VITAMIN K2, BONES THANK YOU

Have you noticed more Vitamin K2 combination products with Vitamin D in your practice?

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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "I keep hearing I should take Vitamin K2 with my Vitamin D. What does it do?"

Concise Conclusion: Some limited research has shown that if you take Vitamin K2, your bones get a bit stronger. It's too soon to say if it's worth the extra cost, but it likely won't hurt to take it with your Vitamin D. Make sure you're getting enough calcium as well.

Quick Wrap-up: This is something we have not seen addressed by many tertiary references as of yet, and we're getting lots of requests to carry it. While Vitamin K1 is in leafy greens, K2 is in cheeses and other animal-based products. Warn your warfarin patients to either avoid or stay consistent with their vitamin K2 intake, as it can reverse some of the anticoagulant effect. The data looks promising for osteoporosis, specifically to increase BMD, but we recommend to focus on Vitamin D and Calcium first.

Dive Deeper

1) The combination effect of vitamin K and vitamin D on human bone quality: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials - PubMed

2) Chemistry, nutritional sources, tissue distribution and metabolism of vitamin K with special reference to bone health - PubMed

We hope you have found this useful. A reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestion you may have would be greatly appreciated. Your input will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.