What is vitamin K2
Vitamin K2, also known as menaquinone, belongs to a group of fat-soluble vitamins known as vitamin K together with vitamin K1. Vitamin K2 is by far the most active vitamin in this group and is exclusively responsible for many positive effects.
There are different variants of vitamin K2, including menaquinone-4, which is derived from animal sources, and menaquinone-7, which is derived from plant sources. At GN Health Line Vitamin K2, we only use menaquinone-7 derived from non-GMO soybeans, making it suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
Vitamin K2 plays an important role in various vital body processes, including healthy blood clotting and the activation of GLA proteins, which play a very important role in the calcium metabolism of the human body.
Although a healthy function of the calcium metabolism may not sound particularly exciting at first glance, it is actually associated with better cardiovascular health by reducing arteriosclerosis and maintaining elastic blood vessels, as well as maintaining healthy bones and teeth and preventing osteoporosis.
In addition, according to scientific studies, vitamin K2 appears to reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancer and could also significantly reduce the risk of diabetes. We will go into all these interesting health benefits in more detail below and also quote the most important studies.
How does a vitamin K2 deficiency manifest itself and what are its consequences?
A vitamin K2 deficiency can occur quite quickly if the diet is not perfectly balanced, not least because even the best natural sources of vitamin K, such as meat, offal, egg yolks, quark and certain cheeses that undergo a bacterial ripening process, only contain small amounts of vitamin K2. It is therefore not surprising that health experts assume that vitamin K2 deficiency is very widespread.
The tricky thing about a vitamin K2 deficiency is that it often only becomes noticeable relatively late, when severe and sometimes irreparable damage has already occurred. This is due to the fact that vitamin K2 is involved in many long-term processes and diseases promoted by a vitamin K2 deficiency, such as osteoporosis or arteriosclerosis, only become noticeable in the final stages, when successful treatment is difficult or even impossible. Initial indications of a vitamin K deficiency include an increased tendency to bruise, as well as unusually prolonged bleeding after injuries, as a vitamin K deficiency inhibits the blood's ability to clot.
Long-term consequences of a vitamin K2 deficiency include a greatly increased risk of osteoporosis, bone loss, arteriosclerosis, cardiovascular disease and kidney stones, to name but a few.
The daily requirement of vitamin K is given as 65 to 80 µg per day. If you want to be on the safe side, you can take a high-quality vitamin K2 product such as GN Health Line Vitamin K2 every day to rule out any risk of vitamin K2 deficiency. There is no need to worry about overdosing, as many experts consider the recommended daily intake of 65 to 80µg to be the absolute lower limit and vitamin K2 is safe even in high doses. Even if vitamin K2 promotes healthy blood clotting, high doses of vitamin K2 cannot lead to an increased risk of thrombosis, as vitamin K2 only has a natural regulating function.
Who can particularly benefit from vitamin K2 supplementation?
Adequate vitamin K2 intake is important for everyone. However, there are some people who may particularly benefit from vitamin K2 supplementation. These groups of people include:
- People who suffer from a blood clotting disorder may particularly benefit from vitamin K2 supplementation, as vitamin K2 plays a crucial role in regulating blood clotting
- Older people and especially post-menopausal women have a greatly increased risk of osteoporosis and bone loss. These people can particularly benefit from the osteoporosis-counteracting and bone-building effects of vitamin K2 if they also make sure they have an adequate supply of vitamin D and calcium.
- People who have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease or already suffer from arteriosclerosis can particularly benefit from vitamin K2 supplementation, as this vitamin can counteract arteriosclerosis and plaque formation in the blood vessels and keep the arteries more elastic.
- As vitamin K2 is primarily found in animal foods, vegetarians and vegans are at an increased risk of vitamin K2 deficiency and can therefore particularly benefit from vitamin K2 supplementation.
- People who have an increased risk of diabetes can particularly benefit from vitamin K2 supplementation, as vitamin K2 could significantly reduce the risk of diabetes.
Vitamin K2 for healthy bones and to protect against osteoporosis
Although vitamin D and calcium are the first vitamins and minerals most people think of when it comes to bone health, vitamin K2 is at least as important. To be more precise, no matter how much vitamin D and calcium you consume, without vitamin K2 neither of them can have their bone-building effect.
To understand this, you need to know that vitamin D stimulates the formation of osteocalcin, which is responsible for storing calcium in the bones. However, this osteocalcin can only be activated by vitamin K2 and is ineffective without vitamin K2. In other words, this means that all the calcium and vitamin D in the world will not be able to reduce osteoporosis and a decrease in bone density if you suffer from a vitamin K2 deficiency. Instead, bones become thin and fragile and the risk of fractures increases over time.
Scientific research has shown that vitamin K2 can increase the strength and density of bones and also promotes the formation of collagen, which makes bones more elastic and can protect against fractures. In fact, an analysis of various studies has shown that vitamin K2 can reduce the risk of bone fractures by 60 to 80%.
When it comes to bone health, osteoporosis is also an important topic. Osteoporosis is defined as bone loss of more than 1 to 1.5% per year from the mid-30s onwards. Women after the menopause are particularly affected, as they have significantly less oestrogen, which promotes calcium deposition in the bones. However, osteoporosis does not only affect women and almost 10 million people in Germany suffer from this disease, also known as bone loss.
Interestingly, scientific studies have shown that vitamin K2 levels in osteoporosis patients are up to 70% lower than in healthy people and that a lack of vitamin K2 leads to lower bone density and an increased risk of fractures (1). Another study was able to show that vitamin K2 is able to prevent bone loss in osteoporosis and even stimulate bone formation (2).
Vitamin K2 to promote cardiovascular health and protect against arteriosclerosis
Arteriosclerosis, also known as calcification of the arteries, is a degenerative change in the arteries and coronary arteries that progresses slowly over years or even decades and is responsible for numerous cardiovascular diseases such as angina pectoris, heart attacks and strokes. Alarmingly, over 50% of all deaths in Western civilization can be attributed to cardiovascular disease.
The insidious thing about arteriosclerosis is that its symptoms only become noticeable at a very advanced stage due to narrowing of the blood vessels or vascular occlusion, when cardiovascular health is already severely impaired.
Arteriosclerosis occurs when tiny cracks appear on the inner walls of the arteries as a result of rising blood pressure and these are filled by the body with LDL cholesterol, which binds calcium, due to a lack of important vital substances. By removing excess calcium from the blood, vitamin K2 can significantly reduce such dangerous calcium deposits (3).
The best known study is the so-called Rotterdam Heart Study, which investigated the relationship between the amount of vitamin K2 consumed and arteriosclerosis (4). This study came to the conclusion that people with a higher vitamin K2 intake have significantly less calcium deposits in the arteries and that a sufficient vitamin K2 intake can reduce the risk of arteriosclerosis or death from cardiovascular disease by 50%.
It is likely that the effects of vitamin K2 could be even more far-reaching. Animal studies have shown that vitamin K2 was able to reverse artificially induced calcification of the arteries and reduce calcium deposits by 50% (5).
Calcification of the arteries also causes the walls of the blood vessels to stiffen, which can cause further micro-tears in the inner walls of the arteries with all their negative consequences. An interesting study conducted with 244 postmenopausal women over a period of 3 years (6) clearly showed that vitamin K2 can improve the elasticity of blood vessels even in the case of existing vascular stiffness. Vitamin K2 can therefore also bring about a significant improvement in the elasticity of blood vessels.
Vitamin K2 to protect against cancer
Even though this branch of research is still in its infancy, there are clear indications that vitamin K2 could protect against cancer by activating the self-destruction mechanism of cancer cells. This has already been demonstrated in leukemia cells in an in vitro study (7).
In addition to these more theoretical studies, there are also studies carried out directly on humans that can show that vitamin K2 can protect against cancer (8). A study conducted on subjects with an increased risk of liver cancer showed that only 10% of the subjects who supplemented with vitamin K, but 47% of the subjects in the control group, developed liver cancer during the study period. Expressed in figures, this means that vitamin K2 was able to reduce the risk of cancer by almost 80%, which corresponds to a quite dramatic reduction in the risk of cancer.
However, vitamin K2 not only appears to be able to protect against cancer, but also to have a positive effect on existing cancer. A study carried out in Heidelberg and published in the renowned American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that vitamin K2 can reduce the risk of death in cancer patients by 30% (9).
Vitamin K2 to reduce the risk of diabetes
A study conducted in the Netherlands in 2010 came to the conclusion that there is a direct link between the level of vitamin K2 intake and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes (10). This study analyzed the diets of almost 40,000 study participants for vitamin K2 content.
In this study, a practically linear relationship between vitamin K2 intake and diabetes risk was observed. A detailed evaluation of the results showed that every 10µg increase in vitamin K2 intake reduces the risk of diabetes by 7%.
In addition, higher vitamin K2 intake was also associated with improved blood lipid levels and lower levels of C-reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation. This suggests that vitamin K2 may reduce inflammation in the body.
Recommended intake: Take one capsule of vitamin K2 after a meal that contains a certain amount of fat. As vitamin K2 is a fat-soluble vitamin, some dietary fat is required for adequate absorption by the body.
Warning: Please discuss supplementation with vitamin K2 in advance with your doctor if you are taking blood-thinning medication such as Coumarin, as vitamin K2 supports healthy blood clotting. It is possible that the medication may need to be adjusted.
