Remember how your mother ran after you when you were small so that you finish the entire glass of milk and she must have insisted that it is rich in calcium.
Calcium is an important nutrient for bone formation, muscle contraction, neuromuscular transmission and blood clotting. Moreover, it is essential for women
especially when her body is going through changes. During pregnancy, women need
calcium for the development of foetus. While during lactation period, it preserves mother’s bone and supplies proper amount of calcium to the baby.
Furthermore, calcium is more essential for women
during the age of 15 to 25 as it is the time to attain peak bone mass that help protect to avoid osteoporosis later in life.
A must in diet
The best way to obtain the required amount of calcium in everyday life is to consume a diet rich in calcium. Every dairy product provides calcium. Non-dairy food products like salmon, tofu, spinach, turnip, okra, broccoli, almonds, peas and beans are also good source of calcium.
But there are times when a woman needs more calcium than what she gets from food. Elaborating on this Professor Dr Heera Tuladhar, gynaecologist, Kist Medical College Hospital, Lalitpur, said, “During pregnancy and the time of onset of menopause and after menopause women must add calcium supplements to balance the quantity of calcium in body.”
Requirement for mothers
When a woman is pregnant there is
additional need of calcium in body thus she requires extra calcium. During that
period the
growing baby consumes calcium from mother’s bones. Dr Tuladhar elaborated, “Calcium supplied through food is inadequate for a pregnant woman. The baby growing within her also needs calcium to build strong bones and teeth, to develop a healthy heart, nerves and muscles plus to build blood-clotting abilities.”
Calcium supplement maintains the normal amount of calcium — one to two gram per day — in the blood and protects bones from the loss. She added, “A pregnant woman needs 500 gram extra than the regular calcium requirement. The baby will draw calcium from mother’s bones where 99 per cent of calcium is stored and if she doesn’t take the
required amount she is at risk of bone damage later.”
Rich in calcium mother’s milk fulfils baby’s calcium
requirement, but leaves the mother without calcium. “To avoid such situation calcium supplement is vital, as extra calcium intake for the
mother during lactation
period is 500 to 1000 gram per day,” added the doctor.
Few misconceptions Calcium and iron supplements are very important for a pregnant woman from her first trimester till the end of the lactation period. A misconception prevails that if a mother takes calcium supplement when pregnant, baby’s size becomes bigger creating trouble while
delivery. Dr Tuladhar cleared the doubt saying, “Calcium does not make the baby grow extra large. When there is unnecessary amount of calcium in mother’s body, kidney helps extract it out through excretion.”
Another misconception is that calcium intake develops stone in kidney, “but that is not true as long as a person takes doctor’s recommended calcium supplement.”
Menopause and bones Before puberty, both boys and girls gain bone mass consisting calcium in the same ratio. But after puberty men have higher bone mass than women. Furthermore, when the ovaries stop functioning after menopause a woman’s bone structure weakens leading to problem like osteoporosis, which is decreased density of bone or bone mass. According to Dr Tuladhar, this makes the bone vulnerable leading to breaking even after slight trauma like falling or even from coughing or sneezing.
Dr Tuladhar said, “After the age of 35 till menopause most of the women slowly lose bone mass collected in early age. But the rate increases rapidly in post menopause phase because of ovary’s dysfunction.” Talking further on this she said that estrogen produced by ovary helps absorb calcium and when this stops bones become fragile and weak increasing the chances of osteoporosis and fractures. She added, “To prevent fracture and damage in the bone, calcium supplement is essential for woman after certain age.”
2011年9月5日星期一
2011年5月15日星期日
Ministry of Agriculture says milk now melamine-free
The quality of the nation's fresh milk has improved and testing shows it is now free from melamine, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
The ministry, which oversees the production and collection of fresh milk, is responsible for ensuring its safety.
In an online notice issued by the ministry during the weekend, it said random tests conducted last year and during the first part of this year showed it was melamine-free and that quality was good. The ministry said it will carry out another special campaign soon to continue to guard against the use of the illegal additive.
Melamine is an industrial chemical that people have, at times, added to watered-down milk to make it appear to have a normal protein count.
The notice said more than 20,000 batches of fresh milk were tested and all passed the scrutiny during spot checks throughout 2010 and in the first quarter of this year.
"It shows the safety of fresh milk has significantly improved throughout the country," the ministry said.
During the past year, the ministry has taken steps to close sub-standard milk collection stations, which are partly blamed for the melamine scandal in 2008. It said it closed 6,890 milk collection stations nationwide during the campaign.
The 13,503 registered stations that remain and the 7,980 vehicles used to transport fresh milk are all now being operated under supervision.
The ministry has also trained some 5,000 dairy farmers and technicians on the technology used in the modern milk industry and explained the country's policies concerning dairy products.
However, experts questioned the thoroughness of the oversight.
"The government mainly cracks down on dairy farmers and milk collectors but pays little attention to milk's circulation, which involves distributors," Wang Dingmian, former vice-chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Dairy Association, told China Daily on Sunday.
Wang said milk distributors are in a state of anarchy and claimed no department has been trying to fill that regulatory gap.
Food safety experts also said the authority should make changes in the way it carries out spot checks so tainted milk does not slip through the loopholes.
"A good sample cannot ensure all the other products from the same batch are also good," said Sang Liwei, a food-safety lawyer in Beijing and a representative of the Global Food Safety Forum, a non-governmental organization.
Wang said, most of the time, dairy farms and businesses "make preparations for" the inspections. He claimed farms and businesses are warned by the local authorities to "be prepared" before the food safety commission swoops to conduct a spot check.
"The watchdog cannot see the real situation if the shady food processors are hidden and the safety loopholes still exist," Wang said.
Nationwide outrage about the safety of milk erupted in 2008 when melamine-tainted baby formula sickened about 300,000 infants and took the lives of six children who had kidney stones and other kidney damage.
Following the scandal, the government took steps to crack down on illegal practices in the dairy industry but reports about unsafe milk continue to surface from time to time.
Several dairy farms in Sanmen county, Zhejiang province, were recently found to have been adding illegal additives and using syringe bottles that had been discarded by hospitals as milk containers, according to the Oriental Morning Post on Sunday.
Earlier, police in Chongqing municipality confiscated 26,000 kilograms of milk powder that was tainted with melamine and that had been produced before 2009.
The ministry, which oversees the production and collection of fresh milk, is responsible for ensuring its safety.
In an online notice issued by the ministry during the weekend, it said random tests conducted last year and during the first part of this year showed it was melamine-free and that quality was good. The ministry said it will carry out another special campaign soon to continue to guard against the use of the illegal additive.
Melamine is an industrial chemical that people have, at times, added to watered-down milk to make it appear to have a normal protein count.
The notice said more than 20,000 batches of fresh milk were tested and all passed the scrutiny during spot checks throughout 2010 and in the first quarter of this year.
"It shows the safety of fresh milk has significantly improved throughout the country," the ministry said.
During the past year, the ministry has taken steps to close sub-standard milk collection stations, which are partly blamed for the melamine scandal in 2008. It said it closed 6,890 milk collection stations nationwide during the campaign.
The 13,503 registered stations that remain and the 7,980 vehicles used to transport fresh milk are all now being operated under supervision.
The ministry has also trained some 5,000 dairy farmers and technicians on the technology used in the modern milk industry and explained the country's policies concerning dairy products.
However, experts questioned the thoroughness of the oversight.
"The government mainly cracks down on dairy farmers and milk collectors but pays little attention to milk's circulation, which involves distributors," Wang Dingmian, former vice-chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Dairy Association, told China Daily on Sunday.
Wang said milk distributors are in a state of anarchy and claimed no department has been trying to fill that regulatory gap.
Food safety experts also said the authority should make changes in the way it carries out spot checks so tainted milk does not slip through the loopholes.
"A good sample cannot ensure all the other products from the same batch are also good," said Sang Liwei, a food-safety lawyer in Beijing and a representative of the Global Food Safety Forum, a non-governmental organization.
Wang said, most of the time, dairy farms and businesses "make preparations for" the inspections. He claimed farms and businesses are warned by the local authorities to "be prepared" before the food safety commission swoops to conduct a spot check.
"The watchdog cannot see the real situation if the shady food processors are hidden and the safety loopholes still exist," Wang said.
Nationwide outrage about the safety of milk erupted in 2008 when melamine-tainted baby formula sickened about 300,000 infants and took the lives of six children who had kidney stones and other kidney damage.
Following the scandal, the government took steps to crack down on illegal practices in the dairy industry but reports about unsafe milk continue to surface from time to time.
Several dairy farms in Sanmen county, Zhejiang province, were recently found to have been adding illegal additives and using syringe bottles that had been discarded by hospitals as milk containers, according to the Oriental Morning Post on Sunday.
Earlier, police in Chongqing municipality confiscated 26,000 kilograms of milk powder that was tainted with melamine and that had been produced before 2009.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)