Yet again, something I blogged about 18 months ago may just now be coming to the mainstream. Stay tuned, and it’s not the only thing. Within another 18 months, you might hear a bombshell about K2, Menatetrenone (MK-4) as well. More on that, below.
Here are my past entries on Vitamin D.
- Politicized Science: How the Sun Might Save Your Life
- Vitamin D
- An elegant slice of evolution
- "Loving Lard"
The first of those is the most important. Feel free to go take a look at how I used to blog (political), but the important thing is the article I linked. How-a-bouts a couple of quick excerpts?
For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.
But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren’t caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations. […]
What’s more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly. […]
But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D’s effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.
A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn’t take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.
Now, think about this from an evolutionary perspective, prior to modern mass migration. Northern latitude: white skin. As you proceeed south, toward the equator, increasingly dark skin on average. Vitamin D is fat soluable, which means, it can build up. At certain high levels it can produce a toxic effect. Final piece of the puzzle: white skin absorbes UV and synthesizes vitamin D way faster than increasingly dark skin. So, natural selection being what it was, those able to make use of the far shorter summers and lower angle of exposure to sunlight (white skin) fared better in the harshness of life; whereas, those in the south where the sun is year-round — and very high in the sky for efficient exposure — fared better by having protection against too much (dark skin), with consequent toxicity.
Now, apply the facts, again: "rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries."
So, now to the next article, in The New Yort Times: Doubling of Vitamin D for Children Is Urged. It’s short, so do read the whole thing. One interesting tidbit: mother’s milk, just like virtually all our foods, doesn’t cut it for vitamin D. And why? God (or nature, take your pick) stupid? Well, I think Occam compels me to conclude that vitamin D from food was no more necessary for ancestral man than was getting air from food. And, since we spent a great deal of time outdoors exposed to sunlight, just like we spent a great deal of time breathing the atmosphere, there was no problem. There was no evolutionary pressure to get D from food.
Then modern ignorance happened, and everyone’s afraid of the sun because of a minuscule risk of skin cancer (1,500 people die per year), and they leave all the other cancers on the table (1,500 die PER DAY from the others), most of which aren’t found in developing countries where there’s lots of sun and people spend a lot of time in it. If that’s not a fool’s wager, then I don’t know what is.
I said I’d mention K2. Let me give you the references. Later, I will blog about the amazing results both my wife and I have experienced in having supplemented with this fat soluble vitamin for these past months (in combo with A and D from cod liver oil, as well). You really owe it to yourself to look into this. Think of it this way: 60 years ago they were curing cavities in teeth by getting them to re-calcify using this exact thing. Now, think of what happens with a vitamin D deficiency; rickets, right? rubbery bones. Calcium. Other mineral salts. What you will find is that these vitamins, in combination, essentially cause your minerals to go everyplace they should, and no place they shouldn’t (such as the walls of your arteries).
- Activator X
- Vitamin K2, menatetrenone (MK-4)
- Vitamin Deficiency
- More Fat-Soluble Vitamin Musing
- On the Trail of the Elusive X-Factor
You are not going to get through that in a short time, but you must get through it. Please read all of those references. The first four are by Stephan the biologist, and the last, by Chris Masterjohn of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
Oh, and K2 (MK-4) is only found in animal sources. Vegans and vegetarians lose, again.
Later: A final thought. If you’re a dark skin living in a place that doesn’t get a lot of sun, or you don’t get a lot of sun, you should look into supplementation. Conversely, if you’re a white skin living in a place that gets a lot of sun, or you happen to get a lot of sun, you should look into protection. The bottom line is that you ought to understand this, think about how your experience may be different from the ancestors who came before you and the conditions under which they evolved and set your genes in motion, and take action accordingly.
Great post. I picked up the same info from Stephan's blog and started supplementation using Thorne Research K2 liquid (1 drop = 1mg per day, or about a year or two supply from a $60 bottle).
Something amazing that I noticed immediately – the amount of plaque on my teeth has dropped to near nothing! My teeth are white even after 24 hours of not brushing.
One note about hunter-gatherer vitamin D3 consumption. It seems to be the view of the Weston Price people that h-g consumed about 4000-6000 IU from their diet by eating the internal organs of prey.
Sunlight at higher latitudes only generates D3 when it's about 45 degrees above the horizon, about 4 hours in the summer and pretty much never during the winter. So food D3 was pretty important for (my) European h-g ancestors.
Until 'civilized' society loses their fascination with cold white beverages from large barnyard animals we'll continue to see problems with calcium absorption and assimilation.
"Milk, it does the body good" has got to be one of the all time advertising coups–not only is it pervasive, (what kid can't complete that phrase?) it's also completely and absolutely false.
Interesting research on the vitamin D, I'll have to dig deeper.
Sam:
I've been using the Green Pastures butter oil. Lots and lots more expensive, but same results. Plaque vanished in a day or so, skin is so moist & smooth (wife says wrinkles on her hands have disappeared), and I rarely feel like I need to brush my teeth, though I still do for the "minty fresh feeling." Just a wooden toothpick to dislodge trapped material is likely enough. That's probably a tool man figured out how to use eons ago.
drofen:
I don't know. Milk used to bother me (didn't drink any for years), but since I've been off grains and eat mostly Paleo, I've been able to take in some milk, always whole / organic, and raw when I can get it.
I kind of consider it quasi appropriate. While it's doubtful it was consumed in our evolutionary past, it still seems to approximate the sorts of nutrients we get from other animal sources.
But, I don't drink an awful lot. Perhaps a quart or so per week. I like a small cup of the raw, whole in the morning when I take my fish oil, cod liver oil, and butter oil (K2) caps.
Out of curiosity, have you looked at the protein ratio in cow's milk? Whey vs. casein. In cows milk the ratio is reverse that of human breast milk. Goat's milk on the other hand is approximately the same ratio as human breast milk.
I hadn't looked at that. My approach is very simple, which is, Paleo as much as possible, but foods that are close get dispensation sometimes. Since I don't even drink it everyday, and when I do it's not a lot, it's not much of a concern.
I had goat's milk as a kid and didn't care much for it (it was raw, from friends who had goats). Perhaps it's that I sometimes had to milk the goats when the friends were away, the goats smelled unpleasant, and the milk reminded me of the way goats smell…
I do, however, adore most goat cheeses. The more pungent, the better.
"…started supplementation using Thorne Research K2 liquid (1 drop = 1mg per day, or about a year or two supply from a $60 bottle)."
My Thorne Research K2 says "15 drops, 3 times daily".
http://tinyurl.com/ynlldv
I don't think it will last a year at 45 drops per day.
Vendo,
The Thorne K2 recommended dose is based on studies done in Japan where they gave people 45 mg per day for osteoporosis (highly effective against fractures). But that's way more than you could get form diet. One drop per day might even be a bit more than you could get from diet. I try to put one drop in a dish I'll be eating for several days.
Richard,
Great post! I'm amazed to see that people are having such consistent effects from the K2. It's exactly what Price saw. Have you gotten to the part in NPD where he shows the effect of the CLO/butter oil combo on oral bacteria?
Stephan:
Thanks, but you and others out there are what makes it possible to put up good material. I've not gotten to that part of the book yet (skimmed around, though), but I recall something about the bacteria levels in Masterjohn's article.
Hi Richard,
Wow, really interesting information! How much of the Green Pastures butter oil and do you take daily? I'm taking their high vitamin cod liver oil that also has 100 mg of butter oil per serving and I'm wondering if the 100 mg is enough.
Hmm, are you sure their cod liver oil has butter oil in it? I'm not seeing that on the descriptions.
Anyway, I take two caps daily (.5g each). I'm not sure how much K2 MK-4 that delivers.
I take every day except fasting days.
Ah, I see.
And, also, important to keep in mind we're talking about milligrams of butter oil and not K2. Wish I knew how much actual K2 was in it.
With the GP butter oil caps, the recommended dose is 1-3 caps per day. I take two and my much smaller wife takes one.
They have a new formulation with butter oil in it: http://www.greenpasture.org/products/therapeutics/1028. I'm taking two of these per day, so I'm getting 200 mg of butter oil along with my cod liver oil. So you're taking 5 times as much per day as I am. I'm just trying to determine optimal dosage.
Mike
Can someone confirm the Thorne Research recommended dosage and also how long theoretically the bottle would last? Thanks
I'm in agreement with Stephan, whom I don't have time to look up (it's in comments, mostly, I think) and link (I'll send 'im an email), but I have stressed to even my own friends and family that the dosage is millions of times too much (my opinion). Here's my reason. By my own calcs, one single drop of the Thorne, for 1 mg, is equal to the K2, MK-4, Menatetrenone that one could get from only 3 grams of foie gras, but 44 pounds of beef liver.
As a consequence, I think one drop per day would be the absolute limit, and preferable would be to put one drop in something you can consume over 2-3 days.
hi,
The girl had her cavities sorted out with butteroil and cod liver oil
Is there an example of this occurring with the othr things mentioned here. Where the actual cavities have clearly been dealt with?
thanks
There is a guy who recently published a book who claims to have cured cavities.
http://www.curetoothdecay.com/
Benny,
I can't honestly say that I've cured cavities with K2 or vitamin D, but last spring I had one wicked toothache and thought I was going to have to go to the dentist to have it dealt with. I decided to start supplementing heavily with fermented cod liver oil. The toothache went away within weeks and hasn't come back since.
Modern anecdotal evidence! I have no X rays so I can't prove I cured any cavities. However, I believe I did. And it feels great not to have to have spent hundreds of dollars! (Just $150 or so to date on nutritional supplements).
Monica
Your calculations are off for the foie gras — according to Masterjohn ), it has 369 micrograms per 100 grams (not per gram), so you'd need to eat 271 grams (about 9.5 ounces) to get 1 mg of MK-4. A rich meal, indeed. (But, less so than 44 pounds of beef liver.)
Thanks for the correction. That'll teach me not to use napkins.