Vitamin K2 EXPLAINED by John Bagnulo
In many of our classes, questions arise about eating eggs and full fat dairy products and first, quality always matters! Quality means that the food comes from animals that are outside on pasture; cows are eating 100% grass, and chickens are eating organic grains and allowed to scratch and hunt for bugs and grubs! Still the questions continue about cholesterol and coronary disease. It is important to understand the role of Vitamin K2: More than enough evidence to support it’s own daily requirement
Vitamin K2 is sorely missing from the average American’s diet. A 2017 study of older adults showed that 97.5% consumed little to none of the specific form of fat-soluble vitamin. There are a variety of factors that have created such widespread deficiency of vitamin that offers unique cardiovascular benefits and protection against arterial disease. While vitamin K1 or phylloquinone is found in green leafy plants, vitamin k2, also known as menaquinone, is found primarily in fermented foods, full fat dairy products of grass-fed animals, and the eggs of chickens that forage. These sources of vitamin k2 all have one thing in common: microbial action on fiber, either in the digestive system of an animal eating hay or in a cultured, fermented food.
As it turns out, vitamin k2 consumption at higher levels provides one of the more plausible explanations to the French Paradox, much more so than the role of red wine. The French Paradox is that there is a lower risk of coronary artery disease in a French population that eats larger amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol than an American population. While saturated fat may have already been debunked as a causes of heart disease, there still exists a major difference in risk of cardiovascular disease between several populations eating otherwise Western, modern diets. Although the French Paradox probably has less to do with saturated fat than sugar and refined carbohydrates, both of which are consumed at lower amounts in France than the US, there’s definitely a dietary factor that is making a difference in how and where calcium gets deposited in the average person’s body.
The evidence that vitamin K2 prevents the calcification of arteries was initially provided by the Rotterdam Study. The results of this 2004 large-scale (45,000+ participants) study revealed that for every additional 10 micrograms of vitamin K2 an individual consumed, there was a corresponding decreased risk for having a heart attack or coronary event by 9%. Those individuals with the highest vitamin K2 intake had by far the lowest risk and those with the lowest intake had the highest risk. No protective benefits were observed for vitamin K1 however, only for the form of vitamin k2 found in high fat cheeses and other dairy products. The biggest difference however was found in the levels of aortic calcification. Keeping calcium away from our arteries, the aorta being the largest in the body, is one of the best ways to maintain elasticity in these blood vessels.
There have been few if any dietary components discovered to date that carry greater protective qualities to heart health than vitamin K2 and potassium. The fact that there is no specific K2 RDA is surprising. Instead, the recommendations for vitamin K are simply lumped together, as if K1 and K2 were equivalent. This lack of education and guidance, coupled with an aversion to high fat dairy foods and eggs, undoubtedly results in more individuals being deficient and consequently having a higher risk for all the manifestations of calcified arteries. These include higher blood pressure and strokes or CVAs. Maybe it is because people are still so frightened by saturated fat that they are unwilling to eat the foods that are the richest sources of K2. Even the authors of the Rotterdam study (although it was 2004) complicate matters by stating that while these results are astonishing and even though they observed amazing cardio-protection by those individuals in this large sample, saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease so we should be careful with high-fat vitamin cheese even if they represent K2-rich foods.
There is very little to no vitamin K2 in low fat dairy. It is a fat-soluble vitamin.
A more recent study with a 10 year follow-up showed that those individuals who consumed the most vitamin K2 had the lowest risk of developing metabolic syndrome (obesity, insulin resistance, high triglycerides, and greater risk for coronary artery disease). Maybe we need to start considering high-fat, grass-fed dairy products as part of a heart healthy, weight loss plan.
The role that vitamin K2 plays in the body is very clear: it guides calcification. Calcium added to our skeletal system is generally a good thing but calcium layered on soft tissue such as our tendons, ligaments, or artery linings is not. Much of heart disease is based upon inflammation and calcification, so anything we can do to reduce these processes can be protective. Eating more anti-inflammatory foods is becoming an increasingly important dietary goal for so many individuals, but the role of vitamin K2 has been lost and it is at least somewhat dependent upon including eggs or dairy fat produced by animals that forage.
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Geleijnse JM, Vermeer C, Grobbee DE, Schurgers LJ, Knapen MH, van der Meer IM, Hofman A, Witteman JC. Dietary intake of menaquinone is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease: the Rotterdam Study. J Nutr. 2004 Nov;134(11):3100-5.
Veerle Dam et al. Association between vitamin K and the metabolic syndrome: A 10-year follow-up study in adults. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 2015 100:6, 2472-2479