Nondairy Sources of Calcium

This may seem like an odd thing to post here, but it goes with pieces on race based medicine where one of my recommendations is that you familiarize yourself with nondairy sources of calcium because it's Caucasians who are genetic freaks able to digest lactose and most other people of other ethnicities are typically lactose intolerant.

I'm Caucasian and not lactose intolerant, but I have a serious medical condition that impairs gut function, so I have firsthand experience with dairy being a problem for me and good luck FINDING an alternative solution for calcium-rich foods.

So if you are dealing with pregnant women of color and passing out your typical literature on nutrition, you are probably handing them information that boils down to saying "YOU need more calcium! Here's a list of calcium-rich foods, most of which you probably can't eat!" because those lists frequently skew heavy on the dairy products.

Harvard Health Publishing has an article about calcium. Harvard is presumably a fairly good source of general information.

I was looking for how many milligrams of calcium per day do you need and clicked into that and it says in part dietary calcium doesn't cause the problems calcium supplements cause. So ideally you want food lists because getting your calcium from food is probably a better answer than taking supplements if you can figure it out.

I'm seeing figures of 700 milligrams to 1200 milligrams per day for women of various ages. I don't actually know and I have concerns that no one really knows. 

I looked it up because this list of nondairy sources of calcium lists things in milligrams. I recommend you double check for selenium content because it recommends Brazil nuts as a good source of calcium and they can outright put you in the ER for selenium poisoning all by themselves and if you are treating Black Americans, they probably are eating too much selenium which is known to cause high blood pressure. 

What I recommend personally as potential calcium sources if you are lactose intolerant:

1. Extremely well cooked chicken so you can eat the smaller bones, like it used to do as a child. 

2. Bone broth which studies show increases in calcium the longer you cook it.

3. And any calcium rich vegetarian sources you are fine with. Soy beans are a good source of calcium and some tofu is extra high in calcium because it's coagulated with calcium sulfate. 

My impression is that tofu, almonds and calcium fortified orange juice are vegetarian sources that frequently come up on lists trying to give you milk alternatives and those lists are frustrating to read it you want a nondairy source because they frequently have a fairly high percentage of recommendations like cheese and yogurt.

My personal practices have been:

1. I spent several months taking calcium citrate supplements to treat my nosebleeds.  I eventually stopped getting frequent nosebleeds. 

There's one other bioavailable calcium supplement. I don't remember what it is.  Calcium citrate is bioavailable and easily found. 

Calcium carbonate is the most common form of calcium supplement and my understanding is it's a waste of money. It's about like munching on sea shells and the body doesn't absorb it well.

2. I try hard to avoid eating high calcium foods with high iron foods in the same meal. My understanding is they interfere with each other and you get little benefit from either one when you do so.

Because of 2, above, I'm not convinced we know how much calcium we need. It's possible a lot of people eat a lot of calcium and see little to no benefit because they are eating broccoli with cheese or cheeseburgers or other meals that combine calcium with iron and then aren't absorbing much of the calcium they eat.

If you NEED calcium, you also need magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K. Without those, you probably aren't adequately absorbing and utilizing the calcium. 

I no longer take any supplements. I still try to not eat beef with cheese or other calcium-iron combos.

Calcium deficiency probably impairs immune function because your bones are where most calcium ends up and bone marrow is where we produce white blood cells. And if you are too acid, your body strips the bones of calcium to keep your blood pH within the very narrow range where you don't die.

Anyone with any form of metal poisoning probably needs more calcium than they are getting. Metal poisoning promotes excess acidity and the body will strip the bones of calcium to buffer your blood pH.

Good luck with documenting such issues. People with Cystic Fibrosis are known to be too acid and you will get laughed out of town if you try to suggest this is an important part of the pathology and perhaps a factor in people with CF developing osteoporosis as early as their teens.

(At one time, I imagined I would go down in history as the genius who discovered that CF causes high acidity. Nope. Everyone with CF KNOWS that as do all physicians familiar with the condition. They just don't think it's significant and never mind that diabetics who develop ketoacidosis are promptly hospitalized because they can be dead within 72 hours.

BUT that can't POSSIBLY imply known chronic high acidity is part of WHY people with CF have an average life expectancy of 36. NOPE!)

Additionally, if you have lead poisoning, it specifically gets into the bones, so much so that chelating out lead increases fracture risk until the lead is replaced with calcium and the bone is rebuilt. 

Guess who in the US is likely to be in bad neighborhoods with lead pipes and therefore at higher risk of having lead poisoning.