When people ask me what the most important nutrient is, I usually respond, “All of them.”

Now, there are some nutrients that steal the limelight, so to speak, because they serve SO many crucial functions in the body. These include vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin B12 and magnesium.

But that doesn’t mean the “backstage” nutrients aren’t important either! Although they don’t get the level of buzz that others may get, lacking in them can have a tremendous impact on your health!

And there’s one lesser-known nutrient in particular that fits that bill perfectly.

Vitamin K!

Here’s why:

Vitamin K—vitamin D’s important partner 

It’s important for you to understand that all nutrients work in partnerships in your body—no one is an “independent contributor.”

For example, calcium and magnesium work together to regulate your heartbeat. Calcium causes your heart to contract, and magnesium tells it to relax between beats.

Sodium and potassium regulate the fluid levels in your body. Sodium causes your body to retain water when you need it, and potassium makes your body excrete excess water. 

Well, vitamins D and K carry out crucial roles in your body too!

In addition to fighting heart disease-causing inflammation, vitamin D also helps your body absorb calcium—that’s why it’s so important for your bones. 

At the same time, vitamin K (in the form of K2) guides the calcium where it needs to go. This is vital because if all that calcium that vitamin D helps you absorb doesn’t get to your bones and teeth, it can accumulate in your arteries, causing calcification and encouraging plaque buildup.

Which INCREASES your heart disease risk!

At the same time, if your bones don’t get the calcium they need, you may be looking at osteoporosis.

In addition, excess calcium that isn’t guided by vitamin K2 can also accumulate in your organs, and when this happens in your gallbladder—you guessed it—gallstones may be in your future!

This is why it boggles my mind that SO many healthcare practitioners push calcium, calcium, calcium for osteoporosis prevention, with no acknowledgement whatsoever of the carefully orchestrated partnership between calcium, vitamin D and vitamin K, and how they can affect heart disease risk.

Could you be running low?

It’s a well-known fact that vitamin D is a common deficiency due to our shunning the sun and slathering ourselves in toxic sunscreen, which thwarts your body’s efforts to make vitamin D from sunlight.

But many people are running low in vitamin K as well! Current estimates state that up to 85 percent of us don’t have the K1 and K2 levels we should.

One of the main reasons for this is our heavy reliance on meat and dairy from grain-fed animals. While it’s a known fact that products derived from grain-fed animals don’t provide adequate levels of omega-3 fatty acids, they are also low in vitamin K2. Grass-fed beef and the dairy products from grass-fed animals, on the other hand, are higher in vitamin K2 (and omega-3 fats).

In addition, the best dietary source of vitamin K1 is leafy greens, but that’s not a food that’s at the top of most people’s grocery lists. Plus, while vegetable oils like soybean and canola are rich in vitamin K1, they also happen to be very inflammatory which makes them more harmful than helpful.

Medications play a role too.

Many medications—including the blood thinner warfarin, statins and anti-tuberculosis medications—can impair your body’s ability to absorb vitamin K. In addition, antibiotics can alter your gut microbiome and reduce the ability of your gut to synthesize vitamin K. 

Liver diseases such as cirrhosis or hepatitis reduce your liver’s capacity to store and process vitamin K. Plus cholestasis (reduced or blocked bile flow) also impacts vitamin K absorption since it’s a fat-soluble vitamin and bile is needed to properly break down fats.

Lastly, weight loss surgeries can also affect your body’s ability to absorb nutrients, including vitamin K.

Signs of vitamin K deficiency

The symptoms of vitamin K deficiency are primarily related to impaired blood clotting. As such, you may experience purple spots on your skin (caused by small blood vessels leaking under the surface) or frequent nosebleeds.

You might also incur gastrointestinal bleeding, genitourinary bleeding (blood in the urine or vaginal bleeding), bleeding gums, or other various unexplained instances of bleeding. 

Get what you need—in the proper amounts!

If you want to optimize your vitamin D and K levels, never fear because I have carefully designed Optimum DK Formula with FruiteX-B just for you.

In addition to perfectly paired amounts of vitamins D3, K1 and K2, Optimum DK Formula with FruiteX-B also contains the mineral boron (that’s what FruiteX-B is) which helps prevent bone loss (this is crucial for osteoporosis prevention) and helps to reduce blood levels of homocysteine (elevated homocysteine is also a heart disease factor)!

Now you know the truth

The truth is that your body needs a variety of nutrients to fight disease.

You can’t concentrate on one to the exclusion of all others—you have to respect the delicate yet crucial balance of nutrients that Nature requires to create health in your body. Every single nutrient benefits your body and health in some way, so in that light, they are ALL important.

And I am happy to help guide you on the best path to prevent disease and promote optimal health!

To your health,

Sherry Brescia