This is a guest post by Rima Mehta. She holds a Masters Degree in Business Management from Thunderbird University, and is a Holistic Nutrition Educator certified by the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. In addition, she has completed an advanced training program in Wellness and Life Coaching.
Calcium for Kids
Calcium is the super nutrient that helps make strong bones and teeth. It’s most important during the growing years when bones are building. The best sources of calcium come from the cow.
Calcium is a mineral that is mostly present in your child’s bones. Having a diet with foods that are high in calcium to meet daily requirements is necessary for the development of strong bones. It is also an important way to prevent the development of osteoporosis in adults.
Recommended daily Calcium requirements:
Toddlers (age 1-3 years) require about 500mg of calcium each day (about 2 glasses of milk). Preschool and younger school age children (age 4-8 years) require about 800 mg of calcium each day (about 3 glasses of milk).
Older school age children and teens (age 9-18 years) require about 1300 mg of calcium each day. This higher level of calcium is especially important once they begin puberty (about 4 glasses of milk). Since milk has a lot of calcium in it, children who routinely drink milk each day usually easily meet their daily requirements of calcium. Children with milk allergies or who just don’t like milk are a little more of a challenge to meet these requirements, but it is still easy if you learn to read food labels.
Non-dairy sources of calcium:
Fortified orange juice is a good source of both calcium and vitamin D. Leafy green vegetables such as spinach and kale are also good sources. Here is a good link for a full list of non-dairy sources of calcium.
How Calcium Works
Calcium MUST have an acid environment in the stomach for absorption into the blood. Interestingly, the majority of Americans nowadays take antacids (prescription and over the counter). The antacids neutralize acid stomach and greatly inhibit calcium absorption.
If the calcium is absorbed from stomach to bloodstream, calcium must find its way to the bone, get into the bone and stay in the bone.
If one’s diet is high in animal protein or refined sugars, this creates blood acidity, which requires buffering. One of calcium’s best jobs is to buffer, so calcium will leave the bone to assist with this buffering. If one’s diet includes veggies, fruits, grains (and small portions of animal protein), the calcium has a chance to get to the bone, if it has a carrier molecule to assist it. Ninety percent of all calcium supplements on the market are “calcium carbonate. Another very important mineral, which most Americans are very deficient in, is magnesium. As a result, we see calcium leeching out of the bone, if it makes it into the bone to begin with, because magnesium’s biggest role is to keep calcium in the bone.
Calcium and Vitamin D
Vitamin D is also well known for its involvement with bone health. It is necessary to absorb calcium. Therefore, people with low vitamin D levels may be more likely to suffer from osteoporosis or joint pain. However, new research is showing that vitamin D has many more functions in the body than just helping our bones.
Vitamin D also effects the neuromuscular and immune systems and can reduce inflammation. Because of these functions, vitamin D deficiency has been related to a variety of disease states including: autoimmune disorders, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.
We certainly do not lack for dairy sources of calcium in our country. In fact, most Americans imbibe it in milk and cheeses. However, milk is an animal protein and remember, intake of large amounts of animal proteins create acidity in the blood! Then to top it off food and beverages companies are typically looking to throw any old calcium into their products so they can add a ‘with added calcium’ label to the product but we are not interested in that.
So choose food products that are high in calcium to get your child the calcium he needs. In addition, compare food labels to choose brands or types of foods that have a higher percentage of the daily value of calcium.
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