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(Updated) The war on milk has shifted fronts. First it was sugar-laden chocolate milk, which parents and school administrators battled in recent years to remove from school-lunch menus. Now, it’s plain old moo that’s under fire. On Thursday, a national doctors group petitioned the U.S. government to remove milk as a required food group from the National School Lunch Program, the federally assisted program that has provided lunch to millions of public school kids since 1946. The doctors’ reasoning: milk doesn’t help protect kids’ bones. The promotion of milk to help build strong bones in kids is, “in effect, the...

I searched FR and found no notice of the recall, and sure have not seen it on the news. I know I've been hit and miss due to a lot of health issues this past year, but we do watch the nightly news. And anything this big would have caught my attention because I keep Maalox in the house for occasional mild stomach upset/reflux when I eat something that disagrees with my stomach. Went to buy a bottle of Maalox and tried several different stores and types, finally one of the gals at a local Kroger's said Maalox had been...

Vitamin D is known for helping create strong bones and is a key regulator of serum calcium levels. Recent studies, however, have not offered much proof that Vitamin D supplements prevents bone fractures.

( Summary) Magnesium balances calcium and its functions within the human body. It is believed that the adult human body contains approximately 1200 grams of calcium, with approximately 99% of it in the skeleton, and approximately 1% (about 12 grams) in extracellular fluids, intracellular structures, and cell membranes. This approximately 1% plays an essential role, in conjunction with magnesium, in the functions of nerve conduction, muscle contraction, blood clotting, and membrane permeability. It is believed that serum calcium concentration is maintained by several hormones, including estrogen and testosterone. It is known that dietary protein enhances calcium absorption, and dietary phosphorus...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new analysis of earlier research finds that both higher vitamin D intake and higher blood levels of the vitamin's active form are linked to lower risk of colon and rectal cancers. In 18 studies that included more than 10,000 people, colon cancer risk was as much as 33 percent lower in subjects with the highest blood levels of vitamin D compared to those with the lowest levels, researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Those with the highest intake of vitamin D through supplements and food had 12 percent lower risk than those...

two new elements have been added to the periodic table...The elements were recognized by an international committee of chemists and physicists. For now, they are called Elements 114 and 116 — permanent names and symbols will be chosen later.People are not likely to run into either of them. Scientists make them in labs by smashing atoms of other elements together to create the new ones...the new ones are short-lived. Atoms of 114 disintegrate within a few seconds, while 116 disappears in a fraction of a second, ..Both elements were discovered by a collaboration of scientists from Livermore and Russia. They...

Most Americans and Canadians up to age 70 need no more than 600 international units (IUs) of vitamin D per day to maintain health, and those 71 and older may need as much as 800 IUs, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The amount of calcium needed ranges, based on age, from 700 to 1,300 milligrams per day... > A large amount of evidence, which formed the basis of the new intake values, confirms the roles of calcium and vitamin D in promoting skeletal growth and maintenance and the amounts needed to avoid poor bone health. >...

Calcium supplements, which many people consume hoping to ward off osteoporosis, may increase the risk of heart attack by as much as 30 percent, researchers reported Friday...(snip) ...While experts are not certain about the biological mechanism by which calcium supplements may damage the body, studies in the past have linked high levels of blood calcium to more heart attacks and damage to blood vessels, Reid said. "When you take calcium supplements, your blood calcium level goes up over the following four to six hours and goes up to the top end of the normal range," he said. "That doesn't happen...

Excessive intake of calcium supplements may have adverse effect on health, notes a study.  Postmenopausal and pregnant women, transplant recipients, patients with bulimia (an eating disorder) and individuals on dialysis face the highest risk of developing the calcium-alkali syndrome.  The incidence of the calcium-alkali or the milk-alkali syndrome is growing in large parts, because of widespread use of over-the-counter calcium and vitamin D supplements.  Study authors Stanley Goldfarb and Ami Patel from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (UPSM) recommend changing milk-alkali syndrome's name to calcium-alkali syndrome because it is now associated with a large calcium intake, not just...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Getting a bit more calcium in your diet could help you live longer, new research suggests. Swedish researchers found that men who consumed the most calcium in food were 25 percent less likely to die over the next decade than their peers who took in the least calcium from food. None of the men took calcium supplements. The findings are in line with previous research linking higher calcium intake with lower mortality in both men and women, the researchers point out in a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology. While many researchers have looked...

SNOWMASS, COLO. — Serious questions exist about the safety and efficacy of the popular practice of high-dose vitamin D supplementation across a broad swath of the population. One of these concerns is that not all of the extra calcium absorption promoted by boosting vitamin D is going into bone to prevent fractures. Some of it may actually be taken up by atherosclerotic plaque, increasing the risk of cardiovascular events, Dr. Lenore M. Buckley cautioned at a symposium sponsored by the American College of Rheumatology. This is of particular concern in patients with known coronary disease and for those at high...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Taking both calcium and vitamin D supplements on a daily basis reduces the risk of bone fractures, regardless of whether a person is young or old, male or female, or has had fractures in the past, a large study of nearly 70,000 patients from throughout the United States and Europe has found. The study included data published in 2006 from clinical trials conducted at UC Davis in Sacramento as part of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). It appears online in this week’s edition of the British Medical Journal. “What is important about this very large study is...

a Department of Safety Research on Biologics, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Gakuen, Musashimurayama, Tokyo 208, Japan b Department of Bacteriology, Kinki University School of Medicine, Osakasayama, Osaka 589, Japan c Animal Production and Grassland Division, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan Received 5 December 1996; Revised 20 January 1997; accepted 21 January 1997. Available online 12 December 1997. Abstract Effects of calcium phosphate and aluminium hydroxide adjuvants with different physical properties were examined in guinea pigs for local histopathological reactions, electron-microscopical changes of macrophages and adjuvanticity on total IgG antibody response to subcutaneously administered...

In studying the preventive effects of vitamin D, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have proposed a new model of cancer development that hinges on a loss of cancer cells' ability to stick together. The model, dubbed DINOMIT, differs substantially from the current model of cancer development, which suggests genetic mutations as the earliest driving forces behind cancer. "The first event in cancer is loss of communication among cells due to, among other things, low vitamin D and calcium levels," said epidemiologist Cedric Garland, DrPH, professor of family and preventive medicine at the...

Vitamin D And Calcium Influence Cell Death In The Colon, Researchers Find ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2008) — Researchers at Emory University are learning how vitamins and minerals in the diet can stimulate or prevent the appearance of colon cancer. Emory investigators will present their findings on biological markers that could influence colon cancer risk in three abstracts at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in San Diego. In a clinical study of 92 patients, supplementing diet with calcium and vitamin D appeared to increase the levels of a protein called Bax that controls programmed cell death in the colon....

Calcium tablets 'raise risk of heart attacks' By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 2:28am GMT 16/01/2008 Calcium supplements taken by about a million women could increase their risk of suffering heart attacks and strokes, scientists said yesterday. Researchers found that women aged 55 and over who took the tablets to combat osteoporosis were almost 50 per cent more likely to have a heart attack than those given placebos. Their chances of having a stroke during the five years of the study were elevated by more than a third. Three million people in Britain suffer from osteoporosis, with one in...

Largest, longest study ever supports screening and prevention of osteoporosis.One bone mineral density test can accurately predict a woman's chance of spinal fractures 15 years down the line, new research shows. And, according to the largest and longest prospective study of osteoporosis ever, women who had a spinal fracture at the beginning of the study had four times the risk of sustaining another fracture later on. The bottom line: "Women need to talk to their doctors about the risk of osteoporosis," according to Jane Cauley, lead author of the study and professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate...

Calcium linked to dementia Last Updated: 1:27am BST 14/05/2007 Calcium and vitamin D in dairy products may help to cause brain damage and dementia in older people, new research suggests. Scientists believe too much calcium can narrow blood vessels in the brain, leading to neural damage. The effect may be compounded by vitamin D, which regulates calcium retention and activity. Researchers made the discovery after scanning the brains of 79 men and 153 women aged up to 86. All had at least a number of brain lesions - areas of tissue damage. But those consuming the most calcium and vitamin...

People taking powerful antacid drugs called proton pump inhibitors face an increased risk of hip fracture, University of Pennsylvania researchers report. Common proton pump inhibitors include Aciphex, Nexium, Prevacid, Prilosec and Protonix; they are often prescribed for stomach conditions such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The report is published in the Dec. 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "If you take acid-suppression medications on a chronic basis and you are 50 or older, your hip fracture risk is even higher than usual," said study author Dr.Yu-Xiao Yang, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology. "In addition,...

The biggest study ever of calcium and vitamin D supplements for older women showed they offered only limited protection against broken bones, raising questions over what has been an article of faith among doctors and nutritionists. The supplements seemed to reduce the risk of broken hips in women over 60 and also helped those who took the supplements most regularly. But as to preventing bone fractures overall, vitamin D and calcium flunked in these healthy women. One of the researchers, Dr. Norman Lasser at New Jersey Medical School, said the study is "not as ringing an endorsement of calcium as...