RegisterPatient AccessPatient- MyHealth- Forums- PatientPro| Sign inPatient AccessPatient- MyHealth- Forums- PatientProPatient - Trusted medical information and supportSkip to contentMyHealth | Symptom checker View this article online at http://patient.info/medicine/calcium-with-colecalciferolCalcium with colecalciferolCalcium with colecalciferol is a mineral and vitamin D supplement.It promotes bone strength and helps to prevent osteoporosis.Make sure you know how to take the preparation you have been given. Some brands of tablets are swallowed with water, others are chewable, and others are dissolved in water. The contents of sachets should be mixed into water before taking. Read the label carefully, and if you are still unsure what to do, ask your pharmacist for advice.Type of medicineMineral and vitamin supplementUsed forTo promote healthy bones and to prevent osteoporosisAlso calledAccrete D3®; Natecal D3®(Colecalciferol is also called vitamin D3)Available asTablets, chewable tablets, soluble tablets, and sachetsCalcium and vitamin D are both important for healthy, strong bones.
Colecalciferol is a type of vitamin D. Vitamin D is mostly made in your skin by exposure to sunlight, but you also get some from your diet. Foods that contain colecalciferol are oily fish (such as sardine, herring, salmon and tuna) and eggs. Your body needs adequate supplies of vitamin D in order for it to absorb the calcium that you eat or drink in your diet.A mild lack of vitamin D may not cause symptoms, but it can cause general aches and pains. It can also result in an increased risk of osteoporosis. A more severe lack of vitamin D can result in your bones softening. This causes problems such as rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults.If you are at risk of vitamin D deficiency, you will be recommended to take a vitamin D supplement such as calcium and colecalciferol routinely. These tablets/sachets are available on prescription or you can buy them at pharmacies, without a prescription.To make sure this is the right treatment for you, before you start taking calcium and colecalciferol it is important that your doctor or pharmacist knows:If you are pregnant or breast-feeding.
This is because, while you are expecting or feeding a baby, you should only take medicines on the recommendation of a doctor.If you have kidney problems, or if you have ever had kidney stones.If you have sarcoidosis. This is a condition causing inflammation, particularly in your lungs and lymph system.If you know you have too much calcium in your blood or urine. This can happen with some cancers.If you are taking any other medicines. This includes any medicines you are taking which are available to buy without a prescription, such as herbal and complementary medicines.If you have ever had an allergic reaction to a medicine.Before you start this treatment, read the manufacturer's printed information leaflet from inside your pack. It will give you more information about calcium and colecalciferol, and will also provide you with a full list of the side-effects which you may experience.Take calcium with colecalciferol tablets/sachets exactly as your doctor or pharmacist has told you to. It is usual to take one or two doses each day, preferably after meals.
If you are taking one dose a day, try to take your doses at the same time of day each day - this will help you to avoid missing any doses. If you are taking two doses a day, take one in the morning and the other in the evening.Some tablets should be swallowed whole without being chewed, other tablets must be chewed before being swallowed. Preparations of calcium and colecalciferol supplied in sachets and soluble (effervescent) tablets need to be dissolved in a glassful of water before they are taken. Read the label on the preparation carefully to find out what you should do, and if you are still unsure, ask your pharmacist for advice.If you do forget to take a dose, do not worry, just take your next dose when it is due. Do not take two doses together to make up for a forgotten dose.Try to keep your regular appointments with your doctor. This is so your doctor can check on your progress.If you buy any medicines, check with a pharmacist that they are suitable to take with calcium and colecalciferol.
This medicine is unlikely to cause any side-effects when taken as directed. Rarely, it may cause stomach upset. If you experience any symptoms which you think may be due to it, then ask your doctor or pharmacist for advice.Keep all medicines out of the reach and sight of children.Store in a cool, dry place, away from direct heat and light.Never take more than the prescribed dose. If you suspect that you or someone else might have taken an overdose of this medicine, go to the accident and emergency department of your local hospital. Take the container with you, even if it is empty.This medicine is for you. Never give it to other people even if their condition appears to be the same as yours.If you are having an operation or dental treatment, tell the person carrying out the treatment which medicines you are taking.Do not keep out-of-date or unwanted medicines. Take them to your local pharmacy which will dispose of them for you.If you have any questions about this medicine ask your pharmacist.
Personal HealthJane Brody on health and aging. Americans seem to think that every health problem can be solved with a pill. And certainly many are, especially infectious diseases that succumb to antibiotics, antifungals and, increasingly, antivirals. But that leaves a medical dictionary full of ailments that continue to plague people despite the best efforts of Big Pharma. Most are chronic health problems related to how Americans live, especially what we eat and drink, and don’t eat and drink, and how we move or don’t move. In our aging society, these ailments have pushed the annual cost of medical care into the trillions of dollars and threaten to break Medicare. Osteoporosis is one of these increasingly prevalent and costly conditions. Although there are drugs to stanch the loss of bone and the debilitating fractures that often result, the remedies are costly, difficult to administer and sometimes have side effects that can be worse than the disease they are meant to counter.
This makes prevention the preferred and more cost-effective option. But efforts to prevent bone disease have focused on a pill, namely supplements of calcium, the mineral responsible for creating bone in youth that must be maintained throughout adult life, which now routinely extends to the 80s and 90s. But as with many other pills once regarded as innocuous, the safety and efficacy of calcium supplements in preventing bone loss is being called into question. In February, the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended that postmenopausal women refrain from taking supplemental calcium and vitamin D. After reviewing more than 135 studies, the task force said there was little evidence that these supplements prevent fractures in healthy women. Moreover, several studies have linked calcium supplements to an increased risk of heart attacks and death from cardiovascular disease. Others have found no effect, depending on the population studied and when calcium supplementation was begun.
The resulting controversy has left countless people, especially postmenopausal women, wondering whether they should be taking calcium. Given the conditional evidence currently available, the answer is not likely to be greeted enthusiastically by anyone other than dairy farmers, who supply the foods and drinks that are the country’s richest dietary sources of calcium. The one indisputable fact is that the safest and probably the most effective source of calcium for strong bones and overall health is diet, not supplements. But few American adults, and a decreasing proportion of children and teenagers, consume enough dairy foods to get the recommended intakes of this essential mineral. Milk consumption has taken a steady nose-dive in the last four decades, largely supplanted by sugared soft drinks that are now under fire as major contributors to obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Beyond age 20, when bone loss can begin to overtake bone formation, the typical man and woman in this country consumes less than one cup of milk a day.
Likewise for teenage girls, who should be striving to maximize bone formation so that there is more in reserve when bone loss begins. Yogurt, which ounce for ounce is an even better source of calcium than fluid milk, has achieved unprecedented popularity in recent years, but few consume it more than once a day, which doesn’t come close to meeting dietary needs. Frozen yogurt, which threatens to supplant ice cream as the nation’s most popular frozen dessert, has about half the amount of calcium as regular yogurt and only slightly more than ice cream. Both are far more caloric than nonfat milk. The only other notable calcium-rich foods are tofu (when prepared with calcium); calcium-fortified orange juice, soy milk and rice milk; canned salmon and sardines (but only if you eat the bones); But few people consume enough of these foods to obtain the calcium they need. Calcium was long thought to protect the cardiovascular system. It helps to lower blood pressure and the risk of hypertension, a major contributor to heart disease.
The Iowa Women’s Health Study linked higher calcium intakes in postmenopausal women to a reduced risk of heart disease deaths, though other long-term studies did not find such an association. Controversy over calcium supplements arose when a combined analysis of 15 studies by Dr. Mark J. Bolland of the University of Auckland found that when calcium was taken without vitamin D (which enhances calcium absorption), the supplements increased the risk of heart attack by about 30 percent. Dr. Bolland then reanalyzed data from the Women’s Health Initiative and found a 24 percent increased risk of heart attack among women who took calcium with or without vitamin D. In this case, the increased risk occurred only among those women assigned to take supplemental calcium who had not already been taking it when the study began. Yet last December, in a report published online in Osteoporosis International, a team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reported that among 36,282 postmenopausal women participating in the Women’s Health Initiative, those taking 1,000 milligram supplements of calcium and 400 international units of vitamin D experienced a 35 percent reduced risk of hip fracture, and no increase in heart attacks during a seven-year follow-up.
In February yet another study, published online in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that among 388,229 men and women initially aged 50 to 71 and followed for an average of 12 years, supplemental calcium raised the risk of cardiovascular death by 20 percent among men — but not women. The increased risk was observed only among smokers. Adding to these confusing results is the fact that none of the studies was specifically designed to assess the effects of calcium supplements on the chances of suffering a heart attack or stroke. This can cause unexpected aberrations in research findings. One possible explanation for a link, the JAMA researchers said, is that a bolus of calcium that enters the blood stream through a supplement, but not gradually through dietary sources, can result in calcium deposits in arteries. Indeed, this is a known complication among patients with advanced kidney disease who take calcium supplements. All the researchers agree that, given the widespread use of supplemental calcium, better studies are needed to clarify possible risks and benefits, and to whom they may apply.