phragmentation

I was just talking to a friend tonight, who is depressed about a guy and suggested she take calcium to help with mood swings, especially since she’s over 40. I’ve made a concerted effort to take calcium supplements this year and have definitely noticed improvement in my moods and health. I went to find a reference for that and discovered this…

Calcium and Weight Loss:
When Dr. Robert Heaney, a calcium expert at Creighton University in Omaha, recently examined the health records of 575 women, he was astonished at the results. “We were looking at mid-life weight gain and found that women with the highest calcium intakes didn’t gain weight and those with the lowest did,” Dr. Heaney said.

Similarly, at the University of Tennessee, Michael Zemel, Ph.D., reported that because calcium plays a key role in metabolic disorders linked to obesity and insulin resistance, a diet low in calcium literally stockpiles fat cells while higher calcium diets depletes them. Dr. Zemel discovered that a high calcium diet released a hormone which sends signals that are read by the body’s fat cells to lose weight.

[i have lost 20 lbs since June]

Calcium and Premenstrual Syndrome:
Susan Thys-Jacobs, an endocrinologist at St. Luke-Roosevelt Hospital’s, has found that calcium supplementation can relieve the physical and emotional toll of PMS by almost 50%. At least half of the 497 women she studied who took 1,200 mg. of calcium supplements experienced fewer mood swings, depression/sadness, anxiety/nervousness; breast tenderness, bloating and other aches and pains.

[i've been taking 1000-2000 mg since July -- and it's true, since my cycle normalized again in Sept and even with the IUD and a heavier blood flow, my last PMS was really minimal, in fact i noticed i didn't have the tenderness at all and only about a day of anxiety instead of usual week. and almost no bloating or weight gain.]

Calcium and Blood Pressure:
In some people, an increase in calcium consumption can help control blood pressure without anti-hypertensive medication. A 13-year study by James Dwyer at the University of Southern California School of Medicine found that consuming 1300 milligrams of calcium a day reduced hypertension risk by 12 percent compared to only 300 mg. a day, while subjects under age 40 reduced their risk by up to 25 percent.

The calcium research is so interesting! I had no idea about this… and I thought I got a lot of calcium from dairy foods, but one thing they tell you is to stop eating cheese before your period because it was believed the fat causes PMS. But they don’t tell you to increase your calcium in other ways! So now I’m taking 2 grams a day. Very happy.

http://www.moodfoods.com/calciumdep.htm

PMS shares many features of depression, anxiety and the dysphoric states. The similarity between the symptoms of PMS and hypocalcemia is remarkable. Clinical trials in women with PMS have found that calcium supplementation effectively alleviates the majority of mood and somatic symptoms. Evidence to date indicates that women with luteal phase symptomatology have an underlying calcium dysregulation with a secondary hyperparathyroidism and vitamin D deficiency. This strongly suggests that PMS represents the clinical manifestation of a calcium deficiency state that is unmasked following the rise of ovarian steroid hormone concentrations during the menstrual cycle.