6 more reasons to love ice cream: Calcium is a powerhouse of health benefits. It even helps you shed belly fat and maintain muscle mass - Healthy Appetites

Natural Health, Jan, 2004 by Kathleen Doheny

Calcium is the new wonder nutrient! Research confirms that the mineral best known for building bones never stops working. Calcium helps control blood pressure, reduces the risk of colon cancer, puts a damper on PMS, and may lower the chances of developing kidney stones. And while it does your body good, it's also doing good for your figure by helping you lose weight, shed belly fat and maintain your weight loss.

So go ahead and eat ice cream from time to time, as long as you don't overload on sugar and saturated fat. Better still, incorporate nonfat milk or nonfat yogurt in your diet; low-fat ice cream has twice the calories and half the calcium of nonfat plain yogurt. If you're averse to dairy for any reason, there are reasonable alternatives.

maintaining weight loss

Most everyone can lose weight by cutting back on calories and getting some exercise. Maintaining that weight loss, however, is the challenge. Recent research suggests that calcium-rich dairy foods help slow down or stop lost pounds from creeping back, according to Michael Zemel, Ph.D., head of the department of nutrition at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Zemel has published several pioneering studies on calcium and weight loss. This past spring he presented the results of his most recent animal research at the annual meeting of the American Society of Experimental Biology. "A diet that included dairy prevented about 50 percent of weight regain and 80 percent of fat regain after the animals had lost weight and were allowed to eat at will, compared to those on the low-calcium, dairy-free diet," Zemel says.

As for dropping pounds in the first place, "one of the benefits of eating a dairy-rich diet is that dairy is about twice as effective as calcium alone in augmenting weight loss," says Zemel. "With the same level of calorie restriction, you lose approximately twice as much weight and twice as much fat on a dairy-rich diet, and you do a better job of preserving lean body mass."

At the 2003 annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, researchers from Louisiana State University described a study of 800 men and women in which those who are the most calcium were also the leanest. And a research team from Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Woman's University in Houston reported an association between the consumption of low-fat milk and dairy products and a lower waist-to-hip ratio.

Some researchers are skeptical of the calcium/weight-loss connection. One report at the NAASO meeting found no association between lower calcium intake and weight gain. And the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine says that caloric restriction is the sole instrument that produces weight loss.

But when you don't get enough calcium, Zemel counters, "your body responds by releasing hormones to maintain calcium levels, including calcitriol." This hormone affects fat cells, sending signals to activate the genes involved in making more fat out of sugar and to slow fat breakdown.

After hearing Zemel present his findings, Robert Heaney, M.D., an expert in calcium nutrition and an osteoporosis researcher at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., took another look at the calcium intake of the nearly 800 women involved in his bone-density studies. "Lo and behold, the women with the lowest calcium intake were most likely to be obese, and those with the highest were likely to be normal weight," says Heaney. "Those who had the highest calcium intake did not gain weight in midlife. The [level of calcium intake] that predicted zero weight gain was 1,000 to 1,300 milligrams a day."

taking the squeeze off arteries

For years, Heaney says, researchers have been aware that the hormone calcitriol helps us use dietary calcium more efficiently. "What we hadn't realized is that it affects many other tissues, including the artery walls," he says.

"Living with high calcitriol levels [which result when calcium intake is low] is kind of like living on high adrenaline all the time," Heaney says Too much calcitriol can cause the walls of the small arteries to constrict, and that can be bad news for your blood pressure. Low-fat dairy foods are part of the reason an eating plan called DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) may lower or prevent high blood pressure.

reducing cancer risk

These days, calcium supplements are likely to be marketed not just as bone-builders but as a way to reduce the risk of colon cancer. Harvard researchers tracked about 135,000 people and found that the danger was higher in those with low calcium intake (400 mg). Those who took in more than 1,250 mg a day of calcium reduced their risk of colon cancer significantly, but, surprisingly, getting 700 mg was just as protective.

No one is certain why calcium helps fight colon cancer, says Robert Sandler, M.D., a cancer researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "One hypothesis is that calcium might bind to bile salts in the colon, and inactivating the bile salts reduces the risk."