What is Calcium?

Featuring Dr. Wade, MD, FRCP
What is Calcium?
Duration: 1 minute, 25 seconds

Calcium is an important supplement like a number of other minerals that we take.  

We get calcium primarily in our diet and the importance is that calcium is important for your health and your teeth, for your bone and for muscles as well as some other function of cells. So, calcium is a crucial supplement that we all take and it is important we get the right amount of calcium in our diet.

So, we get calcium in all sorts of foods. The average, typical non-dairy diet would give us about 300 to 700 milligrams of calcium a day.  

We like to target calcium around 1200 milligrams a day, so most people who are not taking any extra dairy product in their diet will need some extra calcium.  

There are two ways to do that. You can actually add dairy to your diet. Calcium and dairy is an excellent source of calcium. An eight-ounce glass of milk will give you 300 milligrams of calcium.  

Six ounces of yogurt can give you about 300 milligrams of calcium. So, you have a glass of milk and six ounces of yogurt a day, you have 600 milligrams plus your diet, you probably get pretty close to 1200 milligrams a day.  

So, it is fairly easy to get it. Typically, most adults if they are avoiding calcium will get a little bit less than they should, so you may want to take a little bit of supplement of calcium.    

Presenter: Dr. John Wade, Rheumatologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Rheumatologist