Runners Need to Crank Up the K
A friend of mine is an avid runner. He’s been running for several years now, but he’s become increasingly concerned about his knees and the stress he feels there after years of pounding the pavement, treadmill, and wooded trail ways.
Being a natural health guy, I gave him some pointers on how to restore and strengthen cartilage naturally, suggesting supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin, zinc, and vitamin C, as all of these vitamins and minerals have restorative and healing properties.
But there’s another vitamin that researchers say has cartilage-restoring properties as well – vitamin K.
Of all the vitamins, vitamin K is the one you’re probably the least familiar with. That’s probably because vitamin K’s primary function isn’t all that sexy of a function, in that it helps the blood clot.
Whoop-de-doo, right?
But as I’ve written in the past, vitamin K is also important in proper bone development (particularly for kids, which is why it’s so important they eat their “trees” i.e. broccoli) and improving insulin resistance in men. But a study published in a 2006 issuing of the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism found that those deficient in vitamin K were also more likely to suffer from osteoarthritis, as X-rays on the 650 people showed a high number of bone spurs in their joints.
Today researchers from Vita K, a German research organization that specializes in vitamin K awareness and analysis, are hoping that more people become aware of vitamin K’s link to bone and cartilage development by getting the word out and calling for more studies on this lesser-known vitamin.
In a recent interview with NutraIngredients.com, Professor Cees Vemeer of Vita K spoke of vitamin K’s ability to activate certain proteins that are believed to be the “most powerful inhibitors of soft tissue calcification presently known.” But for it to be activated, vitamin K can’t be in short supply.
So is strengthening cartilage as simple as ramping up one’s vitamin K intake? Not exactly. As Professor Vemeer says, vitamin K comes in different forms, and the most effective kind of vitamin K is vitamin K2. A 2006 study published in the journal Blood regarding the effectiveness of K2 over K1 confirmed that K2 had a greater bioavailability for the body’s cells, thus more effective in all its functions in the body.
This poses a problem, however, because vitamin K2 (its technical name is menaquinone-7) is found in less than 10 percent of the average Western diet (primarily the saturated fat laden cheese and yokes of eggs). Vitamin K1 is the kind you find in green leafy vegetables like broccoli, kale, and collard greens.
The solution? Well, there are always supplements, so search ingredient listings that read “menaquinone-7.” But seeing as how I always prefer food over supplements with regards to nutrition, Professor Vemeer suggests natto – a fermented soybean dish very popular in Japanese cuisine, but what’s described as “unpalatable” and “slimy” by author and cardiologist William Davis of “The Heart Scan Blog.”
For my friend, it’s probably a no-go on the natto, so he’ll likely opt for the supplements to crank up the K. As for me, I’ll supplement, but I’ll also give natto a whirl to see what it’s like.
Sources
worldhealth.net
nutraingredients.com
vitak.com
nutraingredients-usa.com
heartscanblog.blogspot.com
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