When you drink coffee you pass more calcium in your urine. Does this result in a loss of calcium from your body? Does drinking coffee weaken your bones? The issue for people over 50 years of age is that they should take calcium supplements, 1,000 milligrams a day for women and 1,000 milligrams a day for men. What happens if you don’t take supplements and you drink coffee?

The Evidence

The New York Times published an article asking, is coffee bad for your bones?

Drinking a lot of coffee has been linked to an increased risk of fractures in some observational studies. However, other studies have found no such link.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Dr. Robert R. Recker, the director of the Osteoporosis Research Center at Creighton University in Omaha. Huge, national studies in different countries have found “no evidence of an increase of fractures due to coffee,” said Dr. Recker, an endocrinologist.

For instance, a population-based Swedish study, which included more than 61,000 women followed for roughly 20 years, found in 2013 that drinking four cups of coffee or more daily was associated with a tiny reduction of bone density, but it was not linked to an increased risk of fracture.

The bottom line is that even in people over 50 who don’t take calcium supplements and do drink coffee the risk of bone fractures is very slightly higher than normal. If these folks have a diet that contains calcium either in supplement form for as natural foods like milk or cheese there is no increased risk of bone fractures. In short drinking coffee does not weaken your bones in later years if you have a regular source of calcium in your diet.

Are There Other Issues with Calcium?

If you are a 50+ coffee drinker make sure there is enough calcium in your diet just to be sure. But what else should you be aware of? If you take corticosteroids for diseases like asthma, if you put a lot of salt on your food, if you take protein supplements and if you eat too much spinach all of these can cause a loss of calcium. Other reasons to lose calcium are too much phosphorus from sodas, too much insoluble fiber, too much alcohol and smoking. What does a person do? First of all avoid anything in excess, especially smoking and alcohol but what people need is sufficient calcium in their diet whether they are concerned about coffee or about other reasons to lose calcium.

Hip Fractures

Calcium loss with age increases the risk of hip fractures to where 1% of women aged 80 experiences this. The answer is more calcium and not less coffee. After all your odds of making it to age 80 are better if you drink coffee because if you drink coffee you live longer!

Another scientific study has come out with the ultimate health benefit of drinking coffee, drink coffee and live longer. The journal Circulation published an article, Association of Coffee Consumption with total and Cause-Specific Mortality in Three Large Prospective Cohorts. This long and complicated title simply means that a lot of people were studied for cause of death. For decades the Harvard School of Public Health has enrolled and followed up on graduates in the health professions.

• Nurses’ Health Study: 74,890 (women)
• Nurses’ Health Study II: 93,054 (women)
• Health Professionals Follow-up Study: 40557 (men)

Over the years people enrolled in this study reported how much coffee they drank and when someone died the cause of death was recorded in the study. Over 4,690,072 person years (# of people x # of years) 19,524 women and 12,432 men died. The results of the study showed that people who drank between one and five cups of coffee a day had a lower risk of dying that those who did not drink any coffee.