Let's talk about the topic for today it's one of my favorite topics
vitamin K2
so today we're looking to clear up some of the confusion about vitamin K2
does it take calcium out of the arteries or does it impact
insulin resistance or maybe it's something else
it's interesting out of all the K2 videos we've done
I have continued to want to cover one which talks about
insulin resistance I thought I had only seen one actual randomized clinical
trial but as you'll see today there's maybe more out there which deal with the
specific issue of K2 and insulin resistance so vitamin K2
you see some buzz about it but you don't see a whole lot of
clarity regarding what's the real science what's the real mechanism you
hear people say well you know what it takes calcium out
of arteries and puts them in the bone where they need to be
how would it do that well there's a lot of interest
but not a lot of information out there let's go back
and talk about that and talk about what it might be and just a brief spoiler it
might be a little bit of both so 1935 there was a Danish biochemist
named Carl Peter Henrik Dam he described a food additive
that reduced bleeding in chicks fed with extremely low fat
diet he named it vitamin K why vitamin K because the German word and he spoke
German for coagulation or clotting is starts
with a "k" so he called it vitamin K a few years
later an American biochemist Edward Adelbert Doisy determined that
vitamin K's chemical structure and succeeded in
synthesizing it Dam and Doisy shared a 1943 Nobel Prize
for their work on vitamin K now remember this is vitamin K
not vitamin K2 and we're talking right now about that original vitamin K
which is integral to clotting or coagulation
that's actually phylloquinone vitamin K1 for those of you who are biochemistry
geeks that's the molecular arrangement as you start looking at vitamin K2 you
begin to see that the menaquinones the vitamin K1 is
phylloquinone vitamin K2 are the menaquinones
and there have been multiples described the two that are most commonly known
are menaquinone 4 or MK4 and menaquinone 7 now one of the
things again if you get deeper into the biochemistry
you start seeing that the vitamin K2 variations have a lot more of these
double bonds that's about as far as I'm going to get
into the biochemistry and the molecular structure
now vitamin K2 does affect bone growth the loss in growth the deposition and
the taking back up of calcium simply adding calcium to your
diet doesn't ensure bone growth other factors are involved like hormones
and vitamins when talking about calcium absorption we
think first of vitamin D3 and it is critical to absorption
but K2 plays a factor now again we're talking right now about
bones we'll go back and we'll connect this whole thing about vitamin K2 and
bones and calcium in just a few minutes but be
patient with us as we get there K2 activates osteoblasts
osteoblasts are cells which build up bone for those of you
who've been through physiology you can remember blast
has a b in it and b stands for build osteoclasts has a c
in it and that means to cut away or to decrease
osteoblasts or cells which build up bone osteoblasts
produce osteocalcin and osteocalcin is a protein or an enzyme with
important roles in bone mineralization and calcium
hemostasis it's activated it's very much involved
in the activation K2 is involved in the activation of osteoclasts and
osteoblasts and osteocalcin is a part of that
process and the process overall what's called a
carboxylation again for you organic chemists out there
it's a carboxylation process which again here's where vitamin
K2 comes in that carboxylation does not occur without
vitamin K2 K2 inhibits osteoclasts as we
mentioned before osteo c cuts so osteoclasts take calcium
away from bone and inhibits those osteoclast cells which remodel bone by
removing calcium K2 also activates MGP
MGP is an acronym standing for matrix Gla protein
MGP is another protein which helps to ensure that calcium is used in bones
and not deposited in arteries and other tissues
now scientists have noticed that vitamin K2 supplementation does
improve prediabetes well K2 takes calcium out of the
arteries and puts it in the bone yeah but there's another way which to me
I wonder if it's not even more important you may have heard the term pleiotropic
mechanisms actually I talked about that in one of my videos
"pleio" means many and "tropic" means to go to
statins have pleotropic mechanisms they have multiple mechanisms so not only do
they decrease LDL they also decrease inflammation in
the artery wall well vitamin K2 seems to have
pleiotropic mechanisms as well not only
does it impact calcium in the artery tissue and the bones
it appears to have something to do with insulin sensitivity in 2010 Diabetes
Care Journal and here we've got a link here if you're
watching this on a large screen here's the article Dietary Phylloquinone
and Menaquinones Intakes and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Dr.
Joline Beulens she's a professor of lifestyle and
cardiometabolic disease epidemiology at the Amsterdam Public
Health Research Program her research is focused
on nutrition cardiovascular health and prediabetes
she's been involved in several studies demonstrating that K2
or the menaquinones have a preventive effect
on prediabetes this work on vitamin K2 prediabetes is still not
completely proven but there are meta-analyses already which support this
as I mentioned before at the beginning of this
I thought I had found maybe the only randomized clinical trial
that mentioned this and I found it buried one place in some
really arcane literature but as you go back and you look there's actually even
a meta-analysis what is a meta-analysis for those of you
who don't know it's looking at multiple pieces of research
multiple trials and these trials looked at this specific
question so the title of that article is Effect of Vitamin
K2 on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus A review the study showed vitamin K2 intake
reduced 7 percent the risk of type 2 diabetes
with each 10 microgram increment 7 percent
doesn't really sound like a whole lot until you start looking at
with each 10 microgram increments so the question is at least from the
signals seen in this meta-analysis significant
very significant powerful impact vitamin K2 has a more significant
impact than vitamin K1 on type 2 diabetes and again
as I've mentioned from the very beginning I felt like
some of the original studies that talked about K1 and diabetes
probably were confused over K1 versus K2 that remains to be
seen vitamin K2 increased insulin sensitivity
via osteocalcin metabolism it improved insulin resistance via
anti-inflammatory properties and lipid lowering effects
once you get a little bit deeper into the anti-inflammatory properties and the
lipid lowering effects you might see and we cover that in some
other videos some other blogs you might begin to wonder like I do
maybe it's not the lipid lowering effects causing the improved insulin
resistance is probably the other way around the
improved insulin sensitivity is causing improvements in lipids lipids
in case you don't know pardon the technical term cholesterol and
triglycerides on a practical basis you improve insulin sensitivity you
improve HDL the "good cholesterol" you
improve LDL the "bad cholesterol"
and you improve triglycerides so that actually is a deep topic I just
finished a blog update on triglyceride over HDL ratio that
is a very very interesting topic I gave it to
Chris last night he'll be working on it and hopefully we'll be putting it out
and covering triglyceride over HDL ratio and the
impact of triglycerides and the fact that HDL
lipidology is very confusing but there's some very important
life-saving information in there want to boil it down make it palatable
make it digestible enough on the triglyceride
HDL ratio again this is where I went down that
bunny trail improved insulin sensitivity and we'll
talk about that in that next video improved insulin sensitivity decreases
triglycerides when you decrease triglycerides you
increase HDL numbers you increase the large fluffy
HDLs which are the ones that really help and you actually move your LDLs
back up in the proper direction away from the small
dense atherogenic HDLs up into the larger fluffier LDLs which do not
cause fly so back to vitamin K2 it also suppresses inflammation
inactivating the NF-kB signaling pathway now is that
associated with insulin sensitivity I don't
know that's a little bit deep for me we were going to cover
this video it's a quick one minute video it's been a very popular
republication of a discussion on vitamin K2 but i thought
you know what that's enough of me
continue to get great feedback regarding the webinars
and here's why you know on the Internet when you hear a webinar you expect for
somebody to try to sell you something we're not doing that we're trying to
tell you something people are coming in with their labs from Quest
inflammation panel OGTT insulin survey response
and then they're finding out do I have inflammation do I have
insulin resistance and where does that fit in terms of other folks
we're getting ready to start one for CIMT as well
so again people are really excited about finding out
their own status looking forward to seeing you there
thanks