Caltrate 600+D Soft Chews

The Issue: It's hard enough to remember to take birth control every day. Getting enough calcium and vitamin D isn't always your top priority... but unless you live on a farm in Barbados, there's a decent chance you're deficient in both.

The Fix: Caltrate 600+D Soft Chews, which taste so good that you've got a much better chance of remembering--and actually taking--your daily calcium and vitamin D.

Calcium is crucial for bone strength, proper blood clotting, muscle contraction and nervous system response. But unfortunately, most women aren't getting enough. The average American woman consumes less than 500 mg of calcium per day, half the currently recommended daily value. Women ages 11 to 24 need 1200 mg of calcium daily, while women ages 25 to 50 need 1000 mg.

Vitamin D, meanwhile, is required for bone tissue to absorb calcium. It may also play a role in cancer prevention, heart disease prevention and diabetes management, ongoing research suggests. Your body makes vitamin D after exposure to the sun, but too much sun action comes with its own problems. The current recommended daily value of vitamin D is 600 International Units (IU), according to a recent report from the Institute of Medicine, but some research suggests we may need more like 800 to 1,000 IU daily.

Since the greatest risk associated with lack of calcium and vitamin D is osteoporosis, is this really something we need to be worried about now? Yes, according to our expert, Los Angeles internist Dr. Andrea Ruman. She says, "It is especially important for people to get enough calcium and vitamin D from childhood through their 20s because most of a person's bone mass is achieved by early adulthood. After that time, bone mass gradually declines throughout the rest of a person's life, and for women, this decline accelerates during the menopause transition." Explains why so many grandmas break their hips. Sad.

While calcium and vitamin D chews have been around for a while, we really like these new ones from Caltrate. They're actually very tasty--the chocolate truffle flavor is more like chocolate candy and less like wax than you might expect. So you can consider it the dieter's dessert. Two soft chews daily also deliver 1200 mg of calcium and 800 IU of vitamin D, so you'll get the recommended daily intake.

They're individually wrapped so you can toss a couple in your purse, and they come in a sealable soft pouch that's easy to throw in a suitcase. You can choose either chocolate truffle or the vanilla crème flavor, with a package of 60 chews costing about 9 bucks.

Yeah, you may not feel the impact of not calciuming up anytime soon...but you could eventually end up like those old people with a hunchback, so just do it ladies.

This is not a product endorsement or recommendation on behalf of ChickRx. Please use your own judgment and consult your physician before using any new product.