My BIL was taking 1200mg of calcium a day. When I told him that Vit D3 was really important, he started taking 10k a day of that. He was getting stomach pains, so he took Tums.

One day he couldn't stand up and he was incoherant, so my sister took him to the emergency room. They thought he had a stroke. She said he babbled all night long, but didn't make any sense with what he was saying. The doctors were baffled. So I asked her if he was still taking the Vit D3 and she said yes and told me also about the calcium. She said he was also a big ice cream eater and drank a lot of milk. I suggested that they tell the doctor that and get a calcium level taken. She did and the doctors found he had toxic levels of calcium. They started treating him for that and within 3 days he was back to normal.

Because of this, I stopped taking my calcium all together. The doctor was always warning me about getting too much. He also told me he thought I should cut back on the 10k of Vit D3, so I did. Recently I am having a real issue with joint pain and leg aches. The other day, I was thinking--gee, I don't eat much dairy and I'll bet that my calcium and D levels have drastically dropped, so I started back on them at the previous levels. It's been about 3 days and already I don't ache as much and my hands haven't hurt like they did.

So, I think you can get way too much calcium, but you can also suffer if you don't get enough. You have to evaluate what you are eating and find out what works best for yourself.