As long term readers of this blog will know we run an occasional set of posts looking at the benefits
A source of Vitamin K
and sources of various vitamins. You can read previous blog posts here https://patienttalk.org/?tag=vitamins
Today we would like to turn our attention to Vitamin K. The reason is slightly different from our usual informational blogs as we want to highlight the various medical conditions which are believed to be helped by Vitamin K.
As background Vitamin K’s main purposes are to help with blood clotting (which helps wounds heal) and it can also assist in strengthening bones.
The most common sources of vitamin K are cereals, vegetables oils and green leafy vegetables. So it is worth including say some spinach as part of your five a day.
However recent research suggests that Vitamin K can assist in treating a number of medical conditions. These include:-
1) Alzheimer’s disease. This is because Vitamin K may inhibit nerve cell death.
2) Bruising to the skin from surgery and injections . It may also help with treating acne.
3) Diabetes Type 2 in older people. It has been suggested that people with high levels of Vitamin K are less likely to develop this kind of diabetes.
4) Cancer. This may be the big one but of course we should be careful about any anti-cancer properties. A study in Japan showed that women with lover cirrhosis are less likely to develop liver cancer if they have a high intake of Vitamin K. In Germany similar results were shown for men with prostate cancer. It seems that Vitamin K limited the chances of the cancer advancing. This may also apply to the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Obviously research is only at an early stage but it is worth ensuring we consume regular and sensible amounts of Vitamin K.