Is there more to Vitamin K than just blood clotting? Yes!

So....it turns out that there are at least two types of Vitamin K. You may have seen them differentiated as Vitamin K1 and Vitamin K2. The two types of Vitamin K are basically chemical cousins with totally different functions.
Vitamin D to the Rescue contains a healthy dose of Vitamin K2, read on to find out why!
1. Vitamin K1 got its name from the Danish/German word "Koagulation" which refers to Vitamin K1's primary function of facilitating blood clotting. Vitamin K1 can be found in green leafy vegetables. The body is very efficient at recycling K1, so most people are not at risk of being deficient.
2. Vitamin K2 has a very different function: it acts as a carrier to shuttle calcium from your blood to your bones. When you eat food that has calcium, like broccoli or spinach, Vitamin D helps your digestive system absorb the calcium into your bloodstream. From there, Vitamin K2 shuttles the calcium to your bones.
The Standard American Diet (SAD) tends to be very low in foods that provide Vitamin K2, like grass-finished dairy or free-range eggs. When someone is deficient in Vitamin K2, it could potentially make them more vulnerable to both osteoporosis and heart disease. The reason for this is that if the calcium is not shuttled into the bones, it could make them weaker and the calcium could end up accumulating in the lining of the arteries, leading to atherosclerosis.
For more information about Vitamin K2 and calcium, we suggest you check out this book by Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue titled: Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox.
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