Another rare vitamin missing from our diet today that you won’t hear about in the mainstream. Back in 1929, vitamin K was found to be essential in allowing blood to clot. We’ve also learned some pretty awesome stuff about it since then.
K1 Phylloquinone is found in leafy greens
This one allows the liver to make stuff that helps our blood clot
K2 Menaquinone is found in animal product and fermented foods
This one is magic, it facilitates in the production of special proteins that help calcium get to the right places in our body. Without it, calcium doesn’t really have a home and ends up in the wrong parts of our body. More humans drop dead today from heart related issues than anything else, even abortion. So anything we can do, in order to help keep calcium from building up around the heart and arteries, would probably be a good thing.
Read more at: https://authoritynutrition.com/vitamin-k2/
Sounds good, where can I get some?
K1 is probably a bit more common and doesn’t show to be as important. K2 is where we want to focus anyway since heart issues are a little too common. The best source of K2 comes from a fermented bean, called Natto. Natto is not the most appetizing food, so unless you don’t mind eating stringy, sticky beans that taste a bit like I would have to imagine a foot tastes like, you may want to at least start with the supplemental form of K2. https://amzn.to/2MZ4pBB
Vitamin K1 & K2 work with NATURAL vitamin D
Our body is a complex system, so we sort of need small amounts of all nutrients without overloading on the wrong ones. But if we’re new to this, or focusing on specific issues(which can be tough if we don’t look at the whole body overall) there are sometimes vitamins that work directly with each other to support our systems.
Natural Vitamin D acts like a doorman for calcium and controls the amount absorbed into the bloodstream. But once calcium is inside, it needs K2 to escort it, otherwise, the calcium just ends up lost and builds up somewhere.
Sometimes natural Vitamin D can make use of vitamin A. This is why we’ll see products like this Vitamin A-D-K supplement. But there are a handful of issues with vitamin D supplementation. I have not had a chance to write about and outline these issues yet. Vitamin D is purposely lowered by our body in order to avoid oxidative stress. Unless we are testing both 25-OH and 1,25-OH and comparing them to each other, we are not even looking at our levels properly.
This woman explains how vitamin D supplementation can override hormones which includes vitamin A ‘Autoimmunity in Women’, Amy Proal’s Porto Presentation – YouTube
There is also some info showing interactions between zinc and vitamin A 1
Almost all of these nutrients use magnesium. So once our body gains access to these extra nutrients, it may increase the demand for magnesium as new processes start happening. This gets into electrolyte balances which I cover a bit more here https://whyiodine.com/electrolytes
Vitamin K and cardiovascular
Matrix Gla protein(MGP) in its non active forms nonphosphorylated carboxylated(dp-cMGP) and undercarboxylated MGP(dp-ucMGP) are correlated with lower levels of vitamin K intake as well as lower survival rates of cardiovascular patients.2
Supplementing with vitamin K2 reduced these non-activated forms of MGP3
- Interactions between zinc and vitamin A: an update – Review Am J Clin Nutr . 1998 Aug;68(2 Suppl):435S-441S. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/68.2.435S. – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9701158/
- Undercarboxylated matrix Gla protein is associated with indices of heart failure and mortality in symptomatic aortic stenosis – J Intern Med. 2010 Nov;268(5):483-92. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2796.2010.02264.x. – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20804515/
- Yogurt drink fortified with menaquinone-7 improves vitamin K status in a healthy population – J Nutr Sci. 2015 Oct 16;4:e35. doi: 10.1017/jns.2015.25. eCollection 2015. – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26495126/