when taking Calcium which amount do I look at????

Calcium Citrate        1200 mg (252 mg elemental) 

I saw on a message board that you would have to take 5 doses of the amount listed above in order to get 1200 mg of calcium.  the 252 amount x 5 a day.  Is this correct????  I take this same liquid vitamin and have only been taking it once a day .  Thought I was getting the 1200mg from the one dose.

Linda, OK, here's the deal on calcium.  Different types of calcium supplements contain varying amounts of elemental calcium.  Calcium citrate contains 21% elemental calcium while calcium carbonate contain about 40% elemental calcium.  Adults usually absorb 20-30% of the calcium that they ingest.  It is even more important for those who have had RNY to ingest more calcium (usually 1500mg to 2000 mg per day) to compensate for the malabsorption that occurs.   So to answer your question, you would have to take 5 of the above calcium citrate supplements to obtain 1200 mg of elemental calcium.  Also remember that Vitamin D is necessary to absorb calcium (usually present in most calcium supplements) and should be taken with meals to increase absorption.  Dosages of 500 mg or less also increases absorption.   You might want to consider looking at a few calcium citrate supplements as come of them contain more calcium per serving than others. Hope this helps!