What’s New With Vitamin K
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Article written by:
Dr. Francisco Arroyo
Medical Director of SportsMed
Sports Medicine & Stem Cell Specialist
Medical | Regenerative Medicine
Let’s make room for the new vitamin in our arsenal of supplements, it can help us in life.
I was recently talking to some friends about vitamin K and it turns out that even though we are doctors, we have the same concept that we learned at University about this vitamin: (1) that it is one of the so-called fat-soluble vitamins, although it has not been shown to have caused poisoning and, (2) that it is mainly used for coagulation and that is all we know. So I began to investigate what’s new with it and the following came up.
Vitamin K2 (also known as Menaquinone and MK7) is a vital nutrient and has recently been recognized because it supports cardiovascular and bone health, but if you want something else that has been discovered about this vitamin, it turns out that it also has an impact on other areas such as brain health, joint health, neuropathies, as well as our vision (I did not know anything about this).
The recommended daily dose is 75 to 120 mcg per day (in one study they used up to 180 micrograms), but be aware that if you have a coagulation-related disease you should first talk to your doctor before making any changes to the supplements you take.
The two forms of vitamin K that we know are K2 and K1 (known as phylloquinone). The first has a longer life and extra-hepatic activity and the second has a shorter life.
Another effect that K2 has is in those patients who tend to have calcifications in the blood vessels known as atherosclerosis, since the intake of this vitamin K2 prevents the formation of atherosclerotic plaques and keeps the risk of calcification of blood vessels at a low level, which is very good for our health. Normally we consider that in the aging process our blood vessels will become rigid but we can control that with the intake of K2.
These results on the arteries were published in two studies done over a three-year period in which a daily dose of vitamin K2 was given to healthy people and a placebo to another group of healthy people. At the end of this Dutch study, the people who had taken the vitamin had better cardiovascular health compared to those who had taken only a placebo and were evaluated with different parameters.
The same effects of better cardiovascular health were had by the patients in the one-year study taking vitamin K2. That is to say, this type of therapy can be used in patients who present intense calcification in the blood vessels.
And I am only going to mention another effect of vitamin K2 in our body since I am running out of space. This effect is in the brain in which vitamin K2 has been shown to be involved in functions such as cell survival, chemotaxis, mitogenesis, cell growth, in the formation of myelin in the nerves and in the formation of sphingolipids— an element, when altered, leads to the formation of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Dear friends, let’s make room for the new vitamin in our arsenal of supplements, which is pleasantly surprising how much it can help us in life and in ways we did not know (Katarzyna Maresz, PhD. Growing Evidence of a Proven Mechanism Shows Vitamin K2 Can Impact Health Conditions Beyond Bone and Cardiovascular. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2021 Aug; 20(4): 34–38. PMCID: PMC8483258).
Article written by:
Dr. Francisco Arroyo – Medical Director of SportMed