Calcium: the Amazing Body Booster

You know it as the bone builder, but here is calcium’s full healthy hot list: It strengthens your muscles, helps you slim, and may even prevent cancer. You need more than you’re getting, though. Here’s the plan.

- Kiera Carter

IIt’s not as though calcium is newly on our radar. By now, we’re all up to speed on the mineral’s impact on bone density. But as doctors look more closely at what other benefits calcium delivers to the body, and especially to a fit woman, they’re pretty excited about its impressive roster of achievements. The mineral helps maintain proper muscle function, aids weight loss, and also carries the capacity to prevent serious illnesses, cancer included.But many of us struggle to find ways to actually consume the high recommended dietary allowance of 1,000 mg a day, especially those who don’t eat dairy. As a result, half of adult women aren’t getting enough.

And taking calcium in supplement form has been linked to possible health issues, such as heart disease, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Heart Association. More on that later.