need help!!
#212367 - 09/11/05 10:15 AM
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Honey_bun
Reged: 03/09/05
Posts: 131
Loc: Canada!
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My doctor told me she wants me to start taking calcium bicarbonate. Does anyone have a problem with that? any tummy troubles? What exactly is it? Is it hard on your tummy? I am getting no source of calcium..and havnt for about 6-8 months...so i need some bad! Any suggestions or advice or stories would be great! thanks!!
melissa
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Well if it is calcium carbonate (calcium bicarbonate is just baking soda, heh  ), that's your basic calcium supplement. Calcium can be helpful if you're D but might be a bit more difficult if you're C (because calcium can be constipating). If you are C and worried about your calcium intake, consider taking a supplement with both calcium and magnesium (which has the opposite effect).
Most calcium supplements are sourced from calcium carbonate, and there are lots available (and it's also the cheapest kind). Make sure you take it AFTER a meal because it needs stomach acids to be broken down and it will also be much easier on your stomach that way.
Avoid calcium citrate-based calcium supplements because those have their own acid in them (citric acid - the idea being you can take them on an empty stomach because they don't need stomach acid) - but that acid can be very irritating to the stomach, especially for IBS I'd imagine.
Also avoid anything sourced from bonemeal or anything like that - recent studies have shown that these contain dangerously high levels of lead (they also come from bones from animal slaughterhouses, yuck  )
HTH! 
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Re: need help!!
#212512 - 09/11/05 10:29 PM
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Sand
Reged: 12/13/04
Posts: 4490
Loc: West Orange, NJ (IBS-D)
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Well, here's what I came up with when I did research on calcium supplements a while back:
calcium citrate is good if you're constipated: Citracal
calcium carbonate is good if you have diarrhea:
Tums (but they have mineral oil)
Caltrate
OsCal
Viactiv (but most - perhaps all - flavors have dairy)
I'm IBS-D and I take Tums. I do fine with them, but I started with a very low dose - 200 mg of calcium per day - and worked my way up to 1500 mg very slowly.
Please do take some kind of calcium. Even if you're in your teens, twenties, or early thirties, you need it because those are the years when your body lays down good solid bone in your skeleton - it's your savings account for your later years.
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