The Vitamin you probably never heard of until today: K2 – By Dr. Susan Sanders Fort Pierce Chiropractor
Vitamin K2, we predict, is going to be the next vitamin everyone is going to be seeking out. It is an essential nutrient and most people have never heard of it. Not only is it minimally talked about, it is rarely eaten as much as it used to be. For this reason, we predict most people need to add it either to their regular food intake, but also take it as a supplement.
What is Vitamin K2?
What is it? It is primarily sourced from animal products. Not just any animal products, but the ones we eat very little of these days: fermented cheeses, liver and other organ meats. If you are like me, you avoid organ meats like the plague. Some people love eating liver. It is my opinion, most people find a significant distaste because their parents ate liver and onions once a week. That being said, these foods have significant nutritional benefit when added to our diet regularly. If you cannot eat these food types, don’t worry, they are available in supplement form.
Where can you get Vitamin K 2?
Before we get into ways to prepare liver (and there are many flavors of liver out there), let’s discuss why we need vitamin K2. You may have heard that Vitamin K (a.k.a. K1) is great for reducing bruises and contusion. What you may not know is that there are different forms of what we call Vitamin K and they are completely different. Some think they should not be in the same family.
Green leafy vegetables give us vitamin K1 which is taken to our liver after digestion where it helps with the internal liver function in breaking down our proteins (a process known as carboxylation) as well as clotting the blood. Vitamin K2, on the other hand, never goes to work in the liver. It works only outside the liver and one of its major functions is to clean your arteries of calcium deposits. It also helps prevent tooth decay. Another massive function of Vitamin K2 is the improving insulin sensitivity in type II Diabetes. We all need clear arteries so we can reduce embolism, heart attacks and strokes.
How often should you eat vitamin K2 foods?
If you supplement, you can supplement daily. This vitamin will begin to reverse artery inflammation and help prevent heart attack. Fermented cheeses such as marbled cheeses, feta, ricotta and more can be added easily to most meals several times a week. Most animal livers can be made into pate (youtube.com has many videos on how to make your own) which can be used as a spread on bread or crackers, or as a dip with vegetables. Liver and onions are of course an option if you wish. My grandfather used to eat all the organs of the animal, because that is what people used to do. You will have to figure out which meals work for you, but you should not ignore this vitamin.
Joggers who drop dead:
It has been suggested that people who jog regularly and suddenly drop dead may have been suffering from significant K2 depletion and their body responded with severe cardiac arrest. Whether this is true or not, K2 is anti-inflammatory and we all can use less inflammation in our bodies to improve our health for our arteries, heart, and whole body well being.
