This video addresses a common question: How much Vitamin K2 should you take through supplements? Unlike Vitamin K1, which is recycled in the body, Vitamin K2 isn’t, suggesting a higher daily need. Dive into the current understanding of Vitamin K2 requirements, including safe intake levels and health maintenance doses for adults and children, focusing on MK7 form. Additionally, the video explores the synergy between Vitamin K2 and Vitamin D, setting the stage for understanding their optimal ratio in supplementation.
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How much Vitamin K2 should I take?
Transcript
For a decade, the single most frequently asked question I get is, if I’m taking vitamin D, how much vitamin K two should I take with it? Why are people asking this and what’s the answer? Vitamin D and K two work together synergistically on a few levels. Vitamin D helps you absorb calcium, but once it’s absorbed, the vitamin D has no control over where that calcium goes. It’s the job of K two to guide the calcium towards your bones and teeth and keep it out of soft tissues where you don’t want it. So in this way, K two actually prevents against any potential toxicity from vitamin D. Vitamin D will make you absorb more and more calcium and that can be problematic. People who take vitamin D over 10,000 IUs per day, for example, can risk having excess calcification. So these two nutrients work synergistically. And when people understand that, the next logical question is, well then what’s the ideal ratio? How much should I take of each? This hasn’t been studied. These nutrients are typically studied in isolation, not together. So there is not an established ratio of D to K two. So I made one up. The one I’ve been using for a while now, the rule of thumb I’m going by is for every 1000 international oats of vitamin D, you take about a hundred micrograms of vitamin K two, and that would be in the MK seven form. In case you’re wondering what MK seven is, it’s a form of vitamin K two that comes from the NATO be. So it comes from fermentation, which means it’s a long chain form of vitamin K two. It has a long half-life stays in the body for about 24 hours. So a single daily dosing is effective and convenient. People are sometimes surprised to hear that vitamin D could be potentially toxic, and it’s not common, but it is possible. Vitamin D causes you to absorb more and more calcium and that can get into the wrong places. So although we don’t see it often at doses of over 10,000 IUs per day, you can get into problems with vitamin D, and that’s where vitamin K two comes in. It helps to guide that calcium into the bones and teeth and keep it out of soft tissues like arteries and other places where you don’t want it.