Calcium Tablets vs. Capsules: What’s Best?

The recommended daily dose of calcium is 1,000 mg per day. So, when you see a calcium supplement with 500 mg per tablet, it sounds great, right? The problem is that you are probably not absorbing that calcium tablet!

Be wary of calcium tablets that claim you can get all your needed calcium in one or two tablets per day. These products contain low quality minerals that are then compressed into a tablet, glued together and coated. This makes them hard for the body to break down and it is common that they pass through your digestive tract and into the toilet unaltered. That definitely won’t do anything for your bone strength!

The cheapest form of calcium is calcium carbonate, otherwise known as gym chalk. Other ground-up rock forms of calcium include bone meal, oyster shell, or dolomite. Another cheap form is calcium gluconate (9% calcium and 91% sugar glucose). These forms of calcium require large amounts of hydrochloric acid to make bioavailable, thus they have poor absorption. Once in your body they are not very biologically useful and even run a risk, depending on your underlying health, of calcifying your arteries or causing alarming breast lumps, gallstones, or kidney stones.

Calcium citrate is another popular calcium supplement that is better absorbed than gym chalk. It is 20% calcium and 80% citric acid. While some citric acid is fine as part of your diet, if you take 1000 mg of calcium in this form you will also be getting 4000 mg of citric acid, like eating a pound of tomatoes. This much citric acid can conk out your cell engines (mitochondria) by flooding their citric acid cycle with too much citrate (like flooding a car with gas). Individuals who are tired or fatigued often respond poorly to high amounts of citric acid, making them even more tired or giving them headaches.

High quality forms of calcium include MCHC, coral minerals with a natural 2:1 calcium to magnesium ratio, calcium AEP, and calcium malate. These forms of calcium are highly absorbable. They work with cofactor nutrients like vitamin D, vitamin K, silica, and boron to build healthy bones.

So, why do you never see these high quality forms of calcium in a tablet? Minerals like calcium and magnesium have a large molecular size and take up a lot of physical space in a capsule. You generally need to take more capsules of a high quality mineral supplement to reach the recommended daily intake for bone health. High quality calcium supplements will always be a powder inside a capsule or even just a powder product. Companies using high quality minerals would never compromise the absorbability by compressing these minerals into a tablet.

If a company sells a calcium supplement in a tablet form, they do not have absorbability or your health in mind. Know what you are taking!