Transcription
By the time you're in your 50s and 60s, if you have not taken care of your vascular health, you're going to have stiff arteries and calcification. Yes, you may not have had a heart attack yet, but your physiology is being set up to either have a stroke, heart attack, or heart failure. So, what is vitamin K2? It's a vitamin that's unheard of; K1 maybe, but K2. Today, I'm going to teach you about calcium and vitamin K2 and why I'm so interested in it because I think that this is a very important chapter in our understanding of what's causing blockages in the arteries of the body.
Let's just dive right into it. There was another study done called The Epic Study, and it showed that for every 10 micrograms of vitamin K2 in your diet, there is a 9% reduction in cardiovascular risk. I would take that any day. Show me which of my medicines can do that—very few, if any. In the Epic Study, there was a direct correlation: the higher your intake of vitamin K2, the lower your cardiovascular risk. So, if you're consuming 40 micrograms, that's almost a 50% reduction in cardiovascular risk. The references are all listed, and this was an amazing study.
There was another beautiful study published in Atherosclerosis in 2009 showing that patients with low vitamin K2 intake have the worst coronary calcification, while those with the highest intake have the lowest amount of coronary calcification. There was another Dutch study that looked at 180 micrograms of MK7, which is the preparation that we use of vitamin K2. As I said before, this comes from fermented products, and it showed not only cardiovascular risk reduction but also that these patients had much better bone density, fewer fractures, and greater strength of the bones as well. This was a 2007 study.
Further studies showed that patients who were given vitamin K2 supplements had improved pulse wave velocities and carotid artery distensibility. So, what does that mean? It means it's improving the elasticity of the blood vessels. How does it do that? Well, obviously, if there's less calcium buildup in the artery wall and in the smooth muscle, which I explained to you before, then that artery is going to be more distensible.
So, if it's more distensible, what happens is that the systolic blood pressure will be lower. When the heart pumps into a rigid tube, the systolic blood pressure is going to be higher because there's nothing accommodating that stroke volume. But when there's more distensibility, that means there's more compliance in the blood vessel because there's less calcium; it's less rigid. You're going to get a lower systolic blood pressure, and we know that systemic blood pressure has a direct correlation to coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathy, congestive heart failure, and total mortality.
What happens to diastolic blood pressure? Patients given vitamin K2 supplements have better diastolic pressure as well. You don't want a very low diastolic pressure because a low diastolic pressure decreases coronary perfusion, which occurs in diastole. So, if you have a vitamin K2 deficiency, you're going to get a high systolic pressure because of the non-distensibility of your rigid tubes, your aorta, and everything else. You'll also get a lower diastolic pressure because there's no recoil of the aorta. Diastolic pressure is caused by the recoil of the aorta, so it's a double whammy. You don't want stiff arteries; you don't want calcium buildup.
By the way, this process of stiffening of the arteries and losing elasticity starts in your 20s. So, I hope I have your attention here. By the time you're in your 50s and 60s, if you have not taken care of your vascular health, you're going to have stiff arteries and calcification. Yes, you may not have had a heart attack yet, but your physiology is being set up to either have a stroke, heart attack, or heart failure.
I give my patients vitamin K2, and my diet has to improve. Diets should include fermented foods. The Japanese eat a lot of natto, which is fermented soybeans. If you have a taste for it, then you should have it because that has the highest concentration of vitamin K2. Next is hard cheese, like Gouda, which has a very high concentration of vitamin K2. Then come other cheeses, like Brie; the French cheeses have a lot of vitamins in them because it's the fermentation products that the bacteria produce vitamin K2. Kefir and sauerkraut also have a lot of vitamin K2, but much less than the first few mentioned.
Our regular meats have MK4, and our eggs have MK4 as well. If you have farm-raised, free-roaming chickens, they'll have vitamin K2 as well, but they have to be free-roaming. They need to be eating what they would normally eat in their natural life, not the feeds that we give them. The same goes for the eggs. So, any opportunity I get to do that is the way to go.
In the worst-case scenario, patients who already have some calcification or are at very high risk, I also give them vitamin K2 supplementation. There was a study showing that there was less prostate cancer and spread of cancer in patients who had the highest levels of vitamin K2 in their bodies, as well as osteodystrophy in renal failure patients.
Now, you know one of the biggest problems with renal patients is that they get calcification of non-osseous structures. When they come to me, I see the coronary calcium score is extremely high; the coronary arteries are calcified, the aorta is calcified, and the aortic valve is calcified. Again, those patients used to be given calcium.
In your bones, for example, you have two types of cells: the osteoclasts and the osteoblasts. The osteoblasts build up bone, meaning they take calcium from the bloodstream and push it into the bone, resulting in nice, strong bones. Osteoclasts destroy the bone; they demoralize the bone and take the calcium out. The way it works is that you need osteocalcin to bind the calcium, but to activate the osteocalcin, you need vitamin K2.
If you do not have vitamin K2 in your body, you're not going to get the carboxylation of these chemicals called osteocalcin. In the tissues, the counterpart of that is called Matrix GLA protein. This protein has to be activated by two things: vitamin D and vitamin K2. In the tissues, this chemical does a different thing; it takes calcium, binds to it, and moves it into the bloodstream out of the tissues.
In the bone, it causes deposition of calcium, but in the tissues, it pulls calcium out of the tissues and takes it into the bloodstream so that it can then head off to the bones. These Matrix GLA proteins are produced by the smooth muscle cells of the blood vessels. Blood vessels have smooth muscle cells, which allow them to vasodilate and vasoconstrict. They make this protein, which has to be activated by vitamin K2. When it's activated, it will bind calcium and move it out of the blood vessel.
When vitamin K2 is not there, there's nothing to take the calcium out of the blood vessel. When vitamin K2 is not there for the bone, the bone will not be able to mineralize because that particular protein in the bone binds to hydroxyapatite, and then the calcium gets trapped in the bone.
So, where does vitamin K2 come from? There are two sources of vitamin K2: one is animal sources, and the other one is my favorite, fermented products. See, it's all coming together. Why have I been encouraging fermented products?
Let's look at vitamin K2, also known as menaquinone. MK4 is one type, and the one that comes from fermented products is called MK7. MK7 is a longer molecule; it is biologically more active as well. It is found in some meats, some eggs, dairy, and fermented products.
Why would vitamin K2 deficiency happen if people are eating lots of meat, eggs, and chicken? Because the quality of the meat is also going down. If your animal was not eating green chloroplasts and natural grass foods, that meat is not going to have enough vitamin K2. Also, the eggs are supposed to have a lot of vitamin K2, but today's eggs are all fed grains, and grains don't have vitamin K2.
Vitamin K2 has to come from the original product, which means nature has to provide it first. When it goes through the cycles of the animals, that's when vitamin K2 levels go up. Fermented foods make vitamin K2; the fermentation products make vitamin K2. So, vitamin K2 gets into the body, activates all the MGPS, and in the bones, you're going to get strong bones, while in the blood vessels, you're going to get inhibition of calcification.