We were always told to eat our veggies as kids, yet the majority of us didn’t exactly enjoy doing so. While vegetables may not be an attractive type of food for many of us, there certainly is no debating how healthy they are in the various vitamins and minerals that they provide us.
One of these important vitamins is known as vitamin K, which unfortunately many people in the United States and in other places across the planet are deficient in. Vitamin K plays an important role in many aspects of our health, and not getting enough from our diet can cause negative health consequences.
How Does Vitamin K Impact Our Health?
Cancer Fighting
Studies have shown that patients who supplement their diets with additional vitamin K show a decrease in the presence of various forms of cancer. Vitamin K has shown the ability to not only help kill off cancerous cells, but to inhibit their growth to begin with.
Many of these foods high in vitamin K are loaded with other powerful antioxidants as well, which also are important factors in the fight against cancer.
Protects Bones
Vitamin K typically isn’t associated with healthy bones, however due to the role it plays in bone metabolism it most certainly is. This is because it influences the occurrence of a protein involved in maintaining the calcium levels in our bones.
Without it the calcium from our bones gets leeched into the bloodstream to perform other functions such as maintaining our heart beat, and in turn can cause bone loss.
Fights Diabetes
One of the problems people with diabetes face is something called insulin sensitivity, to where the body can suffer insulin resistance, or where the insulin isn’t effective in doing its job. This is a problem in regards to diabetics because insulin helps regulate our blood sugar levels.
Increasing your daily intake of vitamin K can help your body better maintain the proper blood glucose levels by helping to better regulate this insulin sensitivity.
Doing so has shown the ability to reduce the insulin resistance over time, making long term supplementation of vitamin K an effective tool which can be used to fight diabetes.
Helps With Clotting
One of the things that vitamin K is known most for is its ability to thicken our blood, which in turn aids in its clotting. While having blood that is too thick can put additional strain on the heart and blood vessels, having blood that is too thin is not beneficial either.
This is because when the body suffers a cut or other type of open wound, having thin blood will slow down and may even prevent the clotting process to occur.
A vitamin K deficiency is pretty easy to determine as well due to the patients proneness to bruising. Remember that if you’re going to supplement your diet with vitamin K that taking large doses can affect the ability of certain blood thinning medications, so check with your doctor before doing so.
Which Foods Contain the Most Vitamin K?
Leafy Green Vegetables
Leafy green vegetables such as kale and spinach are going to be some of the foods you want to target here. They are loaded with vitamin K along with many other vitamins and minerals that our body needs.
Foods found within this category are some of the most nutrient dense foods we have available to us, making them foods we should be eating whether we have a vitamin K deficiency or not.
Fermented Dairy
Fermented foods such as dairy products are going to be another great source of vitamin K along with calcium and potassium, which are going to keep your bones in tip top shape.
The products you want to be looking for here are things like yogurt, kefir, cheeses, and sour cream. These foods are going to help provide your body with the right type of gut bacteria, and give you plenty of vitamin K in the process.
Supplements
If you aren’t getting enough vitamin K from your diet, then taking a supplement like a multivitamin is the way to go. A product like Ultimate Man from Men’s Healthy Lifestyle is an excellent choice here that will provide you with the vitamin K you are lacking from your diet.
Along with doing so it contains other vitamins and minerals, many of which you are going to be deficient in as well. This is the most cost effective way of getting all of the nutrients you are missing from your diet.
