Calcium in Your Arteries?

Today I was working on an article for FitnessRx for Women that in part, involved arterial calcification. Months ago my dad told me he couldn't take too much calcium because of calcification. I was a bit stumped. Why hadn't I thought of that potential relationship before? Leave it to him, a man that reads more than anyone I know and probably knows more about nutrition that 98% of the population to throw me a curveball.

Because of his question, I did some in-depth reading about the walls of our arteries and the process of mineralization - calcium deposits on your arterial walls, much like hard water deposits minerals in pipes. And when I say in-depth, I was reading stuff that I had to re-read a few times just to totally grasp what the authors were saying. But, I had to at least come back with an intelligent conversation piece to his comment.

What did I find? Basically mineralization in our arteries is one process we don't know every single aspect of. In fact, we don't even know the exact sequence of events in many people. But, I'll leave you with this, we need calcium for bone strength but there is an upper limit (yes, we don't need to go crazy on calcium tablets). For the rest, you'll have to pick up the next copy of FitnessRx for Women.