Rhonda: Yeah, I think the vitamin K is a good one to talk about because I think, you know, there's two biologically active forms of vitamin K, vitamin K1 and vitamin K2. And, you know, like you mentioned, vitamin K1 is, you know, found in plants. So phylloquinone, and, you know, this type of vitamin K, K1, is lipophilic. And so it goes directly to the liver, and that's where it activates all these proteins that are involved in blood clotting, that they're in the liver. But, you know, and if you get enough of that, you know, K1 to activate those proteins in the liver, then more of it can stay around in the circulation, where it can then activate these other proteins that are important for pulling calcium out of the bloodstream to prevent calcification of the arteries, take it to the bones where it's supposed to go, right?

Bruce: Yeah.

Rhonda: Like vitamin K2, which is found in, you know, fermented, you know, foods like natto...

Bruce: Yeah, the Japanese have a health food called natto, and most Westerners think it looks a little yucky, and it tastes a little yucky, and it smells a little yucky. But the Japanese love it because they consider it a health food. And the epidemiology shows that people who eat natto...it's a bacterial-fermented soybean, B. subtilis-fermented soybean, and the people who eat that get less heart disease, and they get less bone fractures. Well, one of the proteins that's vitamin K-dependent is something called matrix Gla-protein, and the function of that is to bind calcium phosphate crystals, which form very easily in the blood and is the beginning of an atherosclerotic plaque, and prevent it causing an atherosclerotic plaque.

And so we sort of understand how it's working. People who take Coumadin or it's also called warfarin, it's an anti-clotting protein so you don't get thrombosis, 30 million people take that. Well, they get calcification in the arteries at a much higher rate, and they get bone fractures at a much higher rate. So all this fits together. Anyway, Joyce McCann...

Rhonda: Yeah, I saw a paper on the fact that people that were taking warfarin, if they also took menaquinone, which is vitamin K2 from natto, a natural source, that because vitamin K2 does not go to the liver to activate blood-clotting proteins, it's not the lipophilic, it stays around in the circulation, they could take it. It doesn't interfere with the blood clotting process, and that it negated some of the negative...or, you know, so it negated some negative effects.

Bruce: Okay, that might make sense. Dr. McCann and my group did a beautiful review. We didn't do any experimental work on this. It was all theoretical. But I always said, I thought it was a beautiful review. And she showed that bone fractures, there's a protein called osteocalcin, and if you knock out that protein in mice so they can't make it, then you test the mice and their bones break much more easily. So you need that protein to make a strong bone. It's located in the bone. It's moving calcium around in the bone, and it helps make a strong bone. And if you don't have your vitamin K, you don't have make that protein. And so, and similarly matrix Gla-protein. If you don't have enough vitamin K, you don't make that protein. You get calcification of the arteries. And people taking warfarin, Coumadin tend to get both bone fractures and calcification of the arteries.

So this explains all sorts of medical things we didn't understand before.