Restoring Calcium from the Soil to the Gut

Calcium is an abundant mineral that is unlikely to be missing in soils of semi-arid farmland.  Yet plants and people are often calcium deficient.  Host Mary Lucero discusses symptoms of calcium deficiencies and reasons why crops and soils may require added calcium.  She then shows us  why even when crops and soils have sufficient calcium, diets may still need  supplementation.   

References

Glyphosate reduces calcium (and other minerals).

Calcium and Iron in Plant Tissues (affiliate link)

Micronutrient Inadequacies in the US Population: an Overview

Symptoms of low calcium (hypocalcemia) in people.

Linkage between osteoporosis and soda consumption.

User’s Guide to Calcium and Magnesium (affiliate link)

Find These Calcium Supplements In Our Affiliate Shop

 King Calcium (chewable, with Vitamins D and K, Magnesium, Boron, and Selenium) 

OsteoFX (liquid formula to support bone and joint health and nutrient absorption)

Cal Mag 100 (Mixable powder)

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The Cornerstones of Healthy Food Systems Podcast Introduction by David Lucero.
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This version was updated in summer, 2023, when we decided to remove the cornerstones.endofite.com website reference.  The only change was to remove the word cornerstones from the website reference. 

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Transcript

Mary Lucero: 0:22

Hey everybody, welcome to episode 14. I want to talk today about calcium because, even though calcium makes up 4% of the earth's crust and it's abundant, it's in our soil, it's in our limestone, it's in minerals like gypsum and apatite and fluorite, it's in the dirt.., literally... If you eat dirt, particularly if you're in the southwest or other arid and semi-arid regions, you're going to find a lot of calcium in there. Yet the Linus Pauling Institute tells us that 44% of the US population, age 4 or above, is calcium deficient. Now, this is a big deal, right? Because calcium deficiency is tied to a whole suite of ailments and symptoms. Symptoms of hypocalcemia that's, too little calcium are similar to symptoms that abound in ailments People talk about, like chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia or long-term COVID. Now, are they caused by low calcium? Well, that's something to talk to your doctor about. If you have these symptoms, get a blood test, see how much calcium you've got, see how you're doing with calcium. But we know that 44% of the public is deficient. So some of the symptoms that you get when you're not receiving enough calcium include confusion and memory loss, muscle spasms, numbness, depression, hallucinations, muscle cramps, insomnia, weak and brittle nails and easy fracturing of the bones. And of course, this is something that we really start to worry about when people get into their senior years. But calcium can affect all parts of the body and it gets kind of spooky when you realize that most of us think about calcium as something that you need for strong bones. And as we get older our bones get weaker. But one reason that's happening is because you also need calcium for all these other functions. Calcium is present in every cell just bone cells and it's important as a signal molecule, as a regulatory molecule. It really helps keep processes in balance. It's important for what we call homeostasis. Calcium is important for neurotransmitter release. It's important for muscle contractions.

Mary Lucero: 3:20

Now most people are taught early on that you get calcium from drinking milk. Those who dive a little bit deeper into the nutrition and health literature are aware that you get calcium from leafy green vegetables. But what happens if your cattle or your leafy green vegetables are not getting the calcium they need? So in today's episode, what I want to do is look at where calcium comes from, why it's important in crop and soil health, what happens to plants when they're deficient in calcium and what happens when you don't get enough calcium in your diet. And yes, okay, I gave that away. I already talked about what happens when you don't get enough in your diet, but let's focus on calcium in the soil, because I really like this idea of talking about nutrition all the way from the soil to the diet, and that's because I really think, if we're going to address the chronic disease issues that we're seeing all around us, if we're going to address health care costs, if we're going to address the low productivity we're seeing in a society where 60% of the adult population has a chronic disease, we need to look at nutrition all the way from the soil to the gut. And as far as those of you who are actually growing food, the good part about this is it's not just about this is the way to make your crop better for the consumer. It's also a good way to reduce crop losses and to improve your yield and improve the shelf stability and post harvest shelf life of your products.

Mary Lucero: 5:19

I already told you that calcium is present and abundant in our soils. Now the abundance may diminish as you get into very humid, rainy, low pH soils, in part because calcium competes with ions like magnesium that can literally push it away from those cation exchange sites in your soil and push it out of your soil. This is one reason why, in these humid regions, you might want to lime your soil. You might want to add calcium. Remember, limestone is essentially calcium carbonate. If you put the lime on your soil, you are adding calcium, and while I've never spent extensive time in these humid regions, the limeing soil is something that people have been very much aware of for many, many years. Unlike some of the other micronutrients that get no attention in the literature of the 60s, 70s, even the 80s, when we were narrowly focused on NPNK, calcium is important enough to add in these low pH regions that I think people have been very much aware of it, despite the fact that it's not considered one of the elements on a complete fertilizer.

Mary Lucero: 6:44

So where calcium becomes problematic in soils is in areas like the area at southwest where I live, because the soil has a lot of it, and yet when we test leaf tissues, we often find calcium deficiencies, and so what this is telling us is that the calcium is there, but it's not what we call bioavailable. It's not getting out of the soil and into the plant, and there's some reasons for this. One is that plants really like to take calcium into their roots in an ionic or chelated form, where it is water soluble, and moves through the xylem tissue of the plant. That is, the primary mechanism of calcium movement within the plant is through the xylem and actually a symptom that you'll see when you're not getting enough calcium in your leaves looks a lot like the same symptoms you'll see when you're not getting enough water in your leaves. You'll get kind of a burning or scorching on the tip of the leaf and it's very hard at this point to distinguish the scorching caused by not enough water and the scorching caused by not enough calcium, because the calcium moves through the water. So if you're in drought conditions you're not going to get enough water, but you may also not get enough calcium in the leaves. So what happens to the plant when it doesn't have enough calcium?

Mary Lucero: 8:22

Well, first let's talk about what calcium does in the plant. And even though plants don't have bones and skeletons, the effect of calcium is very similar. It helps with structural support when the plant gets deposited in a substance called the middle, the mella, that literally like acts like cement between the cell walls of plants. So it's kind of like the glue that's holding those cell walls together. Now imagine building a brick wall without cement. If you're lacking calcium in the plant, you're not going to have the structural stability. So, just like a person with insufficient calcium in their bones, those bones are going to become weak and they're going to have a hard time standing. Plants that aren't getting calcium are going to have a hard time with structural support, and this isn't just in the stems that hold the plants up, it's also in fruits and seeds and roots and other parts of the plant. And so if you're harvesting fruit that just seems kind of soft or mushy and doesn't hold up well in packing and storing, one problem might be that you don't have enough calcium.

Mary Lucero: 9:42

But calcium does more than just provide structural support. It's also an important signal molecule. Now I talked about the fact that people who don't get enough calcium may be subject to symptoms like confusion or memory loss, and this is because those signals between neurons are not being transferred properly because there's no calcium there to carry the charge or carry the signal. Well, this signaling process is universal to all cells. So plant cells, microbial cells, animal cells, human cells, all need calcium to carry these signals. And calcium acts to regulate things within the cell. It acts to open and close pores on the plants. It opens and close the little stomata that allow air in and water out of the leaf. So when your plant is short in calcium you may see other symptoms like developmental delays, improper fruiting.

Mary Lucero: 10:51

In tomatoes, many gardeners are familiar with blossom end rot, where the base of the tomato plant doesn't fully form. This is a symptom of insufficient calcium and if you talk to many gardeners, the most common reasons for blossom end rot turn into irregular watering and insufficient calcium. And, like I said before, calcium and transpiration go hand in glove and so if the water's not moving properly to the plant, you're going to be deficient in calcium. Now I said that in humid soils it's common to add lime to the soil to remediate calcium deficiencies, and if you have a healthy soil this is adequate in many cases. But you come out to the southwest and we have these very calcium rich soils, so we already have the line present.

Mary Lucero: 11:52

Some would say we have too much lime and yet you still see calcium deficiencies in the leaves, and the reasons for these deficiencies can become much more complex. Often it has to do with the solubility of the calcium in the soil. So calcium carbonate, which makes up lime, is not very soluble. Now I know in the back of your head you're thinking wait, you just told us to add lime to our soils so it would help the plants. Why are we adding something that's not soluble? If the plant takes calcium up in its roots and moves it through the xylem through transpiration flow? Well, the fact is there are a lot of components in the soil that can help solubilize the calcium, and in the healthy soil these are continually working.

Mary Lucero: 12:45

In arid land soils, what is often missing that limits soil health is organic matter and the microbial living component that goes with that. Particularly if you're working to conserve water and you're using drip irrigation, and so irrigation water is only going to a very isolated zone in the field. We put it right at the root of that plant, right, so the plant can get it, but we're not watering the microbes in soil, and a lot of times it's this microbial activity that helps with the soil development, soil building and calcium solubilization. So if you don't have that microbial activity going on in soil, it's hard to take advantage of the calcium carbonate that's there, and this is why a lot of growers are looking to calcium fertilizers that can be applied in the form of very soluble liquids. I've seen formulas chelate the calcium in humates or other complex formulas. There are a lot of new innovations coming out, a lot of nanotechnologies and polyamine based technologies that are helping to bring this calcium out of the carbonate form and carry those calcium ions into soluble solutions so that the water can move it to your plant. Foliar sprays are great because they get the calcium directly where the leaf needs it.

Mary Lucero: 14:21

The use of herbicides can also limit calcium availability in the soil. In fact, a 2009 study in the European Journal of Agronomy tells us that the herbicide glyphosate reduced seed and leaf concentrations not only of calcium, but also of manganese, magnesium and iron. Now, when you're missing this many nutrients in the plant, you're reducing photosynthesis. So ways to ensure sufficient calcium in your soil First of all, know what base material you're working with. Get some soil testing done, learn what your base levels of calcium are and if you're seeing good calcium in the soil and you're not seeing calcium in the plant, look for those fertilizers that make calcium that contain calcium. First of all, because it's not in your standard NPK formulas, make sure you're adding a foliar calcium supplement that will be absorbed within the leaves and the more organic, so to speak.

Mary Lucero: 15:28

I'm not saying organic like organic certified, but I'm saying organic like organic chemistry. If that calcium is contained in a soluble organic molecule, that's sometimes carried a lot easier through the plant, and so you'll see people using chelated forms that can be taken up by the plant. Now, I just said glyphosate is chelated or key lates of these ions, but it's, but not every key late is the right form. So you need something that that makes the calcium more available to the plant. Now, if you're just interested in calcium for your personal health and nutrition, regardless of whether you're growing food or not, keep in mind that a lot of the food may be deficient in calcium and, just like growers can impact calcium availability to their plants with things like the chemicals they use or the condition of organic matter and the microbial life in the soil, the condition of your microbiome and the kinds of medications, recreational drugs, alcoholic beverages and other things that you consume can impact calcium uptake.

Mary Lucero: 16:49

The carbonation and the acids and soft drinks are totally changing the absorption ratios and the ability of your body to get the nutrients it needs. In fact, I think of soft drinks now as leaching calcium from your bones and while the relationship between carbonated beverage consumption and calcium is not totally clear. There are some strong correlations that have been reported between the consumption of sodas and osteoporosis. So sometimes, when you put all these compounds from our food and from our beverages and from our medications together in the body and try to predict how it's all going to balance out and the answers remain kind of murky. And this is one reason nutrition becomes such a fuzzy topic, so to speak. We seem to get lots of conflicting information, but it's really because we're asking very complex questions about what happens in a complex system. How's that for sounding evasive?

Mary Lucero: 17:52

What we do know is that calcium is often lacking. It can be supplemented. We know that supplements made out of calcium citrate are a little bit more absorbable than supplements made of calcium carbonate or some of the other insoluble forms of calcium that are out there. If you're going to take a calcium carbonate-based supplement, some nutritionists will recommend you take that after meals so that the acid in your stomach will help dissolve that calcium. But another recommendation that nutritionists often point to is that the calcium should not be the only thing you supplement.

Mary Lucero: 18:30

There are several minerals that go into making strong bones. You need boron, you need vitamin D, you need vitamin K and it's important, not just for bone growth but for this whole cellular signaling process that I talked about earlier, to have a balance between calcium and magnesium in your body. A very general, broad recommendation that you'll see often is to have about twice as much calcium as you're taking magnesium. So if they're telling you, as a senior, that you need 1200 milligrams of calcium a day in your diet, this would suggest that you also need 600 milligrams of magnesium. Look for supplements that have all these things together. So there you have it nutrition for your soil, nutrition in your gut, in one episode.

Mary Lucero: 19:26

Thanks for listening today and thanks for your continued patronage. I've really seen an uptick in downloads and participation over the summer and I am thrilled about it. This podcast is supported through affiliate links. The affiliations that I've chosen have some factor related to them that helps support the growth of rural communities, the growth of local businesses or the growth of agriculture. Check the show notes for references and for links to additional information on calcium in the soil, calcium in your body and affiliate links that you can explore if you're looking for calcium supplements. Have a great day.