Be Careful With Calcium Pills - They May Harm Your Heart

Many people like to consume calcium supplements for the health benefits it comes with, but did you know some people who take too many of these have a greater risk of death?

If you live anywhere in the United States, or even in other places, you have almost certainly heard the famous advertising slogan, "Milk does a body good." One of the reasons millions believe milk does a body good is its content of calcium needed for healthy bones, but not everyone likes to drink (or even can drink) milk on a daily basis.

To fill the gap, the supplements industry has promoted  all sorts of calcium supplements for bone health for over 20 years now. Calcium supplements do indeed offer many health benefits and actually do help your bones stay strong and healthy, but that might not be true for everyone. Unfortunately for men, a new study sponsored by the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) found out that taking more than 1,000 mg of calcium per day raises the risk of death from a cardiovascular disease in men by approximately 20%.

Is Calcium a Killer?

The NIH-AARP study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on 4 February 2012, reported a study of 388,229 American men and women aged 50 to 71 who were first contacted in the years 1995 and 1996. These Americans were simply asked whether they usually took calcium supplements, and if they did, how much on a daily basis. Then researchers followed the AARP volunteers for the next 12 years, noting deaths which they recorded in the National Death Index.

Among the women who participated in the study, taking more than 1,000 mg of calcium supplements per day was associated with a 5 percent greater risk of dying of heart disease, a 6 percent greater risk of dying of other kinds of chronic cardiovascular disease, or an 8 percent greater risk of dying from stroke. In women, however, the relationship between the calcium intake and cardiovascular disease was only a trend. It was not shown to be statistically significant. (That is, the researchers could not state with 95 percent certainty that there wasn't an off chance that women's taking calcium's supplements actually lowered the risk of developing heart disease).

Among the men in the study, taking more than 1,000 mg of calcium supplements per day was associated with a 19 percent greater risk of dying of a heart disease, a 20 percent greater risk of dying of other kinds of chronic cardiovascular disease, and a 14 percent greater risk of dying from stroke. Only the 19 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease, however, was statistically significant.

The study also made several interesting findings that didn't make most of the news reports about it.

Assuming that not smoking, exercising more, knowing more, and eating more fruits and vegetables don't cause heart disease, it appears that taking calcium cancels out other healthy lifestyle choices.

Only Supplements Seem to Make a Difference

It is worth repeating that this study did not find that consuming high-calcium foods such as milk, cheese, yogurt, fish, and leafy green vegetables was not associated with greater risk of any kind of cardiovascular disease. Only supplements seem to make a difference.

And it is also helpful to understand that previous studies have not suggested this problem. A study published in the same journal in 1996, for example, found that taking calcium supplements slightly lowered blood pressure (systolic blood pressure, the first number, but not diastolic blood pressure, the second number). And a study published just a few months earlier in the American Journal of Medicine just a few months earlier reported that the link between calcium supplements and heart disease risk was unclear.