I Took Calcium Because I Didn't Want My Daughter Helping Me Out of Bed (But It Got Worse)

After menopause, I wanted to keep looking after myself. Reading about the mineral in my bone-health plan raised a question I had never thought to ask.

The picture that stayed with me was my daughter standing beside my bed, waiting to help me up.

She would do it. That was part of what hurt. She would move things around at work, come over before breakfast and tell me it was no trouble, while I tried to work out whether I could make it to the bathroom without asking her again.

None of that had happened. I was 58, and she still called me when she needed something.

But after my bone scan, I had started thinking about a fall in a way I never had before. A slip on the kitchen floor could mean more than a sore afternoon. In my mind, it could be the point when everybody else's day started revolving around mine.

I wanted to keep being the person she rang for help.

So I took the calcium in the bone-health plan my doctor and I had discussed. The bottle stood beside the breakfast bowls, where I would see it every morning.

There were already days when I felt older than I wanted to. After a bad night's sleep, I could spend the afternoon thinking about when I could finally go to bed again. Menopause had made it harder to know what to expect from my body.

The bone plan gave me something I could actually do. I followed it, kept the next appointment and tried to stop turning every ordinary day into a picture of my future.

When the bottle was nearly empty, I turned it over to check the serving. I was about to buy the same thing again. Before I did, I wanted to understand what I was committing to keep taking, so I looked up the research behind calcium supplements.

The word I hadn't expected to find was "arteries"

I had gone looking for a little more confidence before I bought the next bottle. Instead, I found myself looking at the one I already had as though I no longer knew what was in it.

Researchers had scanned the heart arteries of thousands of people, then scanned them again about ten years later. Among people who started with no calcium in those arteries, the ones taking calcium supplements were 22% more likely to have new deposits show up, even after the researchers allowed for age, weight, smoking and other differences. [1]

I took mine every morning, and I hardly thought about it anymore.

Calcium is what makes bone hard, but an artery is supposed to stay soft so it can stretch with every heartbeat. When calcium builds up in the wall, the artery can stiffen, and stiffer arteries go along with higher pressure. [2]

Then I read about the arteries that feed the heart itself. Calcium can sit inside plaque, along with fat and cholesterol. As the plaque grows, the passage narrows. And if a piece of plaque breaks open, a clot can form on top of it and cut off the blood to part of the heart. That's a heart attack. [3]

Then I found out doctors can measure that calcium. A scan of the heart arteries gives it a score. In a study of more than 6,700 people, the ones with the highest scores were almost ten times as likely to have a heart attack or another coronary problem within about four years as people whose arteries showed no calcium at all. [11]

I looked over at the bottle by the breakfast bowls. Calcium in the arteries was the thing that scan was counting, and the first study had found that people taking pills like mine were more likely to start building some. Nobody has shown the pills cause heart attacks, and other research on calcium and the heart has been mixed. [9] But until that evening, I hadn't known there was a question to ask at all.

I put my hand on the table and stopped reading for a moment.

There were two things in what I'd read. One was the wall itself turning hard. The other was a clot closing the passage.

I had pictured a fall. I hadn't pictured heart disease.

In the picture I'd been trying to keep away, my daughter was helping me out of bed because I'd broken something.

Now I could see her there after a heart attack. She would be asking whether I could manage the stairs, whether I'd eaten, whether somebody ought to stay with me while she went to work.

I could hear myself telling her to go, even if I wanted her to stay.

And this wasn't a rare picture. In 2023, heart disease killed about 1 in every 5 women who died in this country, more than any other cause. [10] I had worried about my hips for a year and never once about my heart.

It doesn't always give you a warning first, either. Sometimes coronary heart disease is silent, with no symptoms at all until the heart attack itself. [4] One ordinary morning you're fine, and the next your daughter is the one making the phone calls.

Then I thought about the stairs.

There were times when I'd carried the laundry up and stopped on the landing to catch my breath. I'd set the basket down, wait a moment and carry it the rest of the way. I had told myself it was age, or the bad nights, and that I'd feel more like myself after some real rest.

When heart disease does give a warning, it can show up as breathlessness or pressure in the chest when you're active. [4]

No wonder that landing had started to bother me. I didn't know what it meant for me, and I knew I couldn't work that out at the kitchen table. So I wrote down what happened on the stairs and booked an appointment with my doctor for the following week. If it had ever come with chest pain, I'd have called for help that minute.

Every answer seemed to come with another bottle

While I waited for the appointment, I went looking for how the body keeps calcium out of the places that are meant to stay soft.

That search took me straight into an argument other women were already having. One woman wrote that you should never take calcium without K2. Another said her clinician thought K2 was all hype and not enough evidence.

So I gave myself a rule. I wasn't going to add anything just because I was frightened. If something new went beside the breakfast bowls, it had to have something to do with the two things I'd read about that night: the wall going hard and the clot that can close the passage.

The first one turned out to have a name. The body makes a protein in the artery wall called matrix Gla protein, or MGP, that helps stop calcium from settling where it shouldn't. It needs vitamin K to switch it on. [5]

I thought of it as a guard the body already had. Without enough vitamin K, the guard is there but can't do its job properly.

Then I found the study that made me stop rolling my eyes. Researchers followed 244 healthy women after menopause for three years. Some took a placebo, and the others took 180 micrograms a day of MK-7, a form of vitamin K2. [6]

In the K2 group, a blood marker of the switched-off guard dropped by about half compared with the placebo group. The K2 group's arteries also did better on one test of stiffness, especially in women whose arteries were stiffer to begin with. A company that makes K2 paid for the study, and it didn't count heart attacks, so I kept that in mind.

But these were women my age, followed for three years, and in their blood more of the guard had been switched on.

While I was reading, my daughter called to ask whether she could borrow my cake pan. I went to the cabinet to make sure it was there and told her to come and get it whenever she liked.

It was such an ordinary thing to be asked, and that was why it mattered. I wanted more calls like that. I wanted to be the one standing at the cabinet finding what she needed, rather than have her standing at mine because I couldn't get up to look.

The Japanese breakfast food that had both halves

When I looked up where K2 comes from, one food kept coming up. Natto is a Japanese breakfast made from fermented soybeans, and it's the richest food source of MK-7 there is. [5]

Then I found the second thing in it. Natto also contains an enzyme called nattokinase. In lab studies, it breaks down fibrin, the tough mesh a clot is built on. In an eight-week study of adults with raised blood pressure, people taking nattokinase saw their top number fall about five and a half points more than people on a placebo. [8, 12]

So the guard for the wall and something aimed at fibrin were sitting in the same bowl of breakfast.

So I bought a pack of natto from the Asian grocery. I couldn't get past the smell, and the strings that followed the spoon finished me off. I tried twice more and knew I wasn't going to eat it every morning for the rest of my life.

I also looked at plain K2 bottles. They covered the guard, and that's a sensible start. But they only covered the guard, and I wanted something working on the fibrin side too.

Two softgels next to the calcium

That's how I came across product from brand. I nearly closed the page, because it looked like exactly the kind of bottle I'd promised myself I wouldn't buy out of fear. Then I checked it against my rule. It's a heart-and-circulation formula built around those same two things from natto: vitamin K2 as MK-7, for the guard in the artery wall, and nattokinase, for the fibrin side. It has a few supporting ingredients as well, and the page says the serving is two softgels a day. [7]

It answered my rule. It went beside the calcium, not instead of it, and it had something for both: the guard for the wall, and an enzyme aimed at fibrin.

I took the label to my appointment, along with my note about the stairs.

My doctor listened to my heart, did an ECG and ordered some blood tests. My blood pressure was 141 over 88, higher than I'd thought. She didn't find anything that needed urgent treatment, but she told me to walk every day and to check my pressure at home.

Then I showed her the label. Nattokinase and vitamin K both need a doctor's check if you're on a blood thinner like warfarin, take daily aspirin or another anti-clotting medicine, have a bleeding problem or have surgery coming up. [5, 8] None of that was me. She didn't tell me to take it or not take it, but she checked it against everything I take and was fine with me keeping my calcium and vitamin D exactly as they were.

I started product the next morning.

What changed by week eight

For the first couple of weeks I didn't notice anything, and honestly I didn't expect to. I took the two softgels with breakfast, next to the calcium, and I started walking around the park after dinner.

I wrote my blood pressure in a notebook every morning. In the first week it averaged 139 over 87. By week eight, the average was 134 over 84.

That's five points. I was walking too, so I can't hand the softgels all the credit, and I don't need to. I just liked seeing the number move the right way for once.

The stairs changed first, and that was the walking, I'm sure of it. Somewhere around the sixth week, I carried a full basket of laundry up and realized at the top that I hadn't stopped on the landing.

The guard part I can't feel at all. Nobody feels an artery wall. That part I take on the strength of that three-year study, the same way I take calcium for bones I'll need at 80.

Last Saturday my daughter called again. She was moving to a new apartment and wanted to know if I could come over and help her pack the kitchen. I was there by nine. I carried boxes down two flights of stairs, and at lunch she handed me the cake pan back with a lemon cake in it.

The bottle beside your breakfast bowls

If you take calcium for your bones, you'll probably take it again tomorrow morning, and the morning after that. It's aimed at your bones, and you should keep taking it if that's your plan.

But nothing in that bottle is aimed at your artery walls or at the fibrin side. Heart disease can give no warning, [4] so I'd rather pay attention to that side now, with my doctor, while I'm still the one carrying the boxes.

Look at product, and take the label to your doctor or pharmacist so they can check it against everything you take. Keep your calcium, your vitamin D and anything you've been prescribed.

brand gives you 90 days to try it. If it isn't right for you, send it back for a full refund.

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