At any given time, about 99% of our total body calcium stores are found in bones and teeth. This calcium plays a critical role in maintaining structural integrity of our skeleton. While calcium is the most critical nutrient to skeletal health, other nutrients provide important support to help absorb and use calcium in the bones. These nutrients include vitamin D, vitamin K, and magnesium.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but bone is very metabolically active tissue, with bone being built and broken down constantly.
When our dietary calcium levels are too low, we pull calcium from the bones to keep the blood levels close to constant.
But if we do more borrowing from than replenishing to our calcium stores, bone can become dangerously weak. In some sense, this gives us flexibility with our diets. In other words, we do not have to get a full supply of calcium each day, as long as we reach our goals most days. As long as your diet contains a wide variety of the foods on our World’s Healthiest Foods list, we believe that your calcium intake should be sufficient to maintain strong bones.
