I just ran across a very interesting article about the dangers of milk and calcium.
Of course we don’t drink toxic cow milk (antibiotics, hormones, etc.) and we substitute with ALMOND “milk”, but sometimes I thought I should take calcium.
Now I’m glad I didn’t.
A couple excerpts from
Horsetail as “calcium” supplement
Surprising but possibly highly effective
…
Several years ago I had occasion to advise a woman in her 70s about calcium absorption. She was formerly a professional dancer and teacher of dance. I had not seen her for some time until I saw her in March 1998 at a meeting where she was in a wheelchair. When I asked what happened she told me that four months before that she had been in a bad auto accident causing multiple fractures of her right tibia (shin bone) just below the knee. She was still in a wheelchair because according to her doctor her fractures were healing very slowly or not at all, and she found it extremely painful and difficult to move her leg and she could not put any weight on it.
I asked if she was taking supplemental calcium, and she said she had been taking about 1,000 to 1,200 mg per day. I advised her to cut down to no more than 400 mg of calcium per day and to take at least as much magnesium. I asked if she was taking horsetail, an herbal (plant) source of silica. She said she had not heard of horsetail, and was not taking any silica supplement. I suggested that she begin taking horsetail, as it is high in an easily absorbed form of silica (Ionic forms of mineral silica are also absorbable), and low in calcium, and is available inexpensively through health food stores and pharmacies. I advised her to take about six capsules daily with meals, as recommended on the bottle (about 2,640 mg of horsetail per day). I explained to her briefly why that might be helpful, and how it might also reduce the pain in her tibia. I talked to her a week later and asked how she was doing. She said for the past week her recovery was like “a miracle every day”; that her tibia was rapidly improving, the pain was less, she was finally gaining mobility, and she was able to start putting weight on her right leg by standing. She told me that she had followed my advice and bought some horsetail the day I talked to her and had taken it daily for the past week as recommended, and that she had also cut her calcium intake down to about 400 mg per day, and was taking 400 mg of magnesium per day. She continued this regimen. Within about two weeks she was out of her wheelchair and walking short distances using a walker, and she continued to make rapid improvement. Five weeks later she was walking with the aid of only a four-pronged cane, and six weeks later she was walking without assistance and got a car and began driving again. She said her doctors told her that her x-rays showed rapid healing of her bone after the time she started taking the horsetail and magnesium, and reduced her calcium intake. In contrast to her despair about her condition when I first talked to her, she was in a very positive mood each time I talked to her after she changed her regimen.
And here is another short example:
A third case was an eighty-one-year-old woman who fell and fractured her wrist in July 2000. Two months later it was not healing well, so in September I advised her to take supplemental horsetail. She took two capsules of the herb three times per day for a week, then one capsule three times per day. Five weeks later her doctors reported that her x-rays showed complete healing.
It’s a long and quite interesting article, well worth reading.
I’ll have to see whether we can grow Horsetail here. I just don’t like pills and don’t take any supplements.
