Vitamin K, a vitamin that is necessary to blood clotting, might likewise help your skin look younger. In newborn nurseries throughout the United States, babies regularly get a dosage of vitamin K to prevent possible hemorrhaging. Now skin specialists think that vitamin K can likewise help aging and damaged skin appearance younger and much healthier.
Vitamin K, and in particular vitamin K2, has gotten a great deal of interest in recent years due to a greater understanding of its function in the body and its numerous prospective health benefits.
Once thought just be important for blood clot, and deficiencies in it unusual, we now understand that vitamin K has a crucial role in avoiding serious health concerns like heart disease, osteoporosis and perhaps even specific cancers.
What has likewise emerged is that the K2 variation of vitamin K, also called menaquinones, is most likely to be even more important for good health than vitamin K1. Sadly, this is the type of vitamin K you’re most likely to be lacking in.
Health Benefits of Vitamin K
Reduces Severity of Bruising
Two research studies strongly recommend that vitamin K cream helps skin heal faster after pulsed dye laser treatments, which are usually used to remove spider veins in the face. In a 2004 study performed at the University of Miami Medical School, patients undergoing a laser procedure used cream including vitamin K on half their face and a placebo on the other.
Half the patients used the cream for two weeks prior to the treatment. The other half used it for two weeks after the treatment. In the post-operative group, the bruising on the vitamin K side of the face was less severe than on the placebo side. Patients in the pre-operative group showed no difference.
The vitamin K side of the face consistently revealed more enhancement than the placebo side each day after the second day. The researchers concluded that topical application of vitamin K gel could help patients recover faster after facial laser surgery.
Improves Skin Elasticity
Physicians in the Netherlands think they’ve discovered a link in between vitamin K and skin elasticity. Scientists from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, were investigating the role of a vitamin K-dependent enzyme in the genetic disease pseudoxanthoma elasticum– PXE.
Individuals experiencing PXE have severe skin wrinkling on the face and body. The researchers found that a specific protein– Matrix-carboxyglutamic acid protein, generally called MGP– hinders the calcification of skin tissues that cause wrinkling in PXE. Vitamin K activates the protein. Individuals whose bodies can not metabolize vitamin K also show symptoms of PXE.
While this study concentrated on people experiencing PXE, the scientists suggested that vitamin K may contribute in preserving flexibility in the skin of people without the disease too.
Improves Dark Under-eye Circles
Vitamin K lowered dark under-eye circles in almost half the patients in a 2004 study performed at the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo. Scientist hired 57 volunteers with dark circles and wrinkles under their eyes. Each volunteer used a gel including 2 percent vitamin K together with small amounts of retinol and vitamins A and C. At the end of 8 weeks, 27 individuals revealed decrease of dark circles. Some of them also showed a decrease in wrinkles.
Without appropriate levels of vitamin K in your body, calcium guideline suffers with typically extremely damaging long-term consequences.
Vitamin K Safeguards Your Bones and Reduces the Risk of Osteoporosis
Vitamin K helps keep calcium and other minerals in your bones by preserving osteocalcin levels. Osteocalcin is a protein secreted by osteoblasts in your bones to bind minerals to the bone matrix. Nevertheless, when vitamin K (and is thought especially vitamin K2) is not present in sufficient amounts then osteocalcin can not perform this function.
This causes calcium been lost from bones at an increased rate. In time, brittle bones and debilitating osteoporosis are the result.
Prevent Arterial Calcification That Causes Atherosclerosis and Heart Disease
When calcium is seeping from your bones due to low vitamin K levels, the excess can be deposited in the cardiovascular system and particularly the arteries.
Preserving excellent levels of vitamin K in your body is essential for the development of a special protein called matrix GLA protein (MGP). MGP helps to obstruct calcium crystal formation inside your blood vessels, however it needs vitamin K to operate correctly.
People with a vitamin K shortage have been found to have a higher risk of solidifying arteries and this study discovered vitamin K2 menaquinone specifically connected with a minimized risk of coronary calcification.
Appropriate Blood Clot and Less Bruising
Your liver produces blood clot proteins and vitamin K is needed for this to happen.
These blood clot proteins likewise affect how easily you bruise and how rapidly bruises recover. Frequent bruising might indicate a need for more vitamin K in your diet.
While the formation of blood clot proteins is an essential procedure, the belief that this was vitamin K’s main function lead to dietary consumption suggestions based just on adequate vitamin K for this purpose.
Vitamin K’s function in bone structure, cardiovascular health and the other advantages of vitamin K listed ahead have numerous health experts stating the RDA for vitamin K is insufficient. Some likewise believe any modification has to recognize vitamin K2 specifically.
It’s crucial to know that blood thinning medications like Warfarin work by interfering with vitamin K’s function, so if your doctor has actually prescribed these you have to talk to them before increasing vitamin K in your diet, particularly through supplements.
Decreased Cancer Risk
Vitamin K2 in specific is being studied for possible protective effect versus specific cancers. A large European research study of more than 11,000 men over nearly 9 years found a minimized risk of prostate cancer with a higher consumption of vitamin K2 (though not vitamin K1).
Another smaller sized study found vitamin K2 had a substantial preventative result against liver cancer in women with viral cirrhosis of the liver. Other studies have analyzed treating leukaemia cells and other haematological cancers with menaquinones.
Enhance Your Skin and Prevent Wrinkles
The same calcification problems that solidify arteries can likewise impact the connective elastin that keeps your skin soft and subtle. Without sufficient vitamin K in your diet, calcium can be deposited in your skin’s elastin fibers and harden to cause wrinkles.
Vitamin K is also required for the development of particular proteins that preserve healthy skin cells and it might be a factor in skin problems like acne. In reality, there are numerous reports of topical vitamin K skin treatments helping to avoid acne and in specific recover skin affected by acne scarring.
Vitamin K1 and K2 Sources
Vitamin K1 is primarily found in green leafy vegetables like kale, romaine lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, collard greens, brussel sprouts, broccoli and cabbage.
While it’s certainly excellent to obtain plenty of these type of greens in your meals (they have many other health benefits) the conversion from vitamin K1 the K2 in your body is now thought to be rather ineffective at around 10 to 1. Having some healthy fats with your greens can help improve this ratio, however clearly there ready needs to get more vitamin K2 specifically into your diet.
Other sources of vitamin K2 are fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir and specific hard cheeses like emmental and Swiss cheese.
Liver, kidney and other organ meats, egg yolks from free variety chickens, yard fed meats and particularly grass fed butter are likewise sources of vitamin K2.
Were you aware of the health advantages of vitamin K and have you tried increasing it in your diet? I ‘d be interested to hear of your results.
