Health benefits and demerits of calcium nutrition or supplementation in older people

The benefit of calcium nutrition for health has been believed for a long time. In fact, higher calcium intake is associated with reduction of blood pressure, rate of bone loss after menopause and mild risk reduction of fracture. Since calcium intake from food has not been achieved to be the recommended level, calcium supplementation is widely used especially in the US. However, calcium supplementation has been reported to increase in vascular events, recently. On the other hand, calcium nutrition from foods have not been reported any harmful effect on health. Therefore, calcium effects on health seemed to be composite effects of other nutrients taking together with calcium.