RELATED: Doing This During Mid-Life Makes Your Dementia Risk Soar, Experts Say. Although calcium helps maintain physical strength, data shows this supplement can also impact the brain, specifically in women. A 2016 study published in Neurology found that calcium supplementation could be associated with a higher risk of dementia for older women. Researchers examined 700 dementia-free women between the ages of 70 to 92 and living in Sweden, over the course of five years. Participants took many different examinations, including memory assessments and brain CT scans. They were also asked if they were taking calcium supplements. Out of the 98 women in the study who took calcium supplements, 14 percent of them developed dementia. On the other hand, out of the 602 women who did not take calcium, only 8 percent of them developed dementia. However, results found that certain women had a higher risk of dementia. In fact, women who took calcium and had a cerebrovascular disease—a condition that affects blood flow in the brain—were twice as likely to develop dementia than those who had a cerebrovascular disease and weren’t taking calcium. RELATED: If You’re Over 60, This Increases Your Dementia Risk by 55 Percent. Researchers further examined how cerebrovascular diseases, like stroke, are connected to women’s dementia risk and calcium intake. Findings showed that women who took supplements and had a history of stroke were nearly seven times more likely to develop dementia than women who had a history of a stroke and did not take calcium. When combined with calcium, strokes weren’t the only thing that impacted dementia risk. The study also looked at the women who had white matter lesions, an indicator for cerebrovascular disease, on their brains. Compared to those who didn’t have this marker, women with white matter lesions were three times as likely to get dementia. The study’s author, Silke Kern, MD expressed that these results aren’t to say that calcium intake is a bad thing. “It is important to note that our study is observational, so we cannot assume that calcium supplements cause dementia,” she said in a press release. Kern’s study notes that calcium is still essential for the body. So, on average, your daily calcium intake should consist of 1,000 to 1,200 milligrams a day. RELATED: For more health news sent directly to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. While men’s dementia risk may not be associated with calcium, this supplement can still affect their overall health. In a 2013 study published in the American Medical Association (AMA), researchers set out to discover how calcium supplements were associated with a risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) death. Participants consisted of 388,229 men and women between the age of 50 to 71, who took part in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study from 1995 to 1996. In 1995, they took a 124-item food frequency questionnaire, which documented calcium intake from food and supplements. After following up with participants nearly 12 years later, the AMA study found 3,974 women and 7,904 men had died due to CVD. Out of those participants who passed, 51 percent of men and 70 percent of women were taking calcium supplements. When looking more closely at each gender, results found that men who took more than 1,000 milligrams a day had an increased risk of CVD death, primarily due to heart disease.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb On the opposite side of the coin, CVD death, heart disease death, or cerebrovascular disease were not linked to women’s supplemental calcium intake. “Whether there is a sex difference in the cardiovascular effect of calcium supplement warrants further investigation,” the study says. “Given the extensive use of calcium supplement in the population, it is of great importance to assess the effect of supplemental calcium use beyond bone health.” As part of the AMA’s study release, Susanna C. Larsson, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden shared her commentary on the study and noted that more research about calcium supplements and CVD still needs to be done. And while calcium can be good for your bones, Larsson also emphasized that there are alternatives to supplements, including “low-fat dairy foods, beans, and green leafy vegetables, which contain not only calcium but also a cocktail of essential minerals and vitamins.” “These non-dairy food sources of calcium have the added health benefits and have recently been reported to improve glycemic control in persons with diabetes,” she added. “The paradigm ’the more the better’ is invalid for calcium supplementation.” RELATED: Eating This After Lunch Increases Your Risk of Dementia, Study Says.
