All About Vitamin K2

It took us a while to put a name on this mysterious “activator,” but it’s finally been identified as Vitamin K2, a fat-soluble vitamin that does a whole lot more than just make your pearly whites pearlier. Vitamin K2 is important for bone health, heart health, and fetal development – and it’s all but vanished from the modern diet.

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Just like we have a lot of B vitamins instead of just one “Vitamin B,” we also have a whole family of K vitamins.

Vitamin K1 (Phylloquinone)

Vitamin K1 is found only in plants. Anything dark green and leafy is a good bet for Vitamin K1.

Vitamin K2 (Menaquinones)

There are several different types of Vitamin K2, and each type gets its own number. Scientists have identified MK-4 through MK-13, but the most important two are MK-4 and MK-7.

• MK-4: found in poultry and eggs.
• MK-7: hard to find outside of natto (fermented soybeans) and certain types of cheese.

In the past, K1 and all the different types of K2 were all lumped together as “Vitamin K” because scientists thought it didn’t matter which one you ate; your body would convert one form to another as needed. But in fact, this is not accurate.

It’s true that your gut flora can convert K1 to the various forms of K2, but it’s not terribly efficient – even your gut flora can’t do everything! A precise conversion rate is hard to pin down, But at any rate it’s pretty clear from the research  that we just can’t get all the K2 we need by converting K1. 

We’ve got to get at least some of our K2 directly.

Vitamin K2 can Do for You

Vitamin K2 is an enabler for Vitamins A and D. Think of it like a “partner vitamin” for A and D: without K2 along for the ride, you wouldn’t get all the benefits of the other two vitamins. It’s also an enabler for calcium: it keeps the calcium you eat in your bones (where you want it) and not in your arteries (where you don’t).

Bone Health

That makes Vitamin K2 crucial for bone health: several studies have demonstrated its role in treating osteoporosis and arthritis. For example, here’s a study describing the effect of Vitamin K2 (but not Vitamin K1) in improving bone strength, and here’s a randomized intervention study showing that supplemental MK-4 helped maintain bone strength in women.

Heart Health

It’s not only good at keeping calcium in your bones, though; Vitamin K2 is also important for keeping calcium out of your arteries. And that makes it excellent for heart health, even though it’s found in all those cholesterol-rich foods we’re warned against eating  in the quest to avoid cholesterol (which isn’t even dangerous!), we may have been doing serious harm to our hearts.

Getting Enough Vitamin K2

Unfortunately, modern diets are typically very deficient in Vitamin K2, for several reasons.

• We avoid fat and cholesterol. The best sources of Vitamin K2 are fatty, cholesterol-rich animal foods, which are still demonized as “artery-clogging.”

•  The amount of Vitamin K2 in factory-farmed meat is much lower than the amount in grass-fed meat. The greatest quantities of Activator X were found in the butter, milk, and meat of cows that grazed on lush green pastures in the spring. That’s because the cows were converting the K1 in the grass to K2 in the cow.

• We take too many antibiotics. This study found that antibiotics that impair the body’s ability to convert Vitamin K1 to Vitamin K2.

• Don’t be afraid of fat. The best sources of K2 are organ meats like liver, especially from poultry, ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys.

• Eat grass-fed meat and Grass-fed dairy is also good.

•  Avoid broad-spectrum antibiotics if you can.

 The optimal Vitamin K2 intake is probably more than most people get. But if you’re eating plenty of animal products from animals that lived on pasture, and your gut flora are reasonably happy, you’ll probably be getting enough K2 without a supplement.

Is Vitamin K2 the “missing piece” that could solve all our modern health problems? Not even close. There is no miracle nutrient that will do that! 

But it is a pretty big gap in the typical American diet, and a potentially significant one – well worth your time and effort to fill.

Get enough vitamin K2!

The very best way to prevent a vitamin K2 deficiency, is to eat a large serving of green leafy vegetables every day.  Green leafy vegetables are sky high in vitamin K1.  Your body will then convert vitamin K1 to vitamin K2.

Fermented foods, like fermented soybeans, sauerkraut, and some cheeses, such as brie or gouda, can all be good sources of vitamin K2.  Even though yogurt and kefir are also fermented foods, the grocery store variety contains the wrong bacteria for vitamin K2.

Other good sources of vitamin K2 include liver and grass fed chicken eggs BUT nothing even comes close to the amount of vitamin K2 found in natto or fermented soybeans.

Indeed, one serving of natto has enough vitamin K2 for an entire week. Not only is natto loaded with vitamin K2, but this fermented food may also help your gut flora.

Natto is a delicacy in Japan.  Unfortunately, most Westerners cannot tolerate the taste.

Can you get too much vitamin K?

Fortunately, I could find no reported cases of vitamin K toxicity from eating too many green leafy vegetables.  Unlike other fat soluble vitamins, very little vitamin K is stored.  Thus, vitamin K toxicity from food isn’t known to develop.  On the other hand, it is always possible to overdose on vitamin K from supplements.

To prevent a vitamin K2 deficiency

 In fact, calcium deposits and plaque buildup is a sign of early aging. The good news is that no matter how old you are or how “bad” things may seem in your arteries, you can DEFINITELY help reverse and remove calcium and plaque buildup… quickly and easily. And the best part is you can do it naturally – no need to ever take medication.

 When it comes to plaque and calcium removal, there are some very specific, potent and effective supplements that will give you dramatic results in just a few short weeks. -Vitamin C, D3, E and especially K2-7 (MK7) and Magnesium are very important at removing calcium OUT of your arteries and putting it in your bones where it belongs.

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