Traditional Chinese Medicine Parenting: Question 9 - Do children need calcium supplements?

Traditional Chinese Medicine Parenting: Question 9 - Do children need calcium supplements?

Answer: Throughout history, there has never been a so-called supplement known as calcium. According to modern understanding, calcium is said to make children's bones strong, support rapid growth, and prevent fractures in the elderly. But let's take a look at the Han Dynasty woman's corpse unearthed at Mawangdui over 1,600 years ago—her bones are still intact. So, how is it that we, living people, might not have bones?

According to media reports, a 90-year-old woman was discovered in the Huangshan Mountains. She carried a box of water up the mountain every day to a small shop, earning 10 RMB to supplement her household income. Modern medical examinations found no health issues with this woman, and certainly no calcium deficiency. She never knew what calcium tablets or vitamins were, yet she lived a very healthy life. Why is that?

The human body certainly needs calcium, but the calcium found in supplements is not the same. Artificially extracted calcium is not easily absorbed by the human body; instead, it tends to deposit in the organs, contributing to the formation of gallstones and kidney stones. A normal diet already provides sufficient nutrition for children. Regarding fractures, they are not necessarily less likely because of higher calcium levels; rather, it is the collagen content in the bones that matters. Consider whether a dry tree branch or a flexible rubber rod is more likely to break. This is why traditional Chinese supplements have always included collagen-rich foods like bird's nest, fish maw, ejiao (donkey-hide gelatin), deer antler glue, and shark fin. These foods help increase the body's flexibility by supplementing collagen.

Conclusion: Calcium tablets and calcium supplements (including vitamins, lecithin, etc.) are merely products of pharmaceutical companies. When they need to sell these products, they must come up with a reasonable justification. The promotion of calcium and vitamin supplementation is just the reasoning they have devised.