Here we go again... more confusing news. I can hear the rumbling frustrations of the millions of women who have been diligent with their calcium supplements in the belief that it helps prevent osteoporosis; a dangerous, sometimes crippling condition primarily associated with post-menopausal women.

In recent news, it was suggested that perhaps all those years of religiously taken your calcium supplement may not have done much good. A report published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Vol. 354, pp. 669-683) is the source of this recent hubbub. The study organizers followed more than 36,000 women, and they have concluded that supplementation did not actually improve the risks of hip fractures during the course of the study. But the news report is quite misleading.

The study focused on calcium and vitamin D supplementation, and concluded that although they did record an increase in bone density, they did not notice any substantial difference in actual hip fractures over the course of seven years. However, my concern with this broad generalization is the same concern I had in all the years of the