Calcium: Can It Cause Weight Loss?
The impact of calcium on weight loss continues to be a source of contention. A recent study has compared calcium supplements with calcium from food (via Yahoo):
Girls who normally consume lots of calcium in their diet have less body fat than their peers, but those who add calcium supplements to their diets do not lose fat or weight.
In essence, of the 110 girls tested (all 12 years old), those who were consistently eating higher amounts of calcium from their diet (up to 1000-1304 mg) had lower body fat (at the start and end of the study). Calcium in the form of supplementation made no impact.
We need to be very careful in drawing any conclusions from this.
Could higher calcium come from increased dairy, therefore increased protein leading to satiety? Could the timing of the supplementation consumption be an issue? How many other factors are involved?
Dr Arne Astrup has no trouble guessing at a conclusion:
It could be quite nice to simply lose weight by having some more skim milk every day," the researcher said. What's more, drinking half a liter of low-fat milk products every day may not only help in regulating one's weight, but has numerous other benefits, including healthier bones, lowered blood pressure and decreased colon cancer risk, he added.
A completely opposite conclusion was published in the same journal 8 months earlier.
Just 8 months earlier in April 2005, another study concluded "Increased intake of dairy products does not alter body weight or fat mass in young, healthy women over 1 y." See also Dairy For Weight Loss: Utter Confusion.
Despite what certain lobby groups may try and tell us - the effect of calcium (and dairy) on weight loss in inconclusive.
Sources: Am J Clin Nutr 2006 83: 18-23, Am J Clin Nutr 2005 81: 751-756
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Calcium consumed through food probably "aids weight loss" because those who consume calcium rich foods are consuming them in place of higher calorie alternatives. Also, dairy contains tryptophan, which is a natural sedative and appitite suppresant.
ReplyI wonder if the source of the calcium was always dairy in the study. You can get higher doses of calcium in some vegetable servings than you can in a serving of milk.
ReplyThat's true, but they keep mentioning dairy, so its unlikley they took calcium-rich vegetable consumption into account.
ReplyI don't think they took calcium from other sources into consideration either. It seems like they were focusing more on the dairy sources. I agree with Lana; the people who were thinner were probably replacing junk food snacks with things that you SHOULD be snacking on...string cheese, yogurt, skim milk, etc. Milk has a high satiety factor and it is a very complete food, so you don't get cravings when you get enough of it.
ReplyGive the calcium bit a try for a week. I've lost 4llbs in 19 days. Albeit, I'm eating healthy-- I eat lots of fruits and veggies w/protein. I have one day to splurge on something like a nice size of chocolate cake. I started excercising, but quit after one week when I returned to work from holiday break. I can see a lot of weight loss around my tummy area. Today was my first day back excercising, anyway, I have been eating tons of yogurt (at least 3xs/week and I'm attributing this almost effortless weight loss to the calcium. I heard it from one of my students and decided just to give it a try.
ReplyCould the low body fat be due to the fact that the girls were eating foods rich in calcium rather than foods saturated in sugars and carbs?
ReplyCalcium acts like an "ATM card" to get fat out of a fat cell. (See papers by Holick et al., from the University of Tennessee.) They showed that overweight rats did better with dairy sources than with supplements. That's the original study.
However, calcium uptake depends on a lot of things, and gut malabsorption could be a key issue. It turns out that food sensitivities (like gluten and dairy sensitivity) may cause a significant amount of problems with mineral and vitamin absorption, especially the fat-soluble ones like vitamin D. (Vit D is important in calcium uptake, too.) So, the controversy could be easily solved if these guys would look a little closer at calcium uptake, instead of trying to make a conclusion based on one study with way too many variables.
-L
ReplyThe weight difference may just represent healthier food choices in the high calcium intake group.
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ReplyWhat about calcium from drinking water? Ionized alkaline drinking water is high in calcium and even has active hydrogen which supplies huge quantities of extra electrons and acts as a powerful antioxidant donating those electrons to the free radicals in our body. Those free radicals will otherwise be taking those electrons from the calcium in our body anytime we are low on antioxidants - which for most of us is all the time.
ReplyThat's true, but they keep mentioning dairy, so its unlikley they took calcium-rich vegetable consumption into account.
ReplyCheck this site out. 100% natural calcium water. EXELLENT FOR WEIGHT MANAGMENT AND CALCIUM ABSORBTION.
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