Calcium the Importance of Calcium

Calcium

The Importance of Calcium in the Human Body

It is difficult to decide which elements are the "most important" in the human body, as many different elements are essential to survival. The problem is not really made any easier when carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen -- the four elements that comprise organic compounds -- are removed, because many of the other elements that are found in the human body to lesser degrees still serve vital functions, and without any number of them life and the functions that sustain human action would cease. Still, if pressed to identify one of the most vital of these lesser elements, calcium would certainly make the short list. Calcium serves a variety of functions within the body that make it absolutely essential to performing certain actions and for basic survival, and is the most abundant mineral in most complex animal organisms (Essential Vitamins Guide 2010). The reasons why calcium is so important will be detailed in the following paragraphs.

The most well-known of calcium's function, used to get children around the globe to drink their milk and marketed to seniors in various forms due to the degradations of aging, is in forming the bones of the body. Ninety-nine percent of all the calcium found in a human body is in the bones and the teeth, and this elements is the primary constituent of these features (EVG 2010; MedlinePlus 2010). Without calcium, the body would have no shape, and furthermore would be unable to perform any of the standard activities that are so easily performed thanks to our skeletal structure -- sitting, standing, walking, talking, and even breathing (not to mention a host of other activities) are all wholly dependent on our bones (EVG 2010; Food Mineral 2010). The body's skeleton also ensures that there is room for soft-tissue organs to function as they are supposed to, and provides a great deal of protection from injury to the inner body, as well (MedlinePlus 2010).

It is not only in the skeleton and the teeth that calcium is so important, however. Though only one percent of the body's calcium exists outside of these structures, this one percent performs a variety of functions that keep the human body running smoothly. Many of the other vital functions that calcium performs are the result of its highly ionic nature (it has two fewer electrons than protons, resulting in Ca++ ions); this electric imbalance means it is very useful in moving certain nutrients through cell membranes through a variety of complex mechanisms (EVG 2010). This same ionic feature makes calcium important in nerve function as well, as it is through a movement of calcium in and out of nerve cells (along with the movement of other ionic elements, notably sodium and potassium) that an electric charge is created and sent from the brain to various parts of the body or vice versa (EVG 2010; Medline Plus 2010). Without calcium, then, the various parts of the body would be unable to communicate with each other and the result would be a chaotic mess -- not any kind of life worth living, if life could be sustained at all.