If I were to pick a vitamin that “gets no respect” the award would go to vitamin K2.  Talk about no respect, there isn’t even a blood test for vitamin K2 and most physicians are probably unaware that vitamin K is not a single vitamin.  Similarly, to a previous newsletter on vitamin E, The vitamin e ight_story, vitamin K is made up of a family of vitamins: K1, K2, and K3 vitamins.  Interestingly, like some siblings, they couldn’t be more different in how they function in the body.  For this newsletter we will ignore K3 (menadione) which is a synthetic form of K3 used mainly in pet foods and instead focus a little on K1, and mostly on K2 and the subsets within that clearly make K2 the most gifted sibling in the family.

Vitamin K or more specifically K1 (phylloquinone) has historically been known as the clotting factor vitamin.  It got its name from the German spelling of Koagulation and it’s found in green leafy vegetables and oils.  Without K1, a simple cut to our skin could be a life-threatening event...