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Hi Renee and all,
Your post on this topic was very informative. Thank you.

Because of the following comment in that post, I would like to point
to some other information on this topic.

You said:
>  An
>overwhelming majority responded that they are currently taking calcium
>supplements daily and/or making sure their food intakes contain calcium.
>(For those interested, the range reported was anywhere from 370 mg per
>day to as much as 2500 mg. per day, but most of the respondents falling
>within the 1000-1200 mg. per day.  And most were taking calcium
>supplements with Vitamin D.)  (This would have been more interesting if
>I had been able to tell which respondents were female and which were
>male to see if that had a significant difference in the supplement
>intake per day--which I think it would.)

On another list, Loren Cordain, PhD. pointed out that:

"Ironically, high calcium
diets may have a deleterious effect upon bone mineralization because of
their hypomagnesic effect.   Mg deficiency is a known cause of
hypocalcemia (5).   The resultant hypocalcemia stems from PTH
unresponsiveness (6), since the effects of PTH are magnesium dependent
(7)."

I will now point out that celiac disease is often associated with
parathyroid abnormalities.

In a later statement from the same post, he said:

 "A recent review article (9) showed
that post-menopausal women given magnesium supplements over a 2 yr
period had a significant increase in their bone mineral density, whereas
meta-analyses of calcium supplementation and bone mineral density have
been equivocal."

                                REFERENCES

1.      Varo P.  Mineral element balance and coronary heart disease. Int
J Vit Nutr Res 1974;44:267-73.
2.      Evans GH et al.  Association of magnesium deficiency with blood
pressure lowering effects of calcium.  Journal of Hypertension
1990;8:327-337.
3.      Luft FC et al.  Effect of high calcium diet on magnesium,
catecholamine, and blood pressure of stroke-prone spontanneously
hypertensive rats. Proc Soc  Exp Biol Med 1988;187:474-81.
4.      Sellig MS et al.  Magnesium interrelationnships in ischemic
heart disease: a review. Am J Clin Nutr 1974;27:59-79.
5.      Rude et al.  Functional hypoparathyroidism and parathyroid
hormone end organ resistance in human magnesium deficiency. Clin
Endocrinol 1976;5:209-224.
6.      Rude et al.  Parathyroid hormone secretion in magnesium
deficiency. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 1978;47:800-06.
7.      Estep H, et al.  Hypocalcemia due to hypomagnesemia and
reversible parathyroid hormone unresponsiveness. J Clin Endocrinol
1969;29:842-48.
8.      Ryzen E, et al.  Low intracellular magnesium in patients with
acute pancreatitis and hypo calcemia. West J Med 1990;152:145-48.
9.      Sojka JE et al.  Magnesium supplementation and osteoporosis.
Nutr Rev 1995;53:71-4.