by Pam Uher

Created on: April 06, 2008

"Calling Vitamin K.
Hello out there.
We are trying to reach Vitamin K.
Are you there?"

Hello, I am Vitamin K. Oh, really. You don't know much about me, do you? Let me explain, Who I am and Why I am extremely important to your well-being.

I am called a fat-soluble vitamin group known to pathologists and scientists as napthoquinones. The RDA for adult men is 80 mg, 65mg for adult women and 5 mg for babies.

It has been said I have split-personality (dihydrovitamin K) because of my K1 self (phylloquinone), which is my natural form found in plants provides the major source of Vitamin K to all humans through dietary intake. My Vitamin K2 compounds (menaquinones) come from bacteria in the human stomach and intestines that produce small amounts of vitamin K for the body.

My K1 self is manufactured by pharmaceutical companies as a treatment for
medical coagulation problems in the human body. In other words Vitamin K
(cest moi) is essential for the "functioning of several proteins involved in blood clotting" (Linus Pauling Institute). There are 7 vitamin K activated clotting proteins that through what is called the "coagulation cascade" (a series of biological events each depending on the other) stop the body from bleeding by causing the blood to clot or coagulate.

So if you cut yourself severely or fall and suffer a severe internal bruise (hemorrhage), it is Vitamin K that essentially activates the process of coagulation that keeps you from bleeding to death.

If, you suffer from liver disease, you are at greater risk for uncontrolled bleeding, because the vitamin K coagulation factors are synthesized in the liver. When the liver is compromised then containing a severe hemorrhage internally is extremely difficult.

Newborn babies are sometimes at risk of having low levels of vitamin K, when they are breast-fed exclusively. Why? Because, vitamin K (me again) is not found to be in human breast milk at very high levels. Believe it or not baby formula has higher concentrations of vitamin K than breast milk.

Vitamin K deficiency in older children and adults results in problematic consequences with blood clotting issues that may manifest with frequent nose bleeds, easy bruising, bleeding gums, blood in urine or stool and problems stopping a skin abrasion or cut that continues to seep blood. This deficiency is not related to the disease Hemophilia, where the causal factor is genetic.

You derive Vitamin K from dietary sources such as: most green leafy vegetables like spinach, broccoli, asparagus and watercress, cabbage, cauliflower, green peas, beans, olives, canola, soybeans, meat, cereals, and dairy products. Raw or cooked these food items are full of vitamin K. Eating a balanced diet with plenty of green vegetables will usually avoid ever having to worry about a deficiency of vitamin K.

FLASH! Here is a new medical and scientific discovery. It appears from new research that vitamin K plays a role in preventing osteoporosis, especially in post menopausal women and elderly folks. New studies since 2003 indicate hip fractures in older women may be related to low vitamin K levels. Check with your doctor if you are over 60, it might be time to add a supplement.

So do as your mother and your grandmother told you (they were right, one more time) eat those green leafy vegetables and keep me working in your body the way I was intended to work. You need me! I am Vitamin K, your blood clot protagonist and bone density specialist.

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