Vitamin K was originally named for the German word Koagulation since it was thought to only be responsible for blood clotting. It was thought that interfering with vitamin K might help prevent blood clots. In the short term, it did. But it turns out that the K vitamins have an important role in calcium metabolism, and long term inhibition can lead to arterial calcification and an increased risk of heart disease.

There was a study fairly recently which demonstrated, via a population study, that calcium supplementation correlated with increased risk of heart disease while calcium from natural sources did not. My thought was that the missing link there was the K1 in calcium-containing green vegetables and the K2 in calcium-containing cheeses. With whole foods, when we eat calcium, we also get the crucial K vitamins to metabolize that calcium. Because nature is cool like that. What frustrated me about that study is that their population data set actually contained information on menaquinone intake, but the researchers, for some reason, decided not to control for that variable. Argh.


Anyway, for a while, it's been noted that cheese was not as fattening as its fat content should make it. And the difference was chalked up to the calcium content of the cheese as a metabolism booster. That was interesting, in our culture so focused on weight loss. However I recently came across a study suggesting that vitamin K may be part of that metabolism-boosting picture.

Quote:Interestingly, the addition of PK (K1 from plants) or MK-4 ( MK-4 is from meat, though the related MK-7 is produced by microbes) significantly decreased the total fat accumulation (p<0.01 and p<0.05, respectively), and serum triglycerides were reduced by 48% in the PK group and 29% in the MK group compared with the control.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21295170

(01-11-2013 3:20 AM)wiserd Wrote:  Because nature is cool like that.

Right?

Awesome post, wiserd! Thanks for always sharing such priceless insight! You rock!!!!!!!