Carboxylation requires K2. So K2 is required to get this MGP (matrix gla
protein) activated so it can start pulling calcium out of the arteries. So
that's one part of what you continually hear about pulling calcium out of the
arteries and there's good research around that. Again, that was one of the
articles of around it. But there's a lot of others.
You know, in speaking of the heated emotion around the K2 issue, it seems
like if I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times that K2 helps vitamin
D3 and the body in general deposit calcium in the bone and
take it out of arteries. But didn't you ever wonder well how just how does it do
that? And maybe it wasn't a thousand times. It just feels like it may. But
surely dozens of times again, so much focus on what that supplement does but
not really that much focus on how is it supposed to do that.
And again, this is... I will just mention a couple of quick scientific articles. But
the key part of this video is to get a little bit deeper on the mechanism for
vitamin K2, how it can have such an impact in two areas. Yes, there's a
research out there. This is, remember, a respected journal. I've reported on it a
couple of times. Vascular calcification involved with a
thing called matrix gla protein. Well, I'm not going to get into
gamma-carboxylation and all of that business, although that is a part of this issue.
Here's another randomized clinical trial which is again... pardon the bad
graphics here... here's the bottom line - there's not a lot of randomized clinical
trials which are good. They're large publications where in the end, they
show decreased plaque in arteries is associated from vitamin K2. (And pardon
all that starting around and trying to find my words and be accurate. I just
need to move on.) Right. This starts to get a little bit more
clear on the process and the mechanism. Remember I mentioned matrix gla protein.
What is this matrix gla protein? Well what it does is it does help pull
calcium out of the walls of soft tissue but guess what,
it doesn't do that unless it's carboxylated. That's where this
carboxylation discussion comes into but again we won't get too deep. Don't worry
about that. The carboxylation requires K2 so K2 is
required to get this MGP (matrix gla protein) activated so it can start
pulling calcium out of the arteries. So that's one part of what you continually
hear about pulling calcium out of the arteries and there's good research
around that. Again that was one of the articles around it but there's a lot
of others. Well, what about the other side?
So that's vascular calcification and inhibiting calcium in the vessels.
What about increasing calcification in the bones? Same thing.
There's another protein analogous to matrix gla protein. It's called
osteocalcin. And the same thing happens with osteocalcin. It's inactive in the
uncarbonated form. It has to be carboxylated in order to work well.
Let's get a little bit deeper in terms of osteocalcin and K2 MK7. There's a
thing called osteoclasts and osteoblasts. These are two types of cells which
control bone growth and bone density and deposition of calcium in the bone.
Remember: osteoblasts deposit bone and protein and grow the bone. Osteoclasts
take the bone up. Now how am I going to remember that? Back in med school, we use a
simple thing. There's a "B" in osteoblasts for "build." And a "C" in osteoclast for
for "cut." So maybe that can help you remember the difference between those
two. What's interesting is even within the bones,
K2 is used in both both of these processes as well - pulling
calcification out of the bone and in putting calcification in the bone. Now go
back up. Remember we talked about carboxylation. This is a
diagram around the carboxylation. This comes from that Journal of the American
College of Cardiology article and it's talking about the matrix gla
protein. If it's non carboxylated, it cannot... it doesn't function that well. It
has to be carboxylated there. As you might have guessed, there's an
enzyme called gamma-carboxylase. Actually, it's... well, let's leave that
alone. After it's carboxylated then it becomes active and can start helping
remove calcium from the artery wall. Vitamin K antagonists (like warfarin) are
known to greatly increase calcification of the artery walls. What does that got
to do with anything? Again, I covered that in another area but
warfarin actually appears to inhibit gamma-carboxylation as well as vitamin
K1 activities. So again, maybe getting too far into too many dots. Let's go back out
and just make repeat something to help simplify this. Vitamin K2 does have
a role in increasing calcium in the bone and in decreasing cast calcium in the
vascular wall... vessel walls. As you see here, it also has a role in decreasing
bone. So how does it do it? It's part of a thing called a carboxylation process and
I'll get deeper into that. One of the reasons that carboxylation process is
very important is it right now is the only lab test that we have that can
actually look a little bit deeper into measuring these activities. We don't have
great function tests and as I've said
before, the state of the art is still inconclusive regarding vitamin K2. I'm
beginning to see that there's enough information out there for me to where I
am focusing more on it. As you can tell, I've committed a few times to doing a
series on K2 and that's what I'm doing. How about osteocalcin and MGP (matrix gla
protein)? Are they something that is just theoretical? No, they're not theoretical
at all. Just go to Wikipedia, you'll see this picture in Wikipedia. It's the
actual protein orientation and structure for osteocalcin which is involved in
laying calcium down in the bone and here's actually the protein... the
amino acid structure, some micro photo, micrograph images of matrix gla protein
and some other information about these proteins are very well now. So again I
hope this helped continue to just push that awareness just a little bit further
regarding a very interesting back story on K2.
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Thanks.