There is an epidemic of Heart Disease (or Atherosclerosis) on one hand and Osteoporosis on the other throughout most of the western world. We supplement gobs of Calcium, only to have it taken up by plaque in our arteries and other soft tissues, while our bones drop in density as we age. One cause of this is proving to be a lack of a little understood vitamin - Vitamin K2. For those interested in lifetime fitness, this information can lead to a viable strategy for avoiding heart disease or osteoporosis.

In 1929, Danish scientist, Dr. Henrik Dam discovered vitamin K. The "K" is for Koagulation -- essential for proper blood clotting.* Vitamin K is unique because it acts like a hormone, but shows no toxicity in its natural form. Recent research is focusing on its potential other benefits beyond regulation of clotting of blood.

Research in the last decade suggests vitamin K plays a crucial role in many bodily functions. It may be a key vitamin to fight the signs of aging. Scientists are even looking at vitamin K to be the future of promoting immune health and supporting memory. With research now focusing on its potential effects on the brain, liver and pancreas, vitamin K is one of the most promising vitamins for maintaining peak health throughout the aging process.

Vitamin K exists in three forms, K1, K2, and K3. All are fat-soluble. This is important because dietary fat is necessary for the absorption of the vitamin -meaning that in order for your body to absorb it effectively, you need to eat some fat along with it. This implies that a 'no fat' or even 'low fat' diet will contribute to a deficiency of vitamin K.

Vitamin K1, or phylloquinone, is found naturally in plants. Vitamin K2, also called menaquinone, is made by the bacteria that line the gastrointestinal tract. Vitamin K3, or menadione is man-made and is generally regarded as toxic because it generates free radicals. Research shows that toxicity has occurred in infants given synthetic vitamin K3 by injection. Vitamin K2 works primarily outside of the liver in the bone and blood vessels to regulate the uptake of calcium and other minerals.

Unlike vitamin K1, vitamin K2 does not concentrate in the liver. The body stores only limited amounts of vitamin K in the liver, so vitamin rich foods must be consumed regularly. With only 10% absorption of vitamin K1 from vegetables, and only a small fraction of that converted to K2 by intestinal bacteria, and considering the importance of this vitamin, it's reasonable to question if you're getting enough.

Natural Sources -

The best natural source of vitamin K2 is derived from an ancient Japanese food called Natto. Natto is made from fermented soybeans and significant amounts of vitamin K2 are produced during the fermentation process.

Fermented foods, such as natto, typically have the highest concentration of vitamin K found in the human diet and can provide several milligrams of vitamin K2 on a daily basis. This level far exceeds the amount found in dark green vegetables. Since most Americans do not eat traditionally fermented foods like natto, adding them to your diet is a must as the health benefits are tremendous. It has also been reported that the sticky part of natto contains polyglutamin acid -- an acid that aids the absorption of calcium from the intestine.

Vitamin K2: Ushering Calcium Where It Belongs

Vitamin K2 provides major protection from osteoporosis, cardiovascular blockages and pathological calcification. Vitamin K's job is to put calcium in the right places and keep it from being deposited in the wrong places. The right places are bones and blood, and the wrong places include calcification of the vessels, bone spurs and calcification of soft tissues.

Calcium has a ubiquitous role in health, impacting all the Syndrome X conditions, including obesity, blood pressure disorders, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and malfunctioning of cell signaling. Calcification of the arteries is a major known consequence of aging, as is the calcification of soft tissues and the accumulation of calcium within the cells.

Optimum calcium nutrition depends on the interplay of a number of related compounds, such as magnesium, vitamin D3, and vitamin K. Just recently, the importance of vitamin K in regulating the healthy function of calcium has been recognized. It has been shown that vitamin K2 can be supplemented in very high doses, as used in Japan. It has been found to be safe even at 45 mg or more per day - up to a thousand times greater than generally occurring in the daily diet. Even small amounts of vitamins K1 & K2, can have a great impact on overall health. Vitamin K1 and more importantly, vitamin K2, play critical roles in preventing arterial calcification, which is a risk factor in coronary artery disease, as well as other calcification conditions associated with aging.

Vitamin K was discovered in the 1920's as a fat-soluble factor important in blood coagulation ("K" for koagulation). Vitamin K1 is found in plants and vitamin K2 is found in animals and bacteria, including beneficial probiotic bacteria, aka "good bacteria," from the GI tract. The body can store about a one-month supply of the vitamin. Please note that antibiotics interfere with the growth of healthy intestinal bacteria and as a result, impair vitamin K production. The prescription anticoagulant Warfarin also interferes with the metabolism and function of vitamin K by inhibiting critical enzymes that are involved with the production of coagulation factors. Without these coagulation factors, excessive bleeding can occur.

How this vitamin is involved in blood coagulation eluded scientists until 1974, when a requirement for vitamin K was shown for the formation of numerous proteins in the body known as gamma-carboxy glutamic acid (GCGA) proteins. These proteins, when modified, specifically bind to calcium which is important for blood coagulation, as well as other critical processes, and through which calcium regulation affects cartilage, bone, protein in blood, and very importantly, regulates the calcium in the cardiovascular system. It appears that the extra carboxyl group binds calcium so that it can be moved around.

The Role of GCGA Proteins

Vitamin K works by acting as a cofactor in the carboxylation (adding of a carboxyl group C02) via an enzyme (gamma glutamyl carboxylase), of glutamic acid (a specific amino acid) to form a modification of that amino acid (gamma carboxyglutamic acid) in a variety of critical plasma proteins. Without this step, these plasma proteins will not function in their role of the regulation of calcium concentrations in various tissues.

The primary types of GCGA proteins include: osteocalcin (OC), the most abundant GCGA protein in humans, synthesized in bone; the GCGA proteins involving blood coagulation factors are synthesized in the liver; the matrix GCGA proteins (MGP) are synthesized in the cartilage and in the vessel walls of arteries. 1

When vitamin K is in short supply in the body, these proteins are formed without the GCGA component and are inactive for their intended functions - which play important roles in four different tissue types including: 1) liver; 2) bone; 3) cartilage; and 4) arterial vessel walls.

These four tissues are all able to pull vitamin K from the blood. However, the uptake from the liver is much greater for K1 than for other tissues. Because the liver needs so much vitamin K, this can leave the cartilage and bone GCGA proteins with inadequate levels. Hence the dietary vitamin K requirement for bone, and the special requirements for the cardiovascular system and cartilage may not be met even though normal clotting factor production occurs, as this occurs in the liver. Therefore, the requirement to keep the vasculature clear of accumulating calcium and to keep the bones well supplied with calcium may not be adequately supplied. This is why the recent discoveries on the value of vitamin K2 and its recent commercial availability can make a great difference in the lives of millions - indeed, a majority of the population would likely benefit.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council pegs the requirements of vitamin K in micrograms (mcg) ranges from 5 micrograms for infants and up to 80 mcg for adult males and 65 mcg for adult females. 2

The FDA's recommendations for vitamin K dosage is based on the liver's requirements alone. Research by Knapen and Booth showed that a large percentage of the enzymes that do not receive GCGA because of a vitamin K1 or K2 deficiency, become unable to mobilize calcium and place it into the bone where it belongs. This GCGA-deficient enzyme is known as under-carboxylated osteocalcin (ucOC). This was found to be true in the majority of the healthy adult population, indicating subclinical vitamin deficiency in a large portion of the population. 3,4 Though subclinical in terms of acute symptoms, slow development of osteoporosis or acute coronary disease are the processes produced by this deficiency - the first symptom may even be death.

One vitamin K intervention study showed that both bone mineral density and vascular elasticity were shown to increase. 5 Other studies have demonstrated consistent findings adding to the conclusion that vitamin K1, and preferably, a good amount of vitamin K2, may be the best protection for preventing calcification of the arteries, and for protection against osteoporosis. A wealth of new information implies that vitamin K, and particularly vitamin K2 holds very strong promise for avoiding two of the most feared components of aging - heart disease and osteoporosis, and potentially, the whole array of Syndrome X consequences.

The aging body produces progressively higher levels of the inflammation-promoting cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). Once IL-6 becomes out of balance with the other cytokines, inflammation accelerates. It has been observed that people with arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and atherosclerosis have higher levels of IL-6. In a study done by the National Research Institute in Italy, it was shown that subjects with the highest levels of IL-6 were almost twice as likely to develop mobility-related disabilities. Recent research has demonstrated vitamin K's anti-inflammatory action, and the ability to reduce IL-6 levels. Vitamin K has been show to be protective of the liver and to act as an antioxidant more powerful than vitamin E and coenzyme Q10 for scavenging free radicals in many of the body's tissues. Mounting evidence suggests there is a synergistic effect between vitamins K, D, calcium and magnesium. Optimal health effects may be obtained from combined supplementation of vitamins K, D and minerals.

More detailed discussion of vitamin K can be found at the Sprinboard4health and Life extension Foundation websites.

Vitamin K2 References:

1. Schurgers LJ, Vermeer C. Differential lipoprotein transport pathways of K-vitamins in healthy subjects. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2002 Feb 15;1570(1):27-32.

2. Kelleys Textbook of Internal Medicine, Fourth Edition, 2000, Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, Philadelphia, PA.

3. Knapen MH, Jie KS, Hamulyak K, Vermeer C. Vitamin K-induced changes in markers for osteoblast activity and urinary calcium loss. Calcif Tissue Int. 1993 Aug;53(2):81-5.

4. Booth SL, Sokoll LJ, O'Brien ME, Tucker K, Dawson-Hughes B, Sadowski JA. Assessment of dietary phylloquinone intake and vitamin K status in postmenopausal women. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1995 Nov;49(11):832-41.

5. Vermeer C, Braam L, Schurgers L, Brouns F. Agro-Food Industry Hi-Tech 2002, 13:11-15.

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Frank Wilhelmi; BS, ME, is a 67 year old defense industry engineer, with 34 years experience pursuing knowledge to keep fit and healthy. He is an avid student of the physical and biological sciences, a once-certified fitness trainer specializing in aging mitigation, and president of Muzology, Inc. He is editor of http://www.seniorfitness.com that provides information for Seniors to attain fitness, health and improved quality of life at any age.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/the-six-fastest-ways-to-start-changing-your-health-for-the-better.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/the-six-fastest-ways-to-start-changing-your-health-for-the-better.html Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600
Anti-aging

Make a decision to pay attention to anti-aging technology and to get interested in optimizing your health. Seek and read information on health; make it a hobby. Adopt the attitude that your body knows how to heal, rebuild and grow, if you just give it the right materials and stimuli. Choose foods, activities, supplements that build health and avoid those that degrade it. Believe that health problems can be reversed and tomorrow you can be stronger, faster and smarter than you were yesterday. Science is brimming with exciting new truths about health and rediscovering old wisdom daily – pay attention!

Exercise

The stimulus for regaining a healthy body is exercise, and nothing works as well as weight training, resistance training, body building: whatever you want to call it, get off the couch and start pumping iron. Weight training is anti-aging! It coaxes all metabolic functions to improve and biases your body to repair and rebuild. Here is the simplest of workout concepts: one day Pushing, one day Pulling, and one day Legs. Three days, less than one hour per day, and you will make a major overhaul of your body and health. Adopt it as a lifestyle; it is very addictive and uplifting. The smart way is to join a gym and hire a personal trainer so you make rapid progress and don’t learn it wrong to start. Spend the money – you deserve the success.

Nutrition

Start eating real foods. Stop eating fake foods. These simple statements are fraught with complexity, and you need to learn the fundamental differences. Basically, you need to be eating real fruits, real nuts, real vegetables and real meats, and not artificial processed things made from those. Example: cheese is a food; Cheesits is not. Likewise, potatoes are food, potato chips are not. Grain and grain products are a special consideration. Products such as breads, pastas and cereals are for the most part, made with refined flour, which is pretty much like eating sugar. Switch to whole-grain or sprouted grain items for the best nutrition. Make baked goods a very small part of your diet.

Eliminate all refined oils. If it is unrefrigerated and sitting on the grocery shelf in a clear bottle, it is a refined fat that will increase inflammation throughout your body. Use extra-virgin olive oil and extra-virgin coconut oil for cooking, and eat nothing that has the words 'partiall hydrogenated' on its label. Read the header article at http://www.seniorfitness.com/Nutrition.html?title=Nutrition to get further details. You are what you eat, and you need to eat that which will let you thrive. The details in our article will give you guidance. For more top-level information on nutrition, one of the best websites is http://www.mercola.com/.

Rest and Recovery

Don’t over-train – more is not better when it comes to exercise. With the 3-day workout plan your body has a week to recover each muscle group worked, and there is enough rest between workouts to recover systemically. If you don’t get enough rest (sleep), your other efforts to improve health will fail. Nothing depresses the immune system faster than lack of adequate sleep; combine that with over-training, and you are guaranteed to get sick. If you are an insomniac, you need to fix the problem. There are solutions to for getting restful sleep; you may need to see a specialist, but not sleeping well will kill you faster than most other sins.

Supplements

The same supplements that allow top natural bodybuilders to grow abundant muscle and drive body fat to incredibly low levels will give you the upper hand on reshaping your aging body. The supplement categories to investigate are:

Secretagogues – to increase growth hormone production, such as Secretagogue Gold by MHP
Testosterone boosters – to crank up this vital anabolic hormone of youth, such as Attitude from SAN
Creatine formulations - to promote energy production, strength and muscle growth, such as Cellmass by BSN
Nitric Oxide boosters – to improve blood flow and move nutrients into the muscle structure, while boosting energy during workouts, such as BSN's NO-Xplode.
Joint Nutrient Supplements - to supply the raw nutrients to allow cartilage repair and regrowth, and to maintain synovial fluid health.

Take a full-spectrum vitamin-mineral-phyto-extract product like Life Extension Foundation's Life Extension Mix to assure adequate baseline nutrition. It will make up for many bad habits. Add Resveratrol to your supplement list; this one substance may prove to be the closest thing to the fountain of youth. The latest studies show it to produce the same benefits as caloric restriction - the only proven strategy to extend life span in virtually all animal life.

Attitude and Thinking

The attitude to foster is that you can be better tomorrow that you were today; you can make incremental improvements in those activities you use to measure your well-being. The thinking to keep at the front of your mind is that the pursuit of health and fitness is a worthy and exciting game. Someone once said ‘Hey, long term we’re all dead!’ – just don’t let that stand in the way of enjoying a great life.

Good Living - Frank




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Frank Wilhelmi; BS, ME, is a 67 year old defense industry engineer, with 34 years experience pursuing knowledge to keep fit and healthy. He is an avid student of the physical and biological sciences, a once-certified fitness trainer specializing in aging mitigation, and president of Muzology, Inc. He is editor of http://www.seniorfitness.com that provides information for Seniors to attain fitness, health and improved quality of life at any age.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/product-reviews/new-website-explains-health-fitness-and-strength-recovery-for-seniors.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/product-reviews/new-website-explains-health-fitness-and-strength-recovery-for-seniors.html Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500 This new site is dedicated to the principle that fitness, health and improved quality of life can be achieved at any age by taking appropriate action. There are two critical steps in this process; learning the appropriate actions, and then actually taking them - changing our lifestyle to put us on the road to lasting health and fitness. Senior Finess.com is structured to provide knowledge of these appropriate actions and the motivation to make them a lifestyle. It is aimed at senior men and women who are sick and tired (literally) of falling apart, want to stop the downward slide and are ready to take life-changing action. Younger people who want to minimize the functional losses of aging will find the knowledge and technology to optimize health and fitness at any age, and to preserve it into advanced age.

The site is organized in categories that focus on specific aspects of establishing, recovering and maintaining health and fitness into old age. Some deal with lifestyle patterns such as the Exercise and Nutrition categories. Others deal with measures that slow the aging process and build physical capability using products now available like the Anti-aging and Supplements categories. Joint health has such critical importance it is a category to itself. Under the category headings are editorial comments on why the information is important to enabling fitness, how it connects to all the other aspects of creating and maintaining health, and the editor's thoughts on how to put the information into action. Beneath these are collections of articles written by practitioners in the fields of fitness, medicine, bio-research, nutrition and other disciplines related to health.

The site was established by Frank Wilhelmi, a 66 year old electronic engineer still working in the defense industry, with a 33 year habit of bodybuilding and pursuing knowledge needed to keep fit and healthy. An avid student of the physical and biological sciences, and a certified fitness trainer, his website is an outgrowth of his personal lifestyle. He created the Senior Fitness website to pass on knowledge acquired over many years, and to collect the technical knowledge necessary to be fit into advanced age. Frank puts his personal experience and opinions in a feature called Frank's Column, where he shares what has worked for him, and the new technologies, techniques and products that can make a huge difference in one’s physical and mental capabilities throughout the aging process. In a column called News Roundup, he passes on information from the many health newsletters he reads monthly and many other authoritative sources. The site went public in October, 2005 and continues to grow in content and features.

So the young, who want the latest technology for staying that way, or the senior, tired of watching health and fitness decline, should check out http://www.seniorfitness.com, bookmark it and become a frequent reader.


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Frank Wilhelmi, a 66 year old electronic engineer still working in the defense industry, with a 33 year habit of bodybuilding and pursuing knowledge needed to keep fit and healthy. An avid student of the physical and biological sciences, and a certified fitness trainer, he created the Senior Fitness website to pass on knowledge acquired over many years, and to collect the technical knowledge necessary to be fit into advanced age.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/nutrition/hydrogenation-a-deadly-chapter-in-the-history-of-nutrition.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/nutrition/hydrogenation-a-deadly-chapter-in-the-history-of-nutrition.html Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500
But before hydrogenation takes place the raw oils must be ‘refined’ to get rid of the colors, smells, tastes and any – God forbid – cloudiness. These oils were promoted as being ‘pure’ and put on grocery shelves in clear bottles so we could feel good about their purity. The primary reason for refining is again, shelf life. Refining removes all the short-chain fatty acids that go rancid (oxidize) in a heartbeat, and are rapidly degraded by light. It also removes the thousands of nutrients locked in the seed or fruit that were available in simpler times to those primitive folks who used unrefined oils, pressed fresh in their markets on a daily basis. Understand this - everything needed to pass life from one generation to the next is present in the grains and seeds pressed for oil. The oil contains all the fat-soluble nutrients necessary for life, and that mankind evolved getting a big part of our nutrients from these oils.

In fact, there are two fatty acids that are ESSENTIAL to our life – we can’t make them in our bodies, and if we don’t get them we die. These are alpha-linolenic acid and linoleic acid. These are referred to as essential fatty acids or EFAs. They enable a huge number of functions in our bodies, including energy production, oxygen transfer in our lungs, hemoglobin production, cell division and growth, and are highly involved in brain development and operation. They are essential components of every membrane of every cell we possess, and control the flow of nutrients into and waste/toxins out of the cells.

Now, to add insult to injury, refining and hydrogenation create a type of fat molecule that rarely existed in the food supply before – the trans-fat. Normal unsaturated fats are bent molecules, because a missing hydrogen atom kinks the carbon chain; that’s what makes them functional in the body. Trans-fats, however, are straight because of the errant position of an extra hydrogen molecule, and can’t perform the same functions as the normal or sis-fat. But the body can’t tell the difference and tries to use them for the same functions, crippling cells and their operations. Tragically, there are mountains of evidence that the health impact of these changes is profound, but the food industry and our watchdog FDA show little concern.

The entire meat industry has been impacted as well. For decades we have been feeding livestock manufactured feeds based on hydrogenated oils, so that the composition of the fats in our meats is vastly different than it was in the 1800’s. It is now nearly devoid of EFAs and much higher in saturated fat and trans-fats than livestock that is free-range fed or wild game animals.

I want to impress upon you that fats and oils are essential for life, and the low-fat insanity of the last 30 years has damaged the health of two generations. But, you must avoid the harmful fats (refined oils and transfats) and eat the right fats to be healthy. For the most part that means Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil and butter for cooking, and either flax oil or a balanced-EFA, unrefined oil mix such as Udo's Oil by the tablespoon or as a base for salad dressings with meals. For general health take fish oil or cod liver oil as a supplement and everything will function better. For those of you who really want to get the truth in all its detail regarding the importance of fats in human physiology, I refer you to "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill" by Udo Erasmus, 1993.

Also, the November,2005 edition of Life Extension Magazine (http://www.lef.org) has an article by Dr. Nicholas V. Perricone, MD. dealing with the history and detriment of the low fat insanity, as the primary cause of our rampant obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammation, leading to heart disease, Alzheimer’s and more.

Good living - Frank

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Frank Wilhelmi, a 66 year old electronic engineer still working in the defense industry, with a 33 year habit of bodybuilding and pursuing knowledge needed to keep fit and healthy. An avid student of the physical and biological sciences, and a certified fitness trainer, his website http://www.seniorfitness.com is an outgrowth of his personal lifestyle. He created the Senior Fitness website to pass on knowledge acquired over many years, and to collect the technical knowledge necessary to be fit into advanced age.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>