Calcium is an important mineral that your body needs in order to maintain normal function. Minerals are a subclass of micronutrients, which are components of food that serve important biological functions, but don't provide energy. There are many kinds of calcium available in foods and as supplements -- calcium carbonate is one example of a type of dietary calcium. Supplementation with calcium carbonate has a variety of benefits.
Calcium
You need calcium for a variety of reasons. The most familiar of calcium's roles in the body is as a component of the skeletal system -- calcium is part of the hard salt that gives your skeleton its strength and rigidity; if you're calcium deficient, your bones can become soft and deformed. Calcium also plays roles in the cardiovascular and muscular systems, however. It regulates the heartbeat and allows muscles to contract.
Calcium Carbonate
Calcium by itself is actually a metal, but samples of pure, metallic calcium are extremely rare. Instead, calcium occurs in nature more frequently as a salt, meaning a compound composed of a positively charged particle of calcium combined with a negatively charged particle of variable identity. The calcium you need to function is in the form of a salt; your body doesn't use pure metallic calcium. Calcium carbonate is an abundant calcium salt; it forms the bulk of seashells, marble and limestone, and is used as classroom chalk. You can also purchase calcium carbonate pills and tablets.
Calcium Supplementation
One of the major benefits of a calcium carbonate supplement is that it can help you meet your daily calcium requirements. Adult men younger than 71 -- and adult women younger than 51 -- need 1000 mg of calcium each day, according to MayoClinic.com. You can get calcium from dairy products, leafy greens, and a variety of other sources. If you're not getting enough dietary calcium, however, calcium carbonate makes an inexpensive supplement. One drawback to calcium carbonate, though, is that it's not as well absorbed by the body as other types of calcium, so you may need to take more calcium carbonate than you'd need of a more soluble calcium salt like calcium lactate.
Other Benefits
While calcium carbonate isn't the best-absorbed of the calcium supplements, it does have another major benefit. Because of the carbonate particle in calcium carbonate pills, the pills act as natural antacids. Carbonate reacts with excess stomach acid, producing water and carbon dioxide as products. You then expel the carbon dioxide by burping. For this reason, calcium carbonate makes an excellent choice of treatment if you have frequent, mild acid stomach -- you can treat your symptoms while simultaneously supplementing yourself with an important mineral.
References
- "Human Physiology"; Lauralee Sherwood, Ph.D.; 2004
- MayoClinic.com: Calcium
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