Milk and calcium.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.herbs
Subject: Re: Why do humans drink milk?
From: mgk2r.Virginia.EDU (Mike Kurilla)
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 15:08:47 GMT

> >And, some people still *believe*, despite all scientific evidence, that the world is flat. When you get past the *belief* stage and into the scientific truth stage, let me know. When a cause and effect relationship can be scientifically and mediaclly proven, come back and talk to us.
> Well, I don't think his viewpoints are off. I've read the same thing myself SEVERAL times - osteoporosis in the U.S. is NOT generally caused by low calcium intake, it's usually caused by excessive protein intake!

Actually, the above statement is not quite true. Protein intake at any level lead to calcium excretion in the urine in a dose dependent manner. The more protein taken in, the more calcium excreted. There is no threshold level of protein to stay below.

This fact has led many researchers to reanalyze their data which typically find a slight positive correlation of bone density with calcium intake and a slight negative correlation with protein intake. If however, you look at the calcium to protein ratio, then a strong correlation with bone density is found.

All this means is with more protein, you need more calcium. At the same time, there is also a preferred ratio of calcium to magnesium and many have questioned whether here in the US, if magnesium intakes are adequate.