Calcium supplementation for babies is a matter of great concern to many mothers and fathers, but what is the best way to take calcium for babies? What is the best way to get calcium? What are the best foods for calcium supplementation? If you choose the right time and the right method, you can make your baby’s calcium supplementation work twice as well as half as well. What is the performance of baby calcium deficiency? For example, when the calcium deficiency, some babies will appear to be sweating a lot when sleeping, the whole person is more easily irritable, there will also be night crying and night terrors, some babies often shake their heads because of sweating, there will also be pillow baldness, if the calcium deficiency is serious children, the bones will have deformation. If you observe that your baby has these symptoms, it means that your baby may be a little deficient in calcium. After measuring the trace elements and finding that the baby is not calcium deficient, do you still need to supplement calcium? First of all, more than 99.5% of the calcium in our body is in the bones and teeth, and less than 1% or even a few percent is in the blood. If the blood is normal, it does not mean that the child does not have calcium deficiency. Therefore, if the child has obvious clinical signs of calcium deficiency, but the trace element test is normal, we still suggest to do some other tests, such as S-line, or some other tests to see if the child’s bone density has changed, or there is a clinical measurement called bone alkaline sulfate enzyme, which can also help us to indirectly determine whether the child is calcium deficient. If the baby is not calcium deficient, but is still given supplements, are there any side effects? If the baby is not deficient in calcium and the amount of supplementation is not very large, it should be safe, because the excess will be excreted directly through our urine. However, if you take too much calcium for a long time, there may be some side effects. For example, the incidence of kidney stones will be higher than others when the baby becomes an adult, or some excess calcium may be deposited on the blood vessels, causing hardening of the blood vessels, these need to be noted. So don’t blindly take a lot of calcium supplements. When is the most appropriate time to start calcium supplementation for babies? Normally, the main source of diet for babies before 6 months of age is breast milk, which is very rich in calcium, so children before 6 months of age generally do not need additional calcium supplementation. After half to one year old, children start to add supplementary food, then there is a possibility that the calcium content in the child’s recipe is not enough because of the unreasonable addition of supplementary food, so we can remind parents that if the child is more than half a year old, and there is some obvious anorexia, we should start to pay attention to whether the child has calcium deficiency, and then pay attention to help him to supplement. What are the common misconceptions parents have about calcium supplementation for their babies? First, some parents actually confuse whether their children are deficient in calcium or vitamin D, which is what we clinically refer to as cod liver oil, for example, I just said that children before 6 months of age actually do not need calcium supplements, but children before 6 months of age must be supplemented with vitamin D. Many of our children are deficient in calcium because of vitamin D. The source of vitamin D is mainly from sunlight and cod liver oil. The international requirement is that newborns who are full term should start taking vitamin D supplements after two to four weeks of life and continue to do so until they are about two years old. When there is a lack of vitamin D, no matter how much calcium is supplemented, it will not be absorbed. This is a very common misconception we have. Second, many parents do not know how to reasonably supplement calcium and blindly follow the advertisements. Many parents go to buy a variety of very fancy calcium tablets to give their babies calcium, in fact, the medical advocate of the best way to supplement calcium is dietary supplementation, said to rely on a reasonable mix of diet to supplement, rather than rely on a variety of name calcium tablets, or even foreign calcium tablets amassed back, which is not a good way to supplement calcium. Third, some parents will go to the other extreme, that is, simply do not give children calcium supplementation, waiting for calcium deficiency to supplement. In fact, the medical requirement is that if the child has a dietary deviation, that is, if the diet is unreasonable, he can be given a preventive calcium supplement. Will there be any conflict if calcium is supplemented with iron, magnesium and other trace elements at the same time? In fact, research has found that if these trace elements are supplemented at the same time, as long as the doses are reasonable and scientific, then they do not conflict with each other before, but can play a mutually beneficial role. For example, if a baby has a calcium deficiency and a zinc deficiency at the same time, the calcium absorption will be good when the zinc is supplemented, and the growth and development of the baby will be faster after the calcium absorption is good; the zinc supplement will help the baby to have a good appetite and facilitate the absorption of iron. In other words, as long as the dosage is reasonable, it is a mutual promotion of the role. Of course, if a large dose of a particular trace element is supplemented, such as a large dose of calcium, too large a dose may inhibit the absorption of zinc. Therefore, I only recommend that if parents find that their child has several micronutrient deficiencies at the same time, it is best to help him or her with reasonable supplementation under the guidance of a doctor.