Your body needs calcium at a young age to develop strong bones and teeth. This may not mean a lot when you’re young, but later on when your bones are brittle, your spine is bent over with osteoporosis and your teeth are falling apart, you’ll be asking yourself why you didn’t get enough calcium when you were young.

Osteoporosis reduces your bone mineral density, basically making your bones weaker and prone to fracturing. Preventing osteoporosis should be a concern early in life, as bone mass development culminates at the age of 30. After that it is imperative to continue to maintain the strength of your bones and teeth with calcium, Vitamin D and exercise, although this maintenance system would be a lot easier if you helped build your strong bones and teeth with calcium at an earlier age, from ten years old onwards.

Calcium also works at developing the body’s lymphatic fluids, which is important to the immune system.

Vitamin D is required in order for your bones to be able to absorb calcium. Good sources of vitamin D are eggs and milk, and fifteen minutes of sunlight each day. Our bodies absorb the sunlight to create our own Vitamin D. The best time to harvest all this sunlight is early in the morning when the light is not yet harsh.

Weight-bearing exercise, such as walking, jogging, dancing and weight-lifting, also help strengthen our bones and teeth and fight calcium depletion.

Research has shown that individuals who were breast fed as babies are noted to have stronger teeth than those who were weaned to drinking cow’s milk right away, and especially those who stopped drinking milk at an early age. Pregnant women should take more liberal amounts of calcium than normal, because their babies are often depleting their mothers’ calcium. Smoking and drinking also deplete calcium and weaken the bones.

We need different levels of calcium at different ages. Infants from birth to six months should get 210 mg of calcium a day, while the calcium levels are raised to 270 mg a day from 7 to 12 months. Children up to three years should then get an average of 500 mg of calcium daily, rising to 800 in the next four years, then to 1,300 mg throughout their teenage life. At the age of 19, the recommended daily allowance of calcium has lowered to 1000 mg a day, until the age of 50. Those 50 years old and older must increase their intake of calcium up to 1,200 mg.

Too much calcium, on the other hand, can also be inadvisable as it could lead to hypocalcaemia, which will lower your body’s ability to absorb other nutrients. It could also weaken your kidneys.

Calcium is best found in milk and other dairy products, such as cheese and yogurt. People who are allergic to dairy products, are lactose intolerant and/or are vegans, or vegetarians who refuse to consume any kind of animal products, could also get their calcium from other sources, such as seaweed, particularly kelp and hijiki, nuts, oranges, vegetables such as broccoli, okra, collard greens and kale, and sardines, among others. Soy milk is also used as a substitute for milk, as with fortified orange juice. And of course, there are many excellent calcium supplements on the market. Calcium supplements usually also contain some amount of Vitamin D in their formulation.

So, whether you are lactose intolerant or not, there are no excuses not to get your recommended doses of calcium daily. In the long run, your bones and teeth will thank you for it.

By: Colin Albert