Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life

205 Pages·2013·1.63 MB·English

by  Kate Rheaume-Bleue

Vitamin K and the Calcium Paradox
2
How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life
Kate Rhéaume-Bleue
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Calcium Paradox
Chapter 2: The Undiscovery and Rediscovery of Vitamin K
2
Chapter 3: How Much Vitamin K Do We Need, and How Do We Get It?
2
Chapter 4: Vitamin K : The Ultimate Antiaging Vitamin
2
Chapter 5: Even More Health Benefits of Vitamin K
2
Chapter 6: Measuring Your Vitamin K Levels
2
Chapter 7: Vitamins K , A and D: Better Together
2
Chapter 8: Toward a New Definition of Nutritious
Endnotes
Copyright
About the Publisher
To Sterling, I hope by the time you are grown up,
this will all be common knowledge.
Acknowledgments
First of all I'd like to thank my amazing literary agent, Rick Broadhead. Rick
immediately recognized the value of my idea, helped me shape the proposal,
found a home for my book at Wiley and supported me in every step of the
publishing and marketing process. Thanks, Rick.
Thank you to my family for their support and patience throughout the
writing process and beyond. I'm especially grateful to my husband, Chris, for
his encouragement and analogies, and to my in-laws, Linda and David, for
frequent babysitting and dog walking. To my own Mum and Dad, thanks for
instilling in me a sense of curiosity, an appreciation of language and
determination. Also to my sister, Robin, thanks for being in my corner.
Thank you to my many dear friends who supported me along the way—
whether you knew it or not. I'm particularly appreciative of you, Rahima,
Paula, Jenny, Cher, Lynn, Lara, Lisa and Joyce.
Just in case I don't get a chance to say it elsewhere, I'm deeply appreciative
of every member of my “Factors Family”—you know who you are—for
support and inspiration. I'm especially thankful to Joanne Aldridge. Jo, thanks
for keeping me organized, putting out fires and making things happen.
I'd like to gratefully acknowledge cardiologist and author Dr. William
Davis, who generously contributed the case study featured in Chapter 6.
Thanks, Bill.
It's been a real pleasure and honor working with every member of the team
at John Wiley & Sons, Canada. I feel like my book and I belong here, and I'm
thankful for that.
Finally, I'd like to express my humble gratitude to the many brilliant
researchers and true scientific experts whose names appear in the endnotes of
this book. This book would not have been written without your efforts and I
hope it does justice to your work.
Chapter 2
The Undiscovery and Rediscovery of Vitamin K
2
Even though most of the world is just hearing about vitamin K , it isn't new.
2
Scientists discovered K 70 years ago; they just didn't know what it was, or—
2
more accurately—they thought it was something else. Misconceptions about
this vital nutrient persisted for decades, and we failed to recognize its unique
actions, food sources and deficiency symptoms. Confusion about the nature
of K persists to this day, in large part because of the lingering effects of its
2
botched discovery. This chapter explores that story, and reveals that vitamin
K is the answer to a 70-year-old mystery. I'll also set the record straight
2
about the difference between K and its sister molecule, vitamin K . But first,
2 1
in order to clarify what K is—and what it isn't—it's helpful to understand
2
how we came to know about it at all.
A Brief History of Vitamin K: A Tale of Two
Nutrients
Vitamin K was discovered in the early 1930s by Danish biochemist Henrik
Dam (1895–1976). Dam was studying another fat-soluble nutrient,
cholesterol, and working with laboratory chickens on very-low-fat diets.
Mysteriously, some of the chicks in the study became ill, developing severe
internal hemorrhages because their blood was unable to clot as usual. Dam
found that the problem could be prevented by giving the chicks specific
foods, particularly greens and liver, yet the clotting problem did not match up
to any known nutrient deficiency.
Eventually, the factor required for clotting was identified and named
vitamin K because, in Dam's own words, “the letter K was the first one in the
alphabet which had not been used to designate other vitamins, and it also
happened to be the first letter in the word ‘koagulation’ according to the
Scandinavian and German spelling.”1 Almost a decade later, American
researcher Edward Doisy (1893–1986) succeeded in isolating vitamin K and
thereby positively identified the nutrient and its structure. In 1943, Dam and
Doisy shared the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for the discovery of
the “coagulation nutrient,” vitamin K . And this is where things went
1
sideways for vitamin K .
2
Both Dam and Doisy, as well as other researchers around the world,
recognized that vitamin K appeared in two distinct forms, designated K and
1
K . However, although both forms were discovered and characterized over
2
the course of the 1930s, three fundamental misunderstandings about these
nutrients persisted for the next 70 years. First, K and K were considered to
1 2
simply be structural variations of the same vitamin and not unique nutrients
with discrete properties. Second, blood clotting was thought to be their only
role in the body. Third, vitamin K deficiency was assumed uncommon and
obvious, since it would manifest as some kind of bleeding disorder. These last
two assumptions are accurate when it comes to K , but highly inaccurate
1
when it comes to K .
2
Although it was not pursued, there must have been at least a notion among
scientists studying vitamin K that the nutrient somehow had health impacts
beyond coagulation. In his 1946 Nobel lecture, Henrik Dam made a passing
reference to early inklings that vitamin K might play a role other than blood
clotting, but then dismissed the idea: “It . . . seems unlikely that vitamin K, as
such, should play any role in the prevention of caries.”2 If by “as such” Dam
meant vitamin K , then he was right: phylloquinone (K ) does not play any
1 1
direct role in preventing dental cavities. But K , menaquinone, plays a big
2
one.
Incredibly, the discovery of the first vitamin K–dependent activity unrelated
to blood clotting didn't occur for almost another 30 years—and it was a major
milestone in changing the fundamental perception of vitamin K. In 1975,
researchers at the Harvard Medical School discovered the vitamin K –
2
dependent protein osteocalcin, which we now know to be a critical factor in
drawing calcium into bones and teeth to prevent osteoporosis and dental
cavities.3
Despite this radical discovery, it would be yet another 20 years until the
scientific community realized that vitamin K is “not just for clotting
anymore.”4 In 1997, researchers reported that the nutrient was required for
two critical physiologic processes unrelated to coagulation: ensuring healthy
calcium deposition in bones and preventing calcification of arteries that leads
to premature death. The implications of this finding were astounding. For the
first time, scientists had identified a single nutritional compound that
governed the appropriate deposition of calcium in the body. The puzzle of
two widespread but seemingly unrelated diseases, osteoporosis and
atherosclerosis, was being solved. So why didn't you hear about this 15 years
ago?
Although K 's role in preventing these major diseases is now obvious, in
2
the 1990s we still didn't quite get the relevance of this nutrient. After all, even
though K was clearly necessary for optimal bone and heart health, little
2
evidence existed to suggest that a lack of this nutrient was a common
problem. The most surprising revelation of all was finally made in 2007:
vitamin K deficiency is, in fact, very widespread, and this is having a major
2
impact on human health.5 Scientists are still grappling with the full
ramifications of this plight. We know that osteoporosis, atherosclerosis,
cancer and other serious health conditions are implicated. Research about the
amazing benefits of K is still pouring in.
2
The Mysterious Activator X
There's a little more to the history of vitamin K than its bungled and delayed
2
discovery by the mainstream scientific community. An astounding body of
evidence that illuminates our modern understanding of menaquinone was
actually published in 1939, four years before Dam and Doisy accepted their
Nobel Prize. For decades, this wealth of knowledge sat right under the
collective nose of scientists and nutrition experts, undiscovered because its
author, who didn't know the identity of the vitamin he was studying, simply
referred to the nutrient as “X.” Furthermore, the author's formal training made
him an unexpected source of groundbreaking nutritional research. He was,
after all, a dentist.
Dr. Weston A. Price was not your average dentist. He has been called the
“Charles Darwin of nutrition” thanks to his discoveries about the causes of
dental cavities and chronic disease. Dr. Price's work, which took him around
the world in search of the origins of illness, resulted in the discovery of a new
fat-soluble nutrient that he named “activator X.” Price demonstrated that the
nutrient clearly played a critical role in health and a lack of it would produce
illness in a very predictable pattern. For decades, the identity of activator X
remained a mystery and the subject of debate in the realms of medicine and
nutrition. Now we know it is vitamin K . The fascinating life and work of Dr.
2
Weston Price provide an abundance of original, evidence-based information
about the actions and health benefits of vitamin K to which modern research
2
is just catching up. Understanding his findings provides a framework for
appreciating the full spectrum of remarkable healing properties of vitamin K .
2
Born in 1870 near the village of Newburgh, Ontario, Weston Andrew Price
moved to Ohio in the 1890s, settling in Cleveland, where he practiced
dentistry for the next 50 years. But, right from the beginning, something
bothered Dr. Price about his practice: it was too busy. It didn't seem right to
him that so many people had such bad teeth. Price reckoned that this wasn't
natural. He suspected that something about people's modern, industrialized
lifestyle was having a seriously negative impact on dental health and general
well-being. And so, in 1925, after three decades of treating people whose
teeth and bodies were plagued with the common maladies of the modern day,
Dr. Price and his wife, Florence, embarked on a series of extensive and often
hazardous expeditions to find people around the world who were truly healthy
and to determine what made them so.
Using Indiana Jones–era modes of transportation, the Prices made their way
to remote corners of the globe: frigid Alaska, the most primitive regions of
Africa, faraway Australia and New Zealand, the idyllic archipelagos of the
South Pacific, the windswept Outer Hebrides (an isolated chain of islands off
the west coast of Scotland), barely accessible mountain villages of
Switzerland, the deserts of the Andean Sierra and the jungles of the Peruvian
Amazon. There Dr. and Mrs. Price found groups of people who, cut off from
the influence of the modern world and without toothbrush or paste, were,
simply put, healthy. The world over, the Prices found communities of
traditional people who had no need for dentists—indeed, had little need for
doctors of any kind. Instead, they displayed exceptional immunity to the
serious afflictions that plagued the modern world. Dr. Price noted that they
were able to maintain this vibrant health for a lifetime, “so long as they were
sufficiently isolated from our modern civilization” and followed the ancestral
diet that had sustained their people for generations. If, instead, individuals
from the tribe lost this isolation and began to consume foods of modern
civilization, things changed.
Without exception, Price found that when these previously healthy people
adopted a modern diet—either because they left their isolated home to live in
more urban areas or trade route developments brought the modern foods to
them—they experienced a predictable and specific pattern of decline in their
health. First, dental decay would set in. Where cavities had been unknown
before, people would develop one, then several, and sometimes mouths full of
rotting teeth. Then came the gum disease. Although today dental health is
primarily considered an issue of dental hygiene, tooth and gum disease
emerged in these individuals even though there had been no change in dental
hygiene habits. Dental hygiene as we know it had not previously been
necessary. More seriously, there is a predictive relationship here that was, it
seems, better appreciated in Price's time and that is only now being
rediscovered: tooth decay and gum disease are harbingers of heart disease.6
What was even more disturbing than the emergence of dental disease where
it had not existed before was the equally predictable pattern of chronic
disease seen in the offspring of those who adopted the modern diet. Where
the parents had broad, beautiful faces, the first generation born after the
introduction of modern foods had narrowed dental arches that housed
crowded, crooked teeth. These children were also prone to a number of other
now-common ailments, including increased susceptibility to infections, and
even behavior issues. In many groups the process of birthing became much
longer and more difficult as well. Price remarked that most cultures he
studied observed special feeding practices and reserved sacred foods for both
men and women approaching their childbearing years, as well as for growing
children. Almost every culture also had customs or taboos around how often
children should be born. They practiced the spacing of children so that
mothers could replenish their nutrient stores for subsequent children.
Apparently, traditional wisdom had a prescription for producing healthy kids.
When this wisdom was abandoned in favor of the modernized diet, problems
set in.
In the photos on page 31 you can see the typical broad, well-proportioned
faces of healthy indigenous people. The strikingly beautiful teeth and square
jaws in both men and women are now only seen in supermodels, some
professional singers and elite athletes. The relative facial proportions are
similar in healthy people around the world. Upper, middle and lower thirds of
the face are approximately equal. The width of the jaw is about the same as
the width of the forehead. Facial symmetry is the norm. Wherever indigenous
people were sufficiently isolated from industrialized society and consuming
only traditional foods, Dr. Price encountered villages full of adults and
children with perfectly straight, healthy teeth and wide, attractive faces to
match.
The next set of photos show the typical facial changes caused by a