There is a new publication in the British Journal of Medicine that has raised questions about the benefits of Calcium supplements and  Calcium from food sources and Bone Mineral Density.

This article is a “meta analysis” of a number of studies. This means that the researches have taken number of other research articles and have “analyzed” and summarized the data.

I will start by saying that there is nothing in this article that suggest post weight loss surgical patients should stop taking their calcium supplements.

This article studied a number of other publications and looked at a number of variables that were common in those articles. The authors themselves outlined a number of limitation to the study. More importantly they recognized these limitation and their conclusion were limited to those that can be justified by the significant limitations  and variability amongst those articles.

Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D, and various supplements are recommended for Duodenal Switch and other weight loss surgical patients for the offsetting the malabsorption that is caused by weight loss procedures. There is nothing in this article that addressed decreased absorption of calcium. The reduced absorption maybe because of the sopanification of calcium with fat, decreased absorption because of the small bowel, or other reasons.

In Summary I recommend Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D, and other supplements to be taken on regular basis as it has been recommended to each patient based on the specific lab results.