The importance of Vitamin K2

Bone Health

As its warming up more people are getting outside in the sun and in turn causing their body to turn cholesterol into vitamin d. Most people have heard about vitamin d’s requirement for bone health, but Vitamin d isn’t the whole story. All Vitamin D does when it comes to calcium is get it from the intestines into the blood stream. Vitamin D then stimulates the production of an inactive protein called osteocalcin, and its actually the K2 that gets calcium into the bones by carboxylating osteocalcin allowing it to bind with calcium. So if one is supplementing Vitamin D and calcium in hope to strengthen their bones they are missing one VERY important piece of the bone health puzzle.

Arterial Health

One of the other important benefits is the ability of K2 to remove calcium from soft tissue (tissue other than bone). In her book Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox author, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue, states “Research now confirms that Vitamin K2 is the single most important nutritional factor in preventing and even reversing arterial blockages". Unlike most Vitamin D3 supplements on the market our mVita D3 contains Vitamin K2 along with it.

Why the Lack of Knowledge of this Very Important Nutrient?

To start off vitamin K1 and K2 where thought to be the same molecule up until 2007, and therefor only having approximately 10 years of study, the information is not far widespread. Lets differentiate between Vitamin k1 and k2, as they are only similar in that they both contain a quinone ring and differ in function. Vitamin k1 comes mainly from leafy green veggies and are involved the clotting of blood. People don’t usually develop a deficiency in this vitamin as the body is very efficient in the recycling of K1. Even if one seldom eats leafy greens. Vitamin K2 on the other hand is synthesized from k1 by bacteria in the fermentation process. If one eats a decent amount of leafy greens and has a healthy microbiota one can produce as much as 10% of ones need of k2, but the rest will have to come from the diet. There are two main types of K2 we will be focusing on as these two are the most prevalent, but other forms exist.

Where Do I Get It?

The First is menaquinone-4 (MK-4) which we get from plant grazing animals, as its their micro-biome that are synthesizing it from the k1 that they are eating.

Foods Sources of MK-4:

-Liver (goose being the highest by a large degree 370 mcg vs 14 mcg in chicken and 0.4 mcg in beef) -Hard Cheeses -Egg Yolk (must be from free range/cage free hens) -Grass Fed Butter MK-4 has a short half-life, basically how long it will stay active in the body, and does provide all the benefits. The superior form is menaquinone-7 (MK-7). This is found mainly in fermented plant products.

Food Sources of MK-7:

-Natto -Sauerkraut

Benefits of Vitamin K2:

-prevents/removes calcium build up in soft-tissue -prevents/ reduces severity of osteoporosis -reduces atherosclerosis -increases insulin sensitivity, helping with type 2 diabetes -cognition, as it has a high ability to prevent free radical damage to neurons -reduces symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis -studies show that Vitamin K2 reduces proliferation and induces apoptosis, programmed cell death, in prostate cancer cells. -been shown to suppress all types of lung carcinoma growth

Recommended Product:

Vitamin D uses up vitamin K2, and that is why we put these two vitamins in combination for our mVita D3. This is perfect for anyone who can't make it outside during the vitamin d window, approx 10 a.m.-4 p.m., to get their daily dose of vitamin d along with the subject of this blog, vitamin k2. Get it at our online store, Amazon, or pick it up locally at our award winning wellness center. -mVita D3

https://woo.crucialfour.com/

Say YES to your health!

Resources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566462/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052396/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3767046/#!po=70.1220 Rhéaume-Bleue, Kate. Vitamin K₂ and the calcium paradox: how a little-known vitamin could save your life. Toronto, Ontario: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013. Print.