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  4. In regards to calcium in pregnancy, I know you recommend Nutrient 950, which has 300 mg. I have a patient who is on a Paleo template following closely your guidelines and Healthy Baby Code. Her doctor wants her on an additional thousand milligrams of calcium, Tums, of all things. I read some research showing a thousand milligrams of calcium supplementation assisting in healthy baby weight. She’s eating a nutrient-dense diet that brings her over a thousand milligrams of calcium including her prenatal.

In regards to calcium in pregnancy, I know you recommend Nutrient 950, which has 300 mg. I have a patient who is on a Paleo template following closely your guidelines and Healthy Baby Code. Her doctor wants her on an additional thousand milligrams of calcium, Tums, of all things. I read some research showing a thousand milligrams of calcium supplementation assisting in healthy baby weight. She’s eating a nutrient-dense diet that brings her over a thousand milligrams of calcium including her prenatal.

Chris Kresser:  I don’t think that’s necessary. You have to recall that doctors, even OB/GYNs, the kind of recommendations that they’re tailoring are to a general population. It’s not following that kind of diet. And I haven’t looked at that specific research but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something a little bit off there. I mean, think about this from an evolutionary perspective. How many of our ancestors were taking a thousand milligrams of calcium during pregnancy? Zero, of course. They likely were getting a fair amount of calcium in their diet through consumption of various bone products and some of the plant-based forms of calcium. And then our later ancestors that started consuming dairy products were getting them through dairy. You haven’t mentioned whether she’s consuming dairy products, but if she is or can, that would be a good idea and that’s what I recommend in the Healthy Baby Code, and calcium is one of the reasons for that. The other thing that’s left out typically in the thought process around this is the status of vitamin D and K2, as you will see. You probably are already aware, but you’ll see in the blood chemistry unit when we start going over all this stuff in detail, vitamin D and K2 status are arguably more important than absolute levels of calcium intake, provided it’s above a certain threshold. Because vitamin D and K2 regulate calcium metabolism and make sure it gets where it needs to get. So in the conventional Western diet, where you have a bunch of people who are deficient in D and K2, they may need more calcium in their diet or from supplements because their calcium regulatory processes are not functioning. And so they need to kind of a brute force more calcium into their system in order to overcome that. Whereas someone that’s eating a balanced, nutrient-dense diet and is getting adequate levels of calcium doesn’t need a whole big whack of supplemental calcium on top of that. So hopefully that makes sense.

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