I've Been a Geriatric Nurse for 20 Years. My Mother Took Her Calcium Every Day and Her DEXA Scans Kept Getting Worse. Nobody Told Us What Her Calcium Was Missing.

My name is Sarah and I'm a geriatric nurse.

Most of the women in the hospital beds on my ward had taken calcium for years. It still didn't stop them from breaking a hip.

My mother sat me down at her kitchen table two years ago. She handed me her latest DEXA scan results and asked, "Sarah, what am I doing wrong?"

My mother Diane started calcium at 60. That was the week her first DEXA scan showed some thinning.

She kept the bottle by the salt shaker and walked most days.

Her bone density went lower on every DEXA scan.

Her doctor raised her calcium dose and added vitamin D, then told her to keep going. The bigger pills felt like swallowing rocks to her.

I was so angry I nearly left my job. I couldn't tell one more woman to try harder at something that wasn't working.

Someone's grandmother is wheeled onto my ward every month. She slipped on a wet kitchen floor and the hip that had been thinning broke under her.

Women like her tell me the same thing. "I feel like I'm made of glass and I'm afraid to move."

A woman with a broken hip can't walk for weeks.

She goes from a wheelchair to a rehab bed while her daughter cuts up her food. Too many of these women end up in a nursing home for good.

My grandmother broke her hip at 74 and never lived in her own house again.

My mother asked me once, "I'm turning into her, aren't I?" I couldn't tell her no.

I'm telling you this before you ever have a fall. My mother was still on her feet when I found out what her calcium had been missing.

I stayed up reading studies one night after a double shift. No one had ever asked what else my mother's bones might need.

Bone isn't made of calcium alone. Calcium is the building material and your body needs other minerals to turn it into bone.

Your body has two crews working on your bones all the time. One crew tears down old bone and the other builds new bone.

Two of the missing minerals work as a pair.

• Magnesium is part of the bone itself. It keeps the tear-down crew from getting ahead of the building crew.
• Boron turns up the signal that tells your kidneys to hold on to calcium. Your kidneys then let less calcium drain out of your body.

Zinc, copper and manganese are the tools the building crew uses. Bone needs the whole set.

Skip any one mineral and you're back where my mother was, holding the rail on every step.

A bigger calcium pill won't replace the other minerals your bones need. A woman in my mother's online group wrote, "More calcium only forces it out in your urine."

Women on calcium alone still lost bone.

A two-year study followed 59 women past menopause. The only women who gained bone in their spine took the other minerals with their calcium.

Your calcium was never meant to work alone.

Only one woman in every 100 who took calcium faithfully for years was spared a broken bone. The other 99 got no protection at all.

My mother was one of the 99. You're most likely one of them too if you've done everything right and still dread every DEXA scan.

The calcium aisle keeps selling women like my mother more of the one mineral they already have.

I drove over the next day and said the words she'd needed to hear for 11 years.

My mother had spent years blaming herself for every DEXA scan that dropped and picturing my grandmother's wheelchair. She'd done everything she was told.

Her doctor wasn't wrong, because calcium was the right first step. Nobody had told her about the other minerals.

I bought her a separate bottle for each mineral that week. The bottles soon crowded her counter and she'd lost track of which ones she'd taken.

She was scared the one she forgot would be the one her bones needed.

Then I found HydroHealth Mineral Packs. They put calcium and the other minerals together in one glass.

HydroHealth comes in a bag of 30 sachets. She stirs one into a glass of water each day and drinks it.

Each sachet holds magnesium and boron along with zinc, copper and manganese.

The calcium dose is small on purpose. Your body soaks up a small dose better than one big pill.

She kept her calcium and everything her doctor had her on. The drink goes beside them.

Maureen is 63 and has taken calcium for 9 years. Her last two DEXA scans got worse.

The icy walk to her mailbox scares her more than any DEXA scan. She's started the drink while she can still make that walk without help.

I'd give HydroHealth Mineral Packs a try. That's what my mother did when her DEXA scans kept going down.

I'd love to see you carry the laundry basket down the basement steps without gripping the rail.

My mother gets down on the floor with her grandkids and back up on her own. I want that for you too.