by Louise Mclean
Updated 3rd January 2024
One of my friends has been suffering from osteoarthritis in her hips since 2010, with the right hip being the worst. She did not want to have hip operations and used homeopathy and supplements.
She had been taking calcium supplements and Vitamin D3 in increasing amounts for 15 years, acting on the 'expert advice' of a friend with a PhD in nutrition.
From one 500mg calcium supplement per day from 2005, she increased it to 1000mg calcium a day around 2017.
She then had a massive calcium problem but this was substantially worsened by a very high Vitamin D3 intake, which was increased on the advice of her nutritionist friend, from 1000iu to 20,000iu per day between 2013-2020.
So by 2020 she was taking 1000mg of calcium and 20,000 vitamin D3 per day!
In 2020, she discovered that it was in fact essential to take Vitamin K2 when you take Vitamin D3. Excessively high Vitamin D3 intake by itself will pull the calcium out of your bones and dump it into the bloodstream, even causing skeletal abnormalities. However, the K2 will put the calcium back into the bones.
The current recommended Vitamin D3 dosage is between 600 to 2,000 international units per day but my friend was taking an extremely high D3 intake of 20,000iu per day for three and a half years, which was pulling calcium out of her bones.
My friend soon realised that she was suffering from an extremely dangerous level of Hypercalcemia!
She was in so much excruciating pain, that in 2020 she wondered if she actually had 'calcium crystals' in her body, as it felt like she was being pricked with broken glass! When she looked this up, she saw that yes, in fact it is quite possible to have calcium crystals on your nerves, muscles, bones and joints, in fact anywhere in the body!
Calcium is the hardest substance in the human body, so excessive amounts cause extreme stiffness! It is actually stone. As an example, the White Cliffs of Dover are made up of calcium carbonate, which according to this article, can eventually turn to marble!
It was when she was sent a video of herself dancing in August 2017 and picking something up quickly from the floor, that she wondered how she had gone downhill so quickly that by the spring of 2019 she could hardly walk, never mind dance or bend down to pick up anything from the floor! She had started walking with a stick since September 2018.
In the autumn of 2020, someone told her about how taking excessive amounts of vitamin D without Vitamin K2 will pull calcium out of your bones. This was a Eureka moment! She had already stopped taking Vitamin D3 in May 2020.
Vitamin D3 is a hormone and actually stores in the fat of the body, which means that even after you stop taking it, it must slowly detox. She bought Vitamin K2 to offset the stored D3, bearing in mind that the D3 would still be coming out of her fat stores for some time.
(Calcium and Vitamin D3 store in the body but for example Vitamin C and magnesium, do not).
So she was full of ingested calcium, plus calcium pulled from the bones by the excess D3, all of which had built up in her body, yet the idea had been instilled in her by her friend that it was essential to carry on taking calcium supplements!
By 2020 she was in excruciating pain and could hardly move at all and she felt like a stone statue from the waist down!
Eventually she found out that it is actually unnecessary to take calcium supplements at all because we get lots of calcium in our food already. In fact when we get older, we actually have more calcium in our bodies. That is why so many older people suffer from stiffness! It is only growing children that need it most.
Finally, in December 2020, she came off the calcium supplements completely, once she found out about the calcium crystals. As this would be very slowly coming out of all the deposit areas, after 15 years of taking calcium, it could take years to return to normal levels.
Around May 2021, my friend spoke to a famous nutritionist who lectures all over Britain called Clive de Carle. He was shocked when she told him about her calcium problem and advised her to take a high daily dose of magnesium, which he said would help shift and disperse the build up of calcium deposits and move it to where it should be in the bones. He said magnesium was safe and any excessive amount would be excreted, not stored, so she started taking 1000mg a day and after a few months brought it down to 500mg daily. Previously she had only been taking 100mg of magnesium a day!
In fact she realised that magnesium was far more beneficial for her than calcium and perhaps what she had needed in the first place for many years!
A supplement called Serrapeptase helped clear the build up of calcium in the bloodstream around the heart, when she experienced a blocked sensation. Hypercalcemia commonly causes strokes due to excessive calcium in the bloodstream, also leading to hardened arteries.
A salivary gland under her chin had become a hard stone about in an inch in diameter for the past four years. High concentrates of calcium were going into her mouth, causing a white tongue and excessive plaque build up, which had loosened many of her teeth! But as soon as she stopped taking calcium supplements that stone-like gland began to soften and eventually go back to its normal size.
High calcium levels also create an over active parathyroid gland, as this gland regulates calcium, which can create tumours on the gland.
In addition to the above dangers of very high calcium levels in the body, it can cause bone pain, brittle bones, mental confusion and eventually even coma!
The other thing my friend found out was that excessively high calcium in the body causes a great loss of potassium. Low potassium levels explain her severe fatigue, digestive bloating, muscle weakness and terrible muscle cramps in her feet and legs. In addition, low potassium causes swelling of the legs and frequent urination.
It also creates kidney stones, as there is huge stress on the kidneys, causing swollen eyelids, swollen legs and ankles, all of which my friend experienced. Her kidneys were overloaded with the burden of trying to excrete the excess calcium and vitamin D3, so it meant my friend needed to get up in the night three or four times to urinate.
Furthermore, excessive amounts of calcium can cause the adrenal glands to shut down, as they try to hold on to magnesium and sodium. Adrenal insufficiency of course causes extreme fatigue.
In fact excessively high calcium levels can cause diabetes insipidus, which can be reversible, when the levels go back down to normal. With diabetes insipidus a person will pass very large volumes of pale urine, known as polyuria, as the kidney function becomes impaired.
The brittleness of bones and ligaments were the reason my friend snapped a ligament in her sacrum in 2012 and also in her right arm in 2018! With high calcium levels, deposits will later form on top of these old injuries, making them much harder to heal! These two injuries were especially painful with agonising nerve pain on the sacrum from the calcium deposit and calcium crystals.
She also said she had a bony exostosis on her left foot, which was about an inch in diameter.
Another thing my friend complained of was severe heartburn, which is actually caused by low stomach acid and was yet another damaging side effect of the excess calcium. Deficient stomach acid production causes impaired protein digestion and absorption, which in turn causes amino acid deficiencies and the inability to get these into her cells.
The homeopathic remedy Nux Vomica helped for this but also sipping squeezed lemon juice just before meals, helps to increase the stomach acid.
After about 18 months after coming off the calcium supplements, bit by bit the pain improved and the deposits slowly started breaking down and dispersing but it has been a very slow process and meant my friend has been more or less housebound, rarely able to go out, unless accompanied by someone.
She admitted she has been suffering from severe pain since 2013, which became unbearable by 2020. She does not like to take pain killers, so uses a very high quality Curcumin product, which is anti-inflammatory and works just as well.
Every day the pains are easing and she now feels as though she is on the road to health again. Her osteoarthritis and walking is getting better. Finally, the prescribed homeopathic medicines are starting to take effect with gradual improvement setting in, whereas before they were unable to work through all the calcium deposits.
In fact nothing had worked, as nothing could work through all those calcium deposits. This meant a great deal of money was wasted between 2015-2019 going to an expensive back clinic in central London, an osteopath, two chiropractors, an ozone clinic and having acupuncture. No one could understand why nothing seemed to work at all. In fact no one had been able to understand what was wrong with her.
The homeopathic remedies that helped for the extreme stiffness were predominantly Rhus Tox, Silicea, Kali Carbonica, among others, but these need to be individualised by a professional. Also Calc Fluor is a remedy that actually removes calcium deposits.
Recently she came across a South American herb called Chanca Piedra, known as 'stone breaker'. This herb successfully breaks down kidney stones and gallstones, so it helps to break down the calcium, as these stones are encased with calcium.
Unfortunately losing calcium too quickly in the urine, can aggravate the kidneys, as it had originally done due to the hypercalcemia, so my friend found this to be the case and had to reduce the number of drops of Chanca Piedra she took per day, from the recommended 20 drops down to 10.
My friend has also informed me that she has found another substance that breaks down calcium deposits called EDTA. This also removes heavy metals as well, which may well be bound to the excessive calcium. So far she says, it has not aggravated her kidneys and she hopes it will work over time by taking one capsule of 500mg per day, taken with food. However, it is really important to take Fulvic Minerals about 12 hours after, as the EDTA also strips minerals out of the body, (when it is removing heavy metals) and these need replacing. (See my article on Fulvic Minerals).
So this is a cautionary tale for people out there with osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and other health conditions. Do not believe that large doses of calcium are a cure! Make sure you take safe dosages of vitamins D3 with K2, as well as a good quality Magnesium!
