We've been asked this question many times. We did some research and found a wonderful article on this. The articles follow, and so does the link to the articles. We hope that it helps alleveiate anyones misconceptions about their morning cup of coffee and their calcium and vitamin D intake.
Original article can be found here: Askville at Amazon
Question on Askville:
I've been told caffeine affects Calicum/Vitamin D absorption. I like coffee in the morning, so should I take my vitamins at night?
Answer from Askville:
It shouldn't be necessary. I did some checking, and it appears that the amount of extra calcium that's excreted via the urinary tract when you have a cup of coffee is minimal - around 5 mg per cup.When you consider that most calcium supplements are between 600 mg. and 1.2 g., you'd have to drink a LOT of coffee to see an adverse effect.
I offer up these two websites for you to take a look at. This one does recommend separating your calcium supplement from your coffee, but only by half an hour, and confirms that the calcium loss is minuscule. This one says there's no problem at all with taking them together.
The National Dairy Council tells you not to worry about it.Vitamin D is a little different. It appears that caffeine consumption in excess of 300 mg. a day (not hard to do) can impair your body's ability to use vitamin D. I promise I looked, but I couldn't find a single thing that confirmed this (I found secondary references, and I found a lab rat study, but nothing that convinces me). I did find some mention about it on a website that deals with osteopenia; essentially, they imply that while cutting back on caffeine consumption is never a bad thing, there really isn't cause for alarm unless you've actually got osteoporosis or osteopenia.
I want to point out that nothing I found indicates that this vitamin D issue is a problem with taking in vitamin D and caffeine at the same time (like you're wondering about) - it seems to be a more overall problem, which tells me that drinking coffee at any point during the day will limit your vitamin D metabolism.
Taking the two separately isn't going to change that if my hunch is correct.So if you really want to get the most out of your supplements, separate them from your coffee consumption by half an hour (or an hour, to be safe). It might improve your calcium absorption by a tiny bit, and probably isn't going to affect your vitamin D absorption at all - cutting back on coffee is the only thing that might help with that. (And let's get real, here! I wouldn't cut back on coffee until I've got a broken hip!) The only other thing I can recommend is that you take your supplement with a meal (any meal).
All information in this post is from Askville at Amazon and XLPharmacy is only relating that article here, we take zero kudus. Full article can be found at the link above this story.
