Is it true that vitamin k2 is important to keep calcium in the bone and not the arteries and other tissues?

“Perigord, France is the world’s capital of foie gras, or fatty goose liver. Good news for the bon vivants: foie gras turns out to be the richest known source of K2. Perigord also has the lowest rate of cardiovascular mortality in France, a country already noted for its low CVD mortality.

The best sources known are grass-fed butter from cows eating rapidly growing grass, and foie gras. K2 tends to associate with beta-carotene in butter, so the darker the color, the more K2 it contains (also, the better it tastes). Fish eggs, other grass-fed dairy, shellfish, insects and other organ meats are also good sources. Chris Masterjohn compiled a list of food sources in his excellent article on the Weston Price foundation website.”

Source

Or Let them eat foie gras!

@Marina I just learned about this, but had read it in an article where the entire magazine is trying to sell you supplements. So, I questioned its validity. This is kind of disturbing to me that many of the foods that are high in cholesterol are also high in k2.

In Japan they consume a lot of vitamin K2 and they don’t worry about cholesterol since the people with high cholesterol (ie 6.2 plus) have the least medical problems.
In Europe the people who eat the greatest amount of cheese (lots of K2) have the least heart disease – France, Greece,etc and the people who eat the least eg Ukraine and Russia have the most coronary heart disease.
I came across K2 about 4 weeks ago and have read the research papers and the science looks very good. It is not just based on corelations. For the first time in my life I decided to take food supplements as well as eating lots of cheese and eggs!
Over the last 3 weeks my pulse pressure has dropped from about 55 to a more normal 42 and so something seems to be working.

@Stew I’m so confused. All things I avoid are good for me? I don’t completely avoid them, I’ve never had that much control, but still. My grandmother used to take tons of supplements and thought eggs were good for you…she lived to be 90. Her brothers died in their 40’s, father at 38, and mother in her 60’s. They all died from heart disease/attacks.

Have you found research or guidelines on how much k2 to take?

Oh, and welcome to fluther :).

Hi, and thanks for the welcome to fluther :)

Regarding diet and coronary heart disease I would have to write a book! If you look at the web there is a huge amount of advice and opinions. I have tried to find out about the research and the studies behind the opinions. And please check out what I write.

Fat
Firstly regarding fat causing heart disease this was mainly based on the 7 country study carried out about 50 years ago. The biggest flaw in this study was that it only compared data for 7 countries and of those particular countries the ones that ate the most fat had the most heart disease. It left out all the other countries which showed that fat in the diet wasn’t related to heart disease. The World health organisation has a web site that shows data for Europe and you can use it to find out things like fat consumption per head , CVD death rates, cancer rates for all European countries.
If you look at fat consumption data and the CVD death rate for people under 65 years old data you will find you get a mirror image, the countries that eat the most fat have the least heart disease, the countries that eat the least fat have the most heart disease.
(The countries that eat the most most fat have the least cancer as well!) This is all on the WHO web site and is freely available for checking.

Cholesterol
As for cholesterol – the studies have shown a correlation for men between the ages of 35 and 50, not much correlation for women. Studies of older people have shown that people with higher levels of cholesterol live longer. I have read studies that have shown:-
1. Men between the ages of 35 to 55 suffer the most from stress.
2. Stress produces more cholesterol.
3. Stress increases the likelihood of CHD
So it is possible that the riseing cholesterol level is a result of the problem not the cause. However this is always an issue when a proof is based on correlation, does A cause B or B cause A or something else cause A and B.

Vitamin K2 and Calcium
The one interesting country that didn’t eat a lot of fat and had the least heart disease is Japan, this is why the researches years ago had got confused about fat. This is where vitamin K2 comes into play!
Vitamin K2 was unknown until recently, however it has now been discover and it;s effects are beginning to be realised.
I have learnt about K2 because I have being trying to work out what really caused heart disease, since the fat diet idea was so flawed. What I have learnt is:-
1. the calcium buildup in arteries is the best predictor or a potential coronary event (this is the wording of the researchers). Forget everything else, if you have calcium build up you have a problem.
2. calcium is vital.
3. calcium in the blood is held within limits
4. the body will remove calcium from the bones in order to keep the blood calcium level up.
5. the body will remove calcium from the bones in order to keep the blood PH at the right level.
6. Smoking causes calcification – which explains why smokers can suffer more from CHD. Also some studies have indicated that stress causes calcium build up.
7. calcium can be deposited in the soft tissue areas eg arteries, but the body has a means of stopping this. This involves the protein called Matrix Gla Protein (MGP). MGP stops the calcium being deposited but it has to be activated by Vitamin K2.
8. The body produces a lot of MGP around calcified areas however this MGP cannot do anything without vitamin K2.
9. Vitamin K2 helps the calcium stick to the bones not to the arteries.
10. Vitamin K2 is formed by fermentation. Vitamin K2 is fat soluble, in order to absorb it you need to eat some fat! You get it in things like cheese, liver, egg yolk , full fat milk.
11. Vitamin K2 is produced by the fermentation of Soy beans, a dish called Natto. This is popular in Japan and explains why they have low rates of heart disease and why they also have less osteoporosis.

Once I have read all this research and also how they managed to reduce the calcification in a lab test I decided it was time to make sure I increased the vitamin K2 in my diet.
What should the daily intake of vitamin K2 be is a good question.
1. In the Rotterdam study they found people with an average intake of 42 micrograms had a much lower rate of heart disease than people with an average of 15 micrograms.
2. Another study suggested that you can get about a 9 % reduction in heart disease for each 10 micrograms of K2.
3. At a scientific meeting it was thought that somewhere between 100 to 200 micrograms a day would be best.
4. I think in another study volunteers who took about 360 micrograms per day had 100% activation of the MGP protein after 3 months.

I am eating more cheese now but I have started taking supplements as well since that is an easier way of proving my intake. I started with an additional 45 micrograms but I’m now taking an additional 180 micrograms per day.
I decided that the best way of measuring any effect was to take my blood pressure. And so I have been doing this for over 3 weeks now. The one thing that did surprise me was my that my diastolic pressure rose, however I then learnt that the pulse pressure (systolic – diastolic) was the best indicator of calcified arteries. Over the three weeks my systolic pressure has come down, my diastolic has gone up and so my pulse pressure is much better. :)
As far as I now it would be difficult ( and expensive) to overdose on K2! In Japan they use 45,000 microgram doses of K2 in a medicinal fashion to counter cancer, and no side effects have been recorded.
There have been a far number of studies that show that K2 helps maintain bones. However I’m not sure how easy it is for people to easily check the state of their bones.

Please look up the K2 studies on the web, K2 is a vital requirement for our health (even the British NHS recognise that it could be useful for bone health!).

In the USA I believe they don’t have an upper limit because no adverse effect have ever been found. I will be staying with the 180 micrograms/ day since it does seem to be doing something useful, maybe when I get down to the blood pressure of a 20 year old I might reduce the quantity I take. Maybe there will be better guidelines published, I know that there are a number of research projects and so more will be known in the next few years.

I hope this answer has helped, and forgive me if it the answer is a bit long but to go against 50 years of indoctrination requires that some explanation is given.

Please don’t believe what I have written, please check it for yourself.

All the best

PS
I do have references for the statements above which i can post.

@stew I appreciate the time you took to write this all out.

Very interesting what you wrote about the 7 countries etc. related to fat. They have said that the mediteranian diet has high fat and they have less heart disease. There is an argument that the olive oil they consume is good for the heart, but I think the are also eating less red meat and many more veggies than an American.

I wanted to mention to you that you can evaluate calcium deposits in the soft tissues with an EBCT scan. My mother had this done, and the docs are suprised she is still alive. You can check bone health in terms of osteoporosis, you can get a bone scan. Logically, if calcium is depositing in the wrong place like your arteries and other tissues, it isn’t getting into your bone. My mom has osteoporosis just to give more support to this theory, and she walks twice a day for min of 30 minutes and swims (although swimming would not increase bone stregnth).

I also want to mention that with what little I have read vitamin D is still important for calcum absorption, but now I am beginning to understand how K2 is also necessary. I was EXTREMELY difficient in vit D. They measure two different numbers for D, both normal ranges are 30–80 more or less, one of mine was 17, and the other <5, basically immeasurable. I had protected my skin so well from the sun I was hurting myself in other ways. The SPF in lotion not only blocks burn but it blocks D. You might want to get yours checked if you work a 9–5 job, and rarely get sun on your skin.

My assumption before I read what you wrote was it still must be better to have proper levels of K2 and also have low cholesterol, which I think seems to be supported from what you wrote about the Japanese. My cholesterol is VERY reactive to what I consume. If I eat what I want/crave my cholesterol is 270. If I take out agg yolks and all sweets like cake and ice cream I am at 225 within a month. If I go even further and cut my animal consumption by half, I am down at 210. All animals produce cholesterol, I believe my body does not have the proper mechanism to estimate how much cholesterol I am consuming so it continues to make cholesterol at the same rate as if I’m not eating it, genetically I figure I am missing certain receptors. I have two close friends that eat whatever they want and their cholesterol is never high.

As a side note, I have tried margarine vs butter, I don’t eat a ton of it anyway, but if I eat butter my cholesterol is higher. I question all of this negative stuff about hydrogenated oils; and I think high frustose corn syrup is the same as sugar in the end, but purely my opinion. My triglicerydes do seem to go up when I take in lots of sugar, but that includes juice, coca cola, doesn’t matter what high sugar thing it is.

I think it seems most prudent with the information provided here to be lacto-ovo vegetarian.

I need to consider what you have written, and try to read some more. I think the EBCT is an XRAY so I have resisted getting one, because I hate getting more radiation, but I need to see if I am even right about that, and I would like to get a bone scan. I am only 41 so I don’t know if my insurance will cover it. I do have muscle trouble and a slow thryroid. My muscles are better when my thyroid is in line, and I think the vitamin D has possibly helped. I understand that vit D is directly related to the parathyroid, but I don’t really understand the function of the parathyroid. I wonder if it is all interconnected somehow?

Sorry to write such a long note…kind of thinking out loud…if you have any comments I’m interested.

Thanks again.

I will start of with an apology for another nice long reply. :) But it is such an important area and the decisions we end up making will affect us for the rest of our lives.

Firstly I had mentioned the WHO site, this is the address and you can use it to check things like fat, heart disease rates, cancer, etc
http://data.euro.who.int/hfadb/

I think the following link will show you the fat available per person for 1999 .
http://data.euro.who.int/hfadb/maps/map.php?w=1360&h=768
The second link shows standardized death rate for ischaemic heart disease for people under 65 for 1999
http://data.euro.who.int/hfadb/maps/map.php?id=map_140275001249485369&tp=1999&ind=1330&qnt=0

Given that in Europe K2 comes from things like cheese, liver, egg yolk and full fat milk then it is clear why the countries that eat the most fat have the least heart disease.

Unlike the 6 or 7 country studies no countries are deliberately left out! (note, I think I should have written the 6 country study in my previous email – I get them mixed up since they are both bad science!)

I think that the American medical establishment made a fundamental mistake when it decided that fat was a villain. One medical paper I have read suggested that because Americans are worried about cholesterol and fat they end up eating loads of junk carbohydrates which makes them obese, causes type 2 diabetes and heart disease. They then have to take drugs in order to stay alive. So America is spending huge amounts of money on medical treatments and yet Americans have the same life expectancy as Cubans. Clearly there is something fundamentally wrong,

I don’t think low cholesterol is something you should aim for, from what I have read below 160 the risk of cancer greatly increases. The average human cholesterol level given a reasonable diet seems to between 200 and 240, and as I stated previously the Japanese have found the healthiest people seem to have a cholesterol level above 240. I have read studies which have shown:-
1. Low total cholesterol is associated with high total mortality in patients with coronary heart disease – basically the low cholesterol patients are much more likely to get cancer.
http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/18/1/52
2. TB patients are more likely to have low levels of cholesterol and they recover more quickly if they are given cholesterol supplements.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16518060
3. Total cholesterol level is inversly related to chance of infection in hospital patients
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3864560
4. Cholesterol has been shown to be bactericidal in laboratory tests
http://www.iovs.org/cgi/content/abstract/48/6/2661
5. Cholesterol Plays Cancer-Prevention Role at Cellular Level
http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/472/63

There are many American and European scientists and doctors who think that the medical establishment have got it badly wrong.
I have the impression from reading studies by Japanese medical researchers that they think that the Western medical advice is totally crazy. Though the Japanese researcher puts it a little more politely:-

‘Looking for similar data in the Western countries, we found several reports
which were not consistent with the classical ‘Cholesterol Hypothesis’, some of
which were described in the previous chapter. Altogether, we reached a new
conclusion that efforts to lower TC should not be made at least for general
populations because low TC value was a predictor of high cancer and all-cause
mortalities. This conclusion most probably applies not only to Japan and Korea
but also to general populations over 50 years old in the Western countries.’
– Cancer and All-Cause Mortalities Are Lower in the Higher Total Cholesterol Groups among General Populations http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?doi=10.1159/000097806&typ=pdf

I think I will much rather face this Swine flu epidemic with a nice healthy 240+ cholesterol level than a low level 160! :)

Regarding getting a Calcium scan it is quite expensive in the UK, I have read that it could cost £400 and then I would still have to get through the NHS bureaucracy. I have read papers which indicate that the systolic BP and the Pulse pressure give a good indication of the amount of arterial calcification and so I am using that at present since it is very easy to do. Early in the year during an eye test, calcium deposits in the blood vessels behind the eye were seen, once I get my blood pressure down I plan to have my eyes checked again to see if they have gone. Repeating myself, the science behind vitamin K2 looks really good, hence I am taking the supplements as well as eating more cheese and liver. :)

Regarding transfats, I would avoid them as much as possible. The food industry like them because the food lasts longer! Think about this – the food last longer because bacteria can’t eat it. If bacteria can’t eat something – is it a food? I prefer to eat food that bacteria can eat. :)

Regarding what you said about sugar and triglycerides – that is the trouble with so called ‘healthy’ carbs. If you eat a high amount of carbs the liver has to quickly turn them into triglycerides or your blood glucose level would go too high. These triglycerides then end up deposited around your vital organs. There was a recent study that showed the best way to get rid of fat deposited around the liver was to eat a low carb diet – Low-carbohydrate diet burns more excess liver fat than low-calorie diet, UT Southwestern study finds http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/usmc-ldb011609.php

Regarding vitamin D I have read some articles that indicate we aren’t getting or making enough. I haven’t really thoroughly studied vitamin D yet and so I can’t really say anything about it.

I am really hoping the forthcoming intervention studies on vitamin K2 will prove it’s benefit and that will lead to much healthier lives for people. However it will then have to compete with the vested interests who are making a fortune out of the present health problems.

Admittedly the existing studies on K2 have been enough to convince me that it is a vital requirement for our diet. Apart from preventing CVD and Osteoporosis there are indications that it helps against cancer, arthritis, rheumatism and dementia! I have not come across any article indicating a negative effect.

All the best. :)