You are a lady who has just celebrated your 50th birthday. Everybody including your doctor has warned you that you are now prone to fracture your bones. Be careful and take regular Calcium and Vitamin D3 supplements. The extra calcium with the help of Vit D3 should be deposited in your hips and long bones making them strong.
What is the chance that this extra calcium is not going to be deposited in your Coronary artery leading to a heart attack ? Have you ever tested your serum calcium level ? It will be normal. It has to be even if you have grossly weak bones.
Increase calcification of arteries of heart and stone formation has been noted following extra calcium and Vit D3 in some women.
Who is the traffic cop that decides whether the cargo of calcium just received in your system be directed to your bones and not to the heart arteries ?
Vitamin K2 keeps our bones strong and our arteries calcium-free
We all know that vitamin K is needed for clotting of blood. When it is not around, the blood simply does not stop flowing after a simple cut. In fact, the alphabet K was derived from Koagulation, the Danish word for clotting, where it was discovered .
Today we shall discuss many other activities of this colourful vitamin.
These triplet always confuse the first year medical students. Well, to make it simple to remember, here is my key-
- K1 is the vegetarian avatar. It is readily available in green, leafy vegetables like Palanga saga (spinach),Poi, Kalama, Sajana, kale, broccoli. You see anything dark, green and leafy contains vitamin K.
- K2 is the non vegan counterpart. It is available only in meat, egg yolk and cheese. Here is the catch. K2 is the traffic cop that decides whether the extra calcium that you have taken should be diverted to your bones or not. In its absence most likely that extra calcium will clog your coronary arteries and choke your heart. This gives us one instances where egg yolk is good for your heart.
- K3 is the synthetic version that we prepare in labs and make available in market.
While millions of people take calcium and Vitamin D supplements thinking they’re helping their bones, the truth is, without the addition of Vitamin K2, the body cannot direct calcium to the bones where it’s needed; instead, the calcium resides in soft tissue (like the arteries)—leading to a combination of osteoporosis and atherosclerosis, or the dreaded “calcium paradox.”
Here is one interesting event. When you take excess sodium ( common salt), you lose more calcium from your body. Roughly one pinch of extra salt ( 5 gm ) in your diet necessitates two 500 mg tablets of extra calcium by your body.
We know increase table salt can increase our blood pressure. Now research shows that sufficient calcium intake has a blood pressure lowering effect.
- Limit your salt intake to only one small pinch per day.
- Increase consumption of green leafy vegetables and small fish in your food.
- Limit processed food. Processed foods are often high in sodium and low in calcium.
In the era of the Calcium and Vitamin D craze, Vitamin K2 is the silent partner. If it is not in the team ( other members include magnesium, Vitamin A), then you are more susceptible to dental cavities, heart disease, prostate cancer, liver cancer, diabetes, wrinkles, obesity, varicose veins, and many other ailments.
The good thing is that your body is capable of converting K1 into K2. There is no need of taking extra egg yolk.
Further reading:
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 
A pinch of salt is about 100 milligrams, almost one-fiftieth of 5 g.
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