Calcium and Menopause: How to Take Calcium Supplements for Maximum Benefits

Vitamins and nutritional supplements affect your health just as medication does. You expect your supplements to have a positive affect by enhancing your immune system, promoting heart health, or in the case of calcium supplements, helping to build healthy bones.

If you're taking a couple of calcium tablets a day, you may not be getting the maximum benefits they have to offer. For calcium to have a significant impact on bone density, it needs to partner with Vitamin D, and it needs time to be absorbed into your system without interference from other supplements or medications.

Your body searches for the calcium it needs to maintain bodily functions such as blood clotting and regulating the heartbeat. It also, of course, uses calcium to contribute to bone regeneration. If there's a shortage of calcium, though, your bones do not get the first bite.

Bone cells called osteoclasts eat away at the bones to allow the bone cells known as osteoblasts to regenerate the bones. After menopause, this rebuilding process begins to falter, due to lack of estrogen among other factors.

The osteoclasts continue to take away bone, but the osteoblasts are unable to regenerate your bones as quickly. This results in a decline in bone mass, the condition known as osteoporosis.

After menopause, you need a higher quantity of calcium to aid in bone regeneration.

Your skin is also drier after menopause, and so does not process Vitamin D obtained through sunlight as efficiently as it used to. This leads to a Vitamin D deficiency. Without a sufficient amount of Vitamin D, your body cannot properly absorb its calcium intake. Without Vitamin D to aid the body in absorbing calcium, the calcium is expelled from the body through perspiration and waste.

Some calcium supplements now have Vitamin D included, and this does help alleviate this situation. Menopausal women should take 400 IUs of Vitamin D daily. However, if your body is not properly absorbing and processing Vitamin D, the intake with your calcium supplement won't help.