An Overview on Calcium Products
Calcium is an important mineral for everyone. We all have grown up hearing how necessary it is for bone health, particularly for women. Did you know that men are now living long enough that osteoporosis is a concern for them as well? The best way to prevent osteoporosis is to build bone mass when you are young. Weight bearing exercise is known to contribute to building bigger bones as long as you consume enough calcium between diet and supplementation. The optimal time to build bone density is the teenage years, although you can still contribute to bone density through your 20s. Teenage boys tend to eat more and exercise more than teenage girls, and so tend to build more bone mass, although after Title IX that difference has lessened. By the time you reach 40, you are mostly trying to hold on to as much of it as you can.
Calcium is also important for muscle relaxation. When people report muscle cramps at night or from exercise, one of the primary causes can be lack of calcium. Note that other factors come into play as well – hydration, potassium levels, and magnesium levels in particular. Most calcium products contain magnesium as well, typically in approximately the 2:1 ratio they are found in bones. Taking a calcium / magnesium supplement with water before bed can help with 3 of the 4 probable causes for nighttime leg cramps.
There are several kinds of calcium that people take. Much of what is found in the market uses forms that are not very absorbable, a problem that is compounded by putting the calcium into hard-to-dissolve tablets. Some forms, however, have surfaced in the public eye as being superior. We offer a choice of preferred forms:
· Calcium Citrate is popular for being among the most absorbable forms of calcium.
· Coral Calcium has become popular not only for its absorbability, but because of the trace minerals that accompany it. It comes in two forms, marine and fossilized. While we like the marine form, there was unfortunately too little interest in it for Ultra Botanicals to keep it in production. Consequently, we currently only have the fossilized coral calcium from its sister label, Emerald Laboratories.
· MCHA Calcium (microcrystalline hydroxyapatite) is the third form we offer. From available research, it seems to offer the best promise of laying down new bone.
You can read more about each of them in their product descriptions.
We know that many people want to just be told that a particular form it the “best” so they can buy that one, but hopefully you are starting to see that it’s a little more complicated than that. “Best” for what? “Best” at what?
We’d like to say more about the topic, but being a commercial site, there are legal constraints on what we can post. We have to send you off to do your own research if you want more information. Once you have figured out which form is right for you, come on back - we have the best of each choice. The good news is that you can’t go wrong with any of them.
We have been lucky to find manufacturers who make these products without additives, meaning they haven’t been compromised in any way. We won’t sell tablets since close to 50% of the material in any tablet is an additive of some sort. Unfortunately, most capsules have additives as well. Almost every manufacturer uses magnesium stearate as a flowing agent (look for it on the label) and then adds fillers to make the capsule look full. Whichever of our calcium products you choose, you can rest assured they are the purest and highest quality versions of those products you can find in the market. Reasonable people can and do disagree about which form might be the best, but these are the forms they will argue for. No one will disagree with the statement that you can’t buy a product that is purer than completely pure! You can purchase any of these knowing that you are getting the best that money can buy, and at a very competitive price.
