It is well known that green leafy vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, kale and broccoli are healthy foods. But did you know that these vegetables may help keep bones strong? And this isn’t merely because some of them contain calcium, but because they are fantastic sources of vitamin K.

Until recently, vitamin K has been most well known as a fat soluble vitamin that plays an important role in blood clotting. However, researchers have also found that circulating vitamin K blood levels are often low in patients with osteoporosis. While a deficiency of vitamin K is considered rare by conventional medicine, a 2006 study by University of Michigan School of Nursing researchers has found that many women in early menopause may not have enough of the vitamin in their bodies. The study suggests that the generally accepted level of vitamin K in healthy women is inadequate to maintain bone health just at the onset of menopause.

Vitamin K is an integral part of bone mineralisation. According to a study that appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1999, Vitamin K is needed to make a protein that’s essential for bone formation. In the great majority of people, beneficial intestinal bacteria make much of the vitamin K needed for this purpose, which is why you hear so little about this vitamin. But to get enough K, especially to keep bones strong, you also need to eat vitamin K-rich vegetables.

In the USA, a Nurses’ Health Study followed 72,000 middle-aged women for 10 years. It was found that those who consumed moderate or high amounts of vitamin K (nearly all from vegetables) had a 30 percent lower risk of hip fractures than women consuming little or no vitamin K. This held true even when other factors affecting bone health, such as calcium and vitamin D, were taken into account.  It didn’t take much vitamin K – about 100 to 150 micrograms a day – to achieve this protective effect.

Worldwide, only a handful of researchers study vitamin K. But with the ageing of the population, this vitamin may command a bigger following as its importance to the integrity of bones becomes increasingly clear; especially as the manufacturing, farming and processing of food creates nutritional deficiencies and Vitamin K isn’t as abundant in the diet as once thought.

Vitamin K-Rich Foods

One portion:

• Cooked broccoli (90 micrograms of vitamin K)
• Cooked Brussel sprouts (230 micrograms of vitamin K)
• Coleslaw (120 micrograms of vitamin K)
• Cooked collards (370 micrograms of vitamin K)
• Iceberg lettuce (30 micrograms of vitamin K)Romaine lettuce (190 micrograms of vitamin K)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Osteoporosis, Supplements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.