Salt and Osteoporosis - what to do next ?

Too much salt in the food you eat forces your body to extract calcium from your bones to counteract the acidity that goes with too much salt in your food. One way to respond is to get a lot of calcium into your diet to try and reduce how much calcium is sucked out of your bones.


Last November the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology had a long article about using Potassium Citrate to at least partially neutralize an acidic western style eating style.

The study came to the conclusion it was the citrate that was more important than the potassium because a parallel study of taking Potassium Chloride showed some improvement but not nearly as much as Potassium Citrate.

A bottle of Potassium Citrate will cost about $10 for 180 capsules.


Of course there are a lot of other things to do to protect your bones

• keep salt taken per day below 2300 milligrams - even this amount of salt leads to 40 milligrams of calcium being lost from your skeleiumton
  
• keep the caffeine down - a good cup of coffee will cause a loss of 20 milligrams of calcium


• easy on the sodas - the phosphoric acid in many carbonated soft drinks increase calcium loss.
  
  Is Potasium Citrate the magic answer ? Probably not but the article I mentioned earlier showed that after about a year of taking Potassium Citrate, hip bone density went up. Remember this was a small study - 161 post-menopausal women - but an indicator to remember.