Principal investigator Todd Alexander and his team recently discovered an important link between sodium and calcium.
These both appear to be regulated by the same molecule in the body.
When sodium intake becomes too high, the body gets rid of sodium via the urine, taking calcium with it, which depletes calcium stores in the body.
High levels of calcium in the urine lead to the development of kidney stones, while inadequate levels of calcium in the body lead to thin bones and osteoporosis.
"When the body tries to get rid of sodium via the urine, our findings suggest the body also gets rid of calcium at the same time," says Alexander, a Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher whose findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed journal American Journal of Physiology -- Renal Physiology.
"This is significant because we are eating more and more sodium in our diets, which means our bodies are getting rid of more and more calcium. Our findings reinforce why it is important to have a low-sodium diet and why it is important to have lower sodium levels in processed foods."
It's been known for a long time that this important molecule was responsible for sodium absorption in the body, but the discovery that it also plays a role in regulating calcium levels is new.
"We asked a simple question with our research -- could sodium and calcium absorption be linked? And we discovered they are," says Alexander.
"We found a molecule that seems to have two jobs -- regulating the levels of both calcium and sodium in the body. Our findings provide very real biological evidence that this relationship between sodium and calcium is real and linked."
When sodium is the determinant, 100 mmol of sodium takes out ∼1 mmol of calcium in the urine. When calcium load is the determinant, each millimole of calcium appearing in the urine is associated with an extra 10–20 mmol of sodium. Sodium-dependent calcium loss may continue indefinitely, but calcium-dependent natriuresis is self-limiting
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