Lots of calcium, was Re: leg cramps

[Guest guest]

> I don't know for sure. I keep getting this memory of a porta-john

> worker on a radio show once describing the mounds of vitamin pills

> he has on the grate of the drain he empties in the truck into. In

> some cases he says he can actually read the lable of the vitamin

> pills! Gross, eh? Anyway I really am thinking about making sure

> stuff gets dissolved.

I know I'm being a curmudgeon, but I'm not sure I believe the guy.

The government requires specific dissolution times for vitamins. I

can maybe believe that some people's digestion is sufficiently

impaired that they couldn't dissolve even cotton candy much less

vitamin pills...however, I'd find it hard to believe that there are

that many vitamin poppers...that are that digestively impaired...that

use porta-johns...

> Good question. Anybody know how the body deals with these

> different sort of acids? I heard another guy on a radio show

> state that it takes our bodies weeks and weeks to excrete the

> citric acid in a single can of soda, and when the citric acid

> goes it takes calcium with it. My presumption then is that

> calcium citrate is a wash, i.e. you lose all the calcium you

> ingest. What happens to the lactic acid? Do our bodies

> actually use it anywhere? I know it helps our intestinal flora,

> and maybe the fauna too (sorry, a joke)...

I'm not sure what the exact elimination process is for any of these

acids, but I do know that they are used in our bodies for very

important processes...although I don't believe it's essential to get

them in your diet since the body is able to synthesize them itself.

Citric acid is an extremely important intermediary in the Krebs Cycle

(cellular metabolism).

As far as the excretion taking weeks to occur, I find that highly

unlikely. If that were the case, the people that I've known who

drink a quart or more of orange juice or soda each day would have

died of acute acidosis years ago.

> Aha, dissolving bones, which I think must be better than dissolving

> calcium pills. I forgot about using vinegar for broths, I always

> use saurkraut in a big crockpot for my bone stews. I never have

> noted sudden jumps in urine PH though, no matter how much broth

> I ate. I wonder why? I haven't tried vinegar though... Hmmm.

I think that part of the reason is that there isn't that much calcium

(or other minerals) in bone broth. The minerals in bone broth are

going to be in solution, and there's only so much mineral that can be

dissolved in a given amount of water. By adding vinegar and lowering

the pH, I believe you increase the amount that can be held in

solution, but I think you'd have to add a LOT of vinegar to

appreciably change the holding capacity of the amount of water that's

in a batch of stock.

I believe that the reason milk is able to hold so much more calcium

is because it's a colloid of calcium-containing protein (calcium

caseinate). While stock is also a colloid of the gelatin proteins,

they aren't calcium-bound that I'm aware of. That would mean that

the stock is only going to have the amount of calcium (and other

minerals) that can be held in solution. Even the fairly acidic

naturally carbonated spring waters only contain about 80 mg or less

of calcium per 8 oz serving. I would imagine that stock would

contain less than that rather than more.

I suspect that most of the mineralizing value of stock comes from the

full-spectrum balanced set of minerals it contains rather than the

quantity of total minerals...the balance of all the minerals might be

another reason you don't see a big pH swing like you do with isolated

high-potency calcium.