By Kennedy Shelley
Rickets is on the rise. It is a disease that usually affects kids and is basically soft bones.
We also have many elderly who suffer from debilitating hip fractures. It’s the complications of these fractures that kills too many every year.
But both of these are caused by the same thing, low vitamin D.
When we think of bones, we think calcium. That is the mineral needed for strong bones.
But the problem is without vitamin D it just doesn’t get absorbed out of the bloodstream to the bones and teeth where it is needed.
The fact is that if you just take calcium by itself you might be setting yourself up for kidney stones and arguably heart problems from calcium build up in the arteries.
The body needs calcium, but it needs to be balanced with vitamin D and optimized with vitamin K2.
What we refer to as vitamin D, is actually a hormone that is vital to getting calcium out of the blood and into the bones.
We get vitamin D primarily from UV B rays from the sun. But because there has been so much near hysteria about skin cancer and sun exposure, vitamin D levels have been dropping in industrial countries leading to softer bones.
Then add to that, governmental dietary recommendations keep many people away from high vitamin D foods such as egg yolks.
And then there is a long lingering idea that vitamin D is toxic.
The Mayo Clinic published a long paper explaining the history of this idea in 2015 and how the evidence shows that people can take ten times more vitamin D than the government RDA without any negative effect.
All three of these have led to serious bone problems.
The most obvious solution is to get some sun, in the winter use a tanning bed a couple of times a week and increase vitamin D supplements.
But that is only part of the equation. Vitamin D and calcium seem to be optimized when using vitamin K2.
NOTE: Vitamin K1 thins the blood and don’t get it confused with K2 if you are taking a blood-thinning medication such as Warfarin.
Vitamin K2 seems to supercharge the process of getting calcium out of the arteries and into teeth and bones when used with vitamin D.
It was discovered by a dentist who noticed that when he was doing missionary work that people in the third world often had better teeth than his patients in industrial countries.
He found vitamin K2 in their diet, but found it was lacking in areas that ate more processed food.
Vitamin D will support your immune system and muscles, K2 helps with heart health, but together they help you absorb calcium into your bones and teeth.
(See this article on the importance of vitamin K2 in Freedom Health News)
Getting sun without burning is important to your bones. You can make it even more effective with more vitamin K2 in your diet.
