Stop taking that calcium supplement, it’s not helping your bones, and it IS increasing your risk of serious medical problems. I know, I know, we’ve been told for years it was vital for bone health, but it’s not.
Hey this is dr. berry in this video i want to talk to you about something that’s very important if you’re taking a calcium supplement stop it right now it does not make your bones any stronger and it can absolutely increase your risk of very bad medical outcomes okay first please take one second and hit the subscribe button right there somewhere that helps me
Spread this message to people who need it and to spread future messages so click the subscribe button and maybe hit that bell now let’s talk about calcium this is one of those subjects that we all think we know exactly the truth about this matter it’s not open for debate you should take a calcium supplement you should drink lots of milk because it makes your bones
Stronger right okay if you believe if you’re not in going yeah that’s right then you need to watch this video this is very very important i’ve been studying this issue for a while i’ve been looking at the research and what i’m about to tell you you’re probably not going to believe what you’ve been told strengthens your bones actually doesn’t at all and increases
Your risk of having bad medical outcomes in other parts of your life at the end of this video i’m going to tell you the three things that absolutely have been proven by large research studies to increase your bone strength and decrease your risk of a fracture you may not believe how simple it is and how cheap it is okay so let’s talk about calcium if you’re my age
Group you remember all of a sudden we were being told in the media oh you need to take a calcium supplement it helps to keep your bones stronger it’s very good for you you don’t get enough calcium in your diet you need to take calcium and so we all thought well calcium bones bones have a lot of calcium yeah makes sense okay so we all started doing that problem is
This is one of those evidence-based medicine things that wasn’t based on any real evidence it was based on expert opinion and so i think i’ve talked about before the hierarchy of medical research the best medical research of all is the placebo controlled double-blind study because you get real answers from that if you’re able to do a big enough study and then as
You come down you come down to observational and other kinds of studies at the very bottom of the barrel if you don’t have anything else to go on then you get a bunch of experts in a room and you ask their opinion and then that’s what you based the recommendation on taking a calcium supplement was based on none of this at all it was based on expert opinion yeah
That’s right that’s exactly why you’ve been taking that calcium supplement for the last 20 years is because i got a bunch of experts from harvard and other places in the room and they decided that was in your best interest based on no meaningful research at all not joking so wait a minute dr. berry you’re telling me that there’s no big research study that shows
That taking more calcium increases your bone strength no no there’s not there’s no study that shows that if you take a calcium supplement every day you’re less likely to have a broken bone mm-hmm no no there’s no study that study does not exist yeah true story so what the heck’s going on here so they actually you know they wanted really badly to prove this so
They did some big studies but at the end of every study when you looked at the true meaningful results background noise it didn’t do anything to increase your bone strength whatsoever not a single study has ever proved it now let’s talk about a couple of thought exercises here and i think you’ll get the the reasoning behind what i’m saying there are about 5,700
Species of mammal on this planet now the definition of a mammal is that they make milk for their babies that’s what a mammal is they have mammary glands and there’s about 5,700 species of mammal on this planet but only one of those species drinks milk as an adult do you know which one it is humans that’s right we’re the only ones unless humans force our cats and
Dogs to drink milk no other adult animal on the planet no other adult mammal does that period not a single one now out of the 5700 species of mammal on this planet do you know how many species gets osteoporosis or brittle bones one humans that’s right yeah so just immediately your common sense should kick in and you should go what wait a minute okay here’s another
Thought exercise there are a hundred and ninety five countries this planet mmm 493 depending on your political and religious orientation but about 195 countries on this planet the countries with the highest milk intake the countries with the highest calcium intake are also the countries that have the highest fracture rate highest hip fracture rate the highest rate
Of osteoporosis so the countries that have the lowest calcium intake have many much less osteoporosis much less brittle bones much less in the way of hip fractures i mean so you see my point here first of all the common sense is totally against this if you look at it like that right so with those two thought exercises your common sense muscle ought to be kicking
In big-time saying wait a minute so when the researchers who fervently believed that more calcium would make your bones stronger they did design these huge studies to prove it problem is they didn’t it didn’t prove it it actually proved that council eve had no effect on the bone strength at all so what did those studies they found some things but it wasn’t stronger
Bones what they found was is that taking a calcium supplement certainly increased your risk of a heart attack yeah yeah a heart attack your rate of heart attack your risk of heart attack goes up as your calcium intake goes up whether it’s from milk whether it’s from a calcium supplement calcium intake makes your heart attack risk go up that obviously is not a good
Thing they also found that quite likely the more calcium you takes the higher your risk of kidney stones and i’ve never had one but when a woman tells you that something hurts worse than childbirth you don’t want that and i’ve had many a female patient tell me that her kidney stone was worse than having a baby so calcium supplements almost certainly increase your
Risk of kidney stones promise you don’t want that almost certainly taking a calcium supplement increases a man’s chance of having prostate cancer another finding was that it almost certainly increases a woman’s ovarian cancer just taking citracal or cal trait or any of the generic calcium supplements or just drinking lots of milk thinking that the calcium is going
To do your body good or do your bones good all it does is increase your risk of heart attack and probably increase your risk of cancer and kidney stone so there’s no benefit whatsoever to taking a calcium supplement you got that now here are the things the three things that you can do that are almost free that will definitely increase your bone strength now there
Are some prescription drugs that your doctor can prescribe for you like boniva fosamax actonel forteo that increase your bone density now density sounds like strength but the problem is is when they do the big studies even though these medicines are they do increase your bone density they evidently don’t really increase your bone strength because they barely affect
Fracture risk at all so if you’re taking any kind of calcium supplement that’s over-the-counter go get it right now and throw it in the garbage you’ll actually be saving money not wasting money if you’re taking a prescription medication to prevent or to treat osteoporosis i want you to go back and see your doctor and say hey doc now this crazy doctor on youtube
Said that this medicine makes my bone density stronger but that may not be the same thing as bone strength is that true see what he says watch watch his face watch his expression we’ll just see what he says about that so the three things you can do to increase your bone density that have been proven in those big studies that have been proven time and time again to
Make your bones stronger because that’s what we want when you fall we all fall when you fall we don’t want you to break a bone we want your bones to be strong enough that they don’t break that’s what matters we don’t want to care about your bone density i don’t really care about anything except when you fall down i don’t want you to break a bone i also don’t want
To cause you to have a heart attack or cause you to have a kidney stone or cause you to have cancer okay so number one the number one thing you can do that’s absolutely free that will increase your bone density more than anything else you can possibly do is weight bearing exercise now i’ve told you before exercise won’t help you lose weight but it will make your
Bones stronger i don’t mean walking on the treadmill i don’t mean on the stairmaster i mean weight-bearing so either walking briskly running lifting weights those things stress your bones and that makes your bones stronger we all often think of our bones as rocks they’re just rocks they’re just that’s it they’re done they don’t change when you’re an adult your
Bone is what your bone is and you can’t do anything about it that is absolutely false okay your bones are like trees they’re constantly growing they’re constantly getting stronger or weaker they’re getting straighter or they’re getting more bent every day based on what you do and what you eat and what you take true story no argument there so your bones are going
To get better or worse based on are you doing weight-bearing exercise so if you go for a walk every day if you lift some some weights your bones are getting stronger if you go to work and sit for eight hours and then come home and sit for eight hours and then go to bed for eight hours your bones are getting weaker definitely no doubt about that so find some time
Once or twice in your day to do a few minutes of a weight-bearing exercise it’s free and it’s proven beyond any doubt to increase your bone strength okay number two take a vitamin d supplement don’t take a calcium supplement throw the calcium in the garbage but take a vitamin d supplement because that will make your bones stronger okay number three stop drinking
Milk remember this is coming from a milk baby i grew up i was a football player in high school in my teenage years i drink almost a gallon of milk a day my family propagandize milk to me to the point where i almost had a religious fervor belief in milk only with years of thought and study and looking into the research have i come to my current opinion that you
Don’t need milk at all when you’re a grown-up so don’t think that i’ve drank the kool-aid i’ve put the kool-aid down you don’t need to drink milk all milk does is increase your risk of cancer heart attack kidney stones you don’t need it stop drinking it okay if you love milk have us small glass once a day as a treat but don’t consider it food because it’s not okay
Now last thing i need you to do for me i really need you to help me share this message and i’ll tell you why i found out that my 88 year old grandmother just the other day i found out she was still taking a calcium supplement knowing would i know i see my grandmother all the time we talk at least twice a week on the phone it never occurred to me that she was still
Taking a calcium supplement your grandmother is probably taking one to your mom your aunt your sister they’re taking calcium supplements because they got into the habit women are really good at getting into habits of things that they think help themselves or others she’s got that she’s put it in her little pill box and she takes it every day and she doesn’t think
A thing about it please share this video with your mom with your sister with your grandmother if she’s on social media if she’s not she will be shortly you’ve got to share this because i guarantee you you’ve got loved ones who are taking a calcium supplement and increasing their risk of heart attack right now please help me get this message out and prevent heart
Attacks please help me get this message out and prevent prostate cancer kidney stones please let’s prevent kidney stones let’s keep these things from happening and let’s spread the word about what actually makes your bones stronger okay now if you’d like to help me have more time in my day to make these videos i have a patreon account and you can you can give me
A buck a month that’s all i mean literally that would help so much because i have to take time away from my duties in the clinic or away from my family to make these videos i love making these videos but there are only so many hours in the day so check out my patreon page if you want to help this is doctor barry i’ll see you next time
Transcribed from video
STOP Taking Calcium Supplements (What to Know) 2022 By KenDBerryMD
