Every adult should consume about 1,000 mg of calcium per day. To ensure adequate calcium intake, you should add dark leafy greens to your diet. Other calcium-rich foods include fatty fish, cheese, milk, soy, almonds, and sesame seeds. Increase your intake of vitamin D to help your body absorb calcium better. This vitamin is found in egg yolks, mushrooms, and fortified foods such as whole grains, oatmeal, and orange juice.
- Dry skin
Your skin may show hypocalcemia, or a lack of calcium in your body. This condition often makes your skin scaly and dry. It has also been found that calcium deficiency is closely related to the development of skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis.
- Fatigue
As a general rule, the lack of calcium in your body can affect your overall health. If you experience extreme fatigue, weakness, lack of energy, or a persistent feeling of sluggishness, consider cutting back on energy drinks and focusing on balancing your diet.
- Paresthesia
Paresthesias include neurological symptoms associated with severe calcium deficiency. Among these, you may experience tingling, numbness, muscle tremors, loss of touch, and even memory loss and hallucinations around the mouth and in the legs and fingers.
- Constant pain
Calcium plays an important role in maintaining a healthy immune system as it helps your body fight off viruses and bacteria. A lack of calcium lowers your body’s ability to fight off pathogen attacks, and as a result, you get sick, catch colds, cough, and sneeze.
- Brittle nails
Like your bones, nails require a certain amount of calcium to maintain their integrity. Therefore, when you are deficient in calcium, your nails become extremely dry, weak, peeling, and brittle. Weak nails are not thick enough to withstand any impact and often break during normal daily activities.
- Difficulty swallowing
Although it may sound surprising, calcium deficiency can cause shortness of breath or difficulty swallowing. Such a tightening sensation is caused by the contraction of the muscles of the throat. In severe cases, it can cause spasms in the throat and unusual voice changes.
- Toothache
Most of the calcium in your body is stored in your bones and teeth, so they are the first to suffer from a calcium deficiency. Deficiency of this vital element causes teeth to turn yellow, decay and become painful. In addition, the risk of periodontal disease increases.
- Muscle cramps
Muscle stiffness in the thighs, calves, arms, and armpits, which usually occurs at night, can be one of the first symptoms of calcium deficiency. There is also muscle pain when moving or walking. Over time, this can lead to spasms in all the muscles of your body.