First, I want to tell you about my calcium shell because it's my personal story with this mineral, and it's one of the most clinically interesting things that showed up in my own HTMA results.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: When my HTMA came back, my calcium was at 161.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: The optimal range is significantly lower than that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you saw that number on a standard blood panel, you might not flag it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Blood calcium is tightly regulated and it doesn't tell you much about what's happening in the tissue.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: HTMA looks at tissue mineral levels, which is different and more often the more revealing picture.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Elevated tissue calcium on an HTMA is not a sign that you have strong bones and plenty of calcium to spare.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's often a sign that calcium has accumulated outside of the cells, which means it's in the tissue and in the soft structures instead of being properly utilized inside the cell where it belongs.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when that accumulation is significant, it creates what is called a calcium shell.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is not just a physiological phenomenon.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It has a psychological and emotional signature that the mental health practitioners listening to this should really hear.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: The calcium that accumulates outside the cell creates a kind of buffer.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think of it as a layer of insulation between the person and the world.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: People with a calcium shell often appear calm on the surface.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: They are composed, like they have it together.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are frequently the person that others lean on, the one who holds the room and the one who seems unflappable.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath that shell is usually exhaustion or depletion.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a nervous system that has been white knuckling it for so long that the armor has become structural.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: For me it showed up as bracing, a constant low grade physical bracing that I had become so accustomed to I barely noticed it anymore.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a tight jaw, tight muscles across my shoulders and neck, a tendency to hold my breath slightly to stay ready for whatever was coming next, even when nothing was coming.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: The emotional piece is a particular kind of flatness.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not exactly depression, it's more like a dampening.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like the volume on your felt experience is turned down a notch.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're present, you're functioning, but something is muted in a way that you can't quite name.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have been treating this with Body Bio PC.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's a liposomal phospholipid complex that supports cell membrane integrity and helps minerals actually get through to the cell membrane where they belong.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is very slow work.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: The calcium shell does not unwind overnight.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I can feel that it's starting to shift.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Things that should land emotionally are landing more fully.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: The bracing is loosening in ways that are subtle but real.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what happens when calcium starts to move where it belongs.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: That armor starts to come off.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: About ninety nine percent of it is in the bones and teeth, which is where the bone health conversation comes from, and why it's not wrong, it's just incomplete.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The other one percent is doing things that don't get nearly enough attention.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Muscle contraction, calcium triggers the contraction, magnesium triggers the relaxation.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: When calcium is biounavailable, muscles can't fully relax, jaws won't unclench, and shoulders that live somewhere around your ears.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Nerve signal transmission.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium helps the nerve cells fire properly.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's involved in blood clotting, hormone secretion, and enzyme activation.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium is not a passive structural mineral.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is active and essential in ways that go well beyond bone density.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is the way we have talked about calcium publicly has missed all of this nuance.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that missing nuance has had real consequences.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: For decades, postmenopausal women were told to supplement with calcium.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: The logic was straightforward.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Estrogen helps maintain bone density.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Estrogen drops at menopause, bone density drops with it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium supports bone density, therefore take calcium.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That logic is not wrong on its face.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is what was left out of the equation.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Multiple meta-analyses have found something that did not make it into the original recommendations.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Isolated calcium supplements taken without adequate vitamin K2 and magnesium may not go where they're supposed to go.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Without vitamin K2, specifically MK7, calcium doesn't get properly directed to bone tissue.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It circulates.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And circulating calcium can end up deposited in arterial walls, in the soft tissue.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: In places where calcification is not a feature, it's a problem.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: A meta-analysis covering nearly 29,000 participants found that calcium supplements increase the risk of cardiovascular disease by about 15% in healthy postmenopausal women.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Separate research associated oral calcium supplements with serial coronary calcification, which is hardening of the arteries.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this is from Science Direct and Nutrients.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: The research is not uniformly damning.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Women's Health Initiative, one of the largest trials ever done on this, found no significant cardiovascular effect with calcium plus D over seven years.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But subsequent longer-term follow-up data showed a slightly increased risk of dying from heart disease in postmenopausal women who supplemented.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: What the research consistently points towards is this.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: The source and the context of calcium matters enormously.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium from food comes packaged with cofactors that help direct it appropriately.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Isolated calcium supplements taken in large doses without those cofactors behave differently in the body.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody told women that.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see frequent cavities and weakening teeth, anxiety and hyperexcitability.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Counterintuitively, low calcium can create a heightened nerve excitability, a wired and jumpy quality, while a calcium shell creates the opposite dampening effect.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: We can also see brittle nails, because nails require calcium for structural integrity.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we can see numbness or tingling, particularly in the hands and feet as the neuromuscular system becomes dysregulated.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: There is a relationship between calcium and magnesium, and it's central to understanding both minerals.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium and magnesium are co-regulators.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: They work as a team, or they're supposed to.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium triggers the muscle contraction, magnesium triggers the relaxation.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium excites the nervous system, magnesium calms it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium promotes coagulation, magnesium opposes it.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: When that balance tips, too much calcium relative to magnesium, or too little magnesium to offset the calcium, the system trends towards tension, excitability, and overactivation.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the part of what a calcium shell represents.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So much calcium outside the cells that the buffering effect becomes structural rather than dynamic.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: The calcium magnesium ratio on an HTMA is one of the more important things a functional medicine practitioner looks at.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: My own ratio was elevated, which tracks with the bracing, the depletion, the fatigue, and the emotional muting.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is why you cannot supplement calcium in isolation and expect a good outcome.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Magnesium needs to be present, vitamin K2 needs to be present, vitamin D needs to be adequate, boron plays a role.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: The whole mineral ecosystem matters, not just the one you're trying to address.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And dairy's not the only source, and for a lot of people it's not the best source, particularly if there's sensitivity.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can get calcium from sardines and canned salmon with bones.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is among the highest calcium foods available.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: A can of sardines delivers well over 300 milligrams.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: The bones are soft enough to eat and come alongside with vitamin D naturally, which is a meaningful combination.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We can get calcium from dark leafy greens.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Collard greens, kale, bok choy, and broccoli are solid sources.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Spinach contains calcium but also oxalates that bind to it and reduce the absorption.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the most efficient source despite the numbers.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Almonds are also a good source, alongside magnesium and healthy fats.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Tofu made with calcium sulfate, the calcium content varies by coagulant, but it can be surprisingly high.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fortified plant milts and orange juice, the form and the absorbability vary, so check out your labels.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And dairy, if you tolerate it, is a legitimate source.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is the assumption that dairy alone is sufficient or that additional supplementation is always beneficial.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom line here, variety, whole foods, and the presence of cofactors like vitamin D, K2, and magnesium in the overall diet matters more than hitting a specific number from any single source.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Given everything I've said about the cardiovascular research, I want to be careful here.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I am not telling anyone to stop their calcium supplement.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is a conversation for you and your healthcare provider, particularly if you have bone density concerns.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: What I am saying to you is that if you are supplementing calcium, the cofactors matter.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Vitamin K2, specifically MK7, directs calcium to bone tissue rather than to the arterial walls.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're taking calcium without K2, it's worth discussing with your provider.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium absorption is regulated by vitamin D.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Without adequate D, you absorb very little calcium regardless of how much you supplement.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Supplementing calcium without supporting magnesium throws the calcium magnesium balance further off.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the form matters.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium citrate is better absorbed than calcium carbonate, particularly in people with low stomach acid.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the work has been less about supplementing calcium and more about getting the calcium I already have to behave properly.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Body bio PC supports cell membrane integrity, which is what allows minerals to get through the membrane where they belong.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: As that work continues, calcium starts moving into the cells rather than accumulating in the tissue.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: The armor very slowly is coming off.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Calcium is the mineral we thought we understood.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Take your supplement, drink your milk, protect your bones.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: What we did not understand is that calcium without its cofactors is calcium without direction.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: It goes where it goes, and where it goes is not always where we need it or where we want it to go.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: The calcium shell I'm walking around with right now is a picture of what happens when calcium builds up in the tissue instead of being properly utilized.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It shows up in the body as bracing and tightness, it shows up in the nervous system as a kind of muting, and it shows up in the emotional body as a buffer that keeps things from landing fully.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: That buffer is finally starting to live for me.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Next episode in the mineral files, we're moving to sodium.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think sodium is just about salt and blood pressure, you're in for a surprise.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If something today resonated, check the show notes.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find information about booking your root cause roadmap with me at sandyboon.com, where we look at your full mineral picture and figure out what your body is actually running on.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Come find me on Instagram at the Sandy Boon.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a healing professional looking for a community that feels good to be in, come join us at the Rooted Calm Collective on Facebook.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Links for everything are in the show notes.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.