Most people have rarely heard of vitamin K2. But in fact, every organ inside the body needs this vitamin.
Vitamin K2 is quite rare in the daily diet. As a result, they often don’t get the attention they deserve. This powerful vitamin plays an essential role in everyone’s health. Through this article, increaseheightblog.com will help you better understand this vitamin and the benefits it will bring you.
First you need to get to know its root, vitamin K.
What is Vitamin K?
Vitamin K was first discovered in 1929 as an essential nutrient for blood clotting. In this discovery, it is called “Koagulationvitamin”, the source of the “K” in vitamin K.
Vitamin K was also discovered by Weston Price, who traveled the world in the early 20th century to study the relationship between diet and chronic diseases. He discovered that the diet was rich in “mysterious” nutrients that seemed to help protect the body against chronic disease.
He calls this “mysterious” nutrient “activator X”. Today it is known as vitamin K2.
Vitamin K will include 2 main groups:
- Vitamin K1 (also known as phylloquinone): Found in plants such as green vegetables.
- Vitamin K2 (also called menaquinone): Found in animal foods and fermented foods.
Chemical structures of two types of vitamin K
Overall, vitamin K2 is a member of the vitamin K family, a nutrient involved in blood clotting and maintaining bone health. They are sometimes called menaquinone or MK with the two most common forms being MK-4 and MK-7.
What benefits will vitamin K2 bring to the body?
Improve bone health
Vitamin K2 improves bone mineralization and metabolism. It activates matrix gla protein (also known as MGP), the protein responsible for carrying calcium from food to bone and integrating it into the bone matrix. This vitamin also activates osteocalcin, which helps form bands of collagen fibers in the bones. These collagen bands help absorb pressure and pressure on the bones, limiting fractures.
This vitamin helps the process of transporting calcium to the bones
Good for gymer
For the gymer community, K2 supplementation is equally important as muscle mass is increased by training. The more muscles you have, the more you need a strong skeleton to support the new muscle mass. Thanks to its ability to improve bone health as analyzed above, vitamin K2 has proven effective for exercise
Protect your oral health
Like bones, teeth need vitamin K2 to support calcium metabolism and prevent tooth decay. Odontoblasts, located just below the enamel, produce osteocalcin. This osteocalcin needs to be activated by vitamin K2 before combining with calcium to form dentin.
In addition, some vitamin K2 in the body is found in saliva. Scientists observed that K2 has an antibacterial effect, reducing the number of harmful bacteria, helping to prevent tooth decay.
Improve heart health
Vitamin K2 activates MGP in the blood which inhibits calcification of arteries and other soft tissues. Vascular calcification reduces the elasticity of blood vessels, leading to hardening of the arteries. The activated MGP helps prevent calcium from precipitating into the calcium salts in your blood.
This vitamin deficiency is directly related to high intake of calcium through the diet which can lead to poor bone mineral density, causing calcification of the arteries. Without vitamin K2 to activate MGP, calcium will not be concentrated where it is needed, but accumulates in the soft tissues of blood vessels.
Calcium accumulates in the wrong place, for a long time will lead to calcification of the arteries
Effects on bone development in children
Bone growth begins as early as six weeks after conception and continues into adulthood. Bone density peaks around the age of 20, and then begins to decline to a stable level.
At this time, vitamin K2 is very important in transporting calcium to the right place, i.e. into bone tissue for rapid growth. The MGP activated by this vitamin is also needed to protect cartilage from premature calcification. If this cartilage is calcified too soon, the child may stop growing bones.
Good for pregnancy
Research indicates that during pregnancy, vitamin K2 is especially important for both mother and fetus.
Pregnant women can be calcium deficient due to the process of adjusting the skeletal system in preparation for childbirth. In some cases, this can lead to pregnancy-induced osteoporosis. Their supplementation has been shown to improve the bone health of pregnant women.
Vitamin K2 is also needed by infants to support skeletal development both during pregnancy and after birth. A K2 deficiency during pregnancy can harm your baby’s bone health later in life.
Balance blood sugar
Vitamin K2 helps activate and build stores of a protein called osteocalcin in the bones. Osteocalcin from here is regularly released into the bloodstream and used by the body to increase insulin production in the pancreas, as well as improve insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism.
Balanced blood sugar means a lower risk of diabetes
Anti-inflammatory
They have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects by inhibiting anti-inflammatory markers produced by monocytes. Scientists performed a study on patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The results showed that K2 supplementation reduced levels of inflammatory markers.
Beautiful skin and anti-aging
Some of the latest research shows that vitamin K2 plays a role in protecting skin elasticity. In the same way that it prevents calcification in other soft tissues, it also blocks the calcification of the skin’s elastin, the protein that gives the skin its elasticity and smoothes wrinkles.
Where can vitamin K2 be found?
Compared to vitamin K1, vitamin K2 is less common. The amount of vitamin K1 in a basic diet can be ten times the amount of vitamin K2.
Your body can in fact partially convert vitamin K1 to K2. However, the conversion process is not as efficient as direct absorption of vitamin K2.
This vitamin is mainly found in some fermented foods and animal foods. Vitamin K2 is fat soluble, which means low-fat, lean animal products won’t contain much of them Vitamin K2 is found most often in: natto (fermented soybeans), beef liver, egg yolks, full cream milk, chicken, foie gras pate, cheese and beef. In addition, dietary supplements are also considered an option worth considering today.
4 foods with the most vitamin K2
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Reference source
Vitamin K2: Everything You Need to Know https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-k2 Accessed date: 12/19/2020
Benefits of vitamin K2 https://vitamink2.ca/benefits-of-vitamin-k2/ Accessed date: 12/19/2020
Hi everyone, I’m Tony Scotti, an expert in the field of height increase with many years of experience researching and applying height increase methods, and have achieved promising results. I have created increase height blog as a personal blog to share knowledge and experience about what I have learned during the process of improving my own height.
