In: Anatomy and Physiology
why when blood calcium levels fall, we remove calcium from the bone matrix?Why do we sacrifice bone density to maintain blood calcium? Why is calcium necessary for muscle function and neural communication?
Bones act as reservoir for calcium. Bones store 99 percent of total calcium in the body. When blood calcium level falls bones release calcium into the blood it doesn't mean we are sacrificing our bone density because once the blood calcium level increases bone again restore the calcium from blood. Blood calcium level keep fluctuating according to your diet and lifestyle. Bones maintain this fluctuations by releasing and absorbing calcium. Although a continued decreased blood calcium level may weaken the bone.
Calcium is necessary for muscle function because muscle contraction require calcium. During the process of muscle contraction calcium released from endoplasmic reticulum binds with troponin protein complex necessary for exposing actin on which myosin head binds to cause contraction.
In neural signaling calcium play a vital role. The movement of action potential to the axon terminal allows the movement of calcium ions into the axon terminal which is necessary for release of neurotransmitters into synaptic cleft. From synaptic cleft neurotransmitters diffuse to the postsynaptic neurons and in this way propagation of action potential occurs.