Pilgrims’ progress can be extensive
Calcium fulfils many vital functions but ‘too much of a good thing can be bad for you’
It seems improbable in our secular age that companies are likely to take up the suggestion of researchers at Lancaster University last week, that they mitigate their employees’ workplace stress and boost their well-being by sending them on pilgrimages. Still, their popularity is certainly burgeoning – last year 270,000 pilgrims walked the Camino Way to Santiago de Compostela compared to just 1,000 back in 1987. In this country, the British Pilgrimage Trust is currently involved in reopening the 220-mile ancient pilgrims’ way over the South Downs from Southampton to Canterbury – connecting 65 churches, three cathedrals, 78 prehistoric sites, five holy wells, 15 ruined monasteries and abbeys and 40 pubs.
There are several specific, if fairly obvious reasons, why a pilgrimage should be physically and mentally uplifting. Dr Rupert Sheldrake, in his informative Science and Spiritual Practices, observes they combine the merits of walking, fresh air, exercise and purposefulness, all of which can be expected to improve self-esteem,
mood and quality of sleep. And there is the added bonus of the placebo effect – if you believe some activity is beneficial, it probably is. Not all would necessarily agree. Martin Luther urged that “all pilgrimages should be stopped. There is no good in them. Rather they give countless opportunities to commit sin and despise God’s commandments.”
Riveting reasoning
The recent observation that calcium supplements, despite being commonly prescribed (usually with vitamin D) for thinning of the bones or osteoporosis, do not fulfil their purpose in reducing the risk of fractures, has prompted several requests for further clarification. There are two major components of bone, firstly the weight-bearing struts, composed of the tough material collagen secreted by cells called osteoblasts. These struts are further strengthened by crystals of calcium and phosphate, both minerals readily available from the usual dietary sources such as milk and dairy products.
This internal structure of bone is analogous (if not exactly) to the cantilevered Forth Rail Bridge across the Firth of Forth outside Edinburgh, with its massive weight bearing girders (the collagen struts) held in place by numerous steel rivets (the calcium and phosphate crystals). The relative fragility of bone that predisposes to fractures in those with osteoporosis is due to a thinning out of the density or diminution in the numbers of the collagen struts (the equivalent, pursuing the analogy, of there being fewer girders).
Self-evidently this process cannot be corrected by increasing the number of rivets (taking calcium supplements). And that is why an extensive review of the relevant evidence four years ago concluded that they have “no effect on the risk of fracture at any site” – with the possible exception of the very elderly in whom the mineral is deficient due to poor diet or insufficient exposure to sunlight.
Calcium fulfils many vital biological functions but regrettably “too much of a good thing can be bad for you”. The several adverse effects of increasing calcium intake over and above its natural source in milk and dairy products include predisposing to kidney stones, gut disturbances (notably constipation) and hardening of the arteries.
Thawing out
Finally, those with the misfortune to be troubled by a frozen shoulder, but hesitant to have it manipulated under anaesthesia, as recently commended in this column, might consider the option of selftreatment – as described by a woman who devised a simple exercise routine when the joint became “stuck”.
Standing with her affected arm dangling in front of her she would swing it with tiny movements a little more each day while simultaneously massaging her neck and shoulder with her “good” hand. This she found had a gradual loosening effect “achieved without recourse to pills of any kind”, she writes – though it took several months for full function to be restored.