Vitamin K In Milk [Best Vitamin K2 Source?]

schultz

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Likely cows milk from grazing animals. I haven't seen a study showing the total K2 (all fractions) of milk from animals pastured on green grass, but Weston Price tested (according to himself) over 20,000 samples of dairy from all over North and South America. He was testing for "Activator X", which is now assumed to be vitamin K2. He said that when animals were eating green pasture the amount of Act. X could go up 50 fold.

This study - Vitamin k contents of meat, dairy, and fast food in the u.s. Diet. - PubMed - NCBI - tested a bunch of foods and the whole milk had a level of 2.5mcg of MK4 per cup of milk, or a measly 20mcg per 8 cups of milk. If you were to multiply this by 50 you get 1,000mcg per 8 cups of whole milk. Suddenly milk seems like the best source!

This is a quote from the book...

"It has been shown that dairy products in Hereford vicinity may vary through a range of fiftyfold in a few weeks' time in the vitamin A and activator X content, the range depending directly on the fodder. There is a sharp rise at the time that the green pasturage is added to the ration of the cows."

This topic is very interesting to me and I am surprised it has not been studied more. When my kids were born the midwives asked if we wanted vitamin K injections for our babies. It is generally assumed that human milk contains only trace amounts of vitamin K so babies are generally injected with a large dose of vitamin K after birth. I had already looked into this and found studies showing that mothers who supplement vitamin K have a much higher level of vitamin K and vitamin K2 in their breast milk (duh!). We declined the shot and I said "my wife supplements vitamin K2". Not to mention topically giving a baby some vitamin K2 would probably be a much better way to administer the vitamin (who knows what the shot has in it).

It really made no sense to me that a mothers milk would have no vitamin K yet the baby needs it. It also seemed kind of obvious that you need to get vitamin K in the diet in order to get it in the milk... The same goes for ruminant animals!

Vitamin K is a very expensive vitamin to make and I think dairy operations don't supplement it for this reason, so cows need to get it in their food.

Here is a study showing that supplementing vitamin K1 raised the K1 and K2 in breast milk:
Menaquinone-4 in breast milk is derived from dietary phylloquinone. - PubMed - NCBI

A nice study would be supplementing mothers with 1mg of vitamin K2 a day and measuring the levels. I haven't seen a study like this yet.

I am very surprised that there hasn't been a study comparing vitamin K levels in pastured vs non-pastured cows milk, considering how popular vitamin K2 is now.
 

paymanz

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@schultz there is also a wulzen factor and some of people in WP circle call it the "X" ,there is also vitamin k2 as you mentioned.

i havent read lot of their articles or books , but their claim that wulzen factor only can be found in raw milk seems to be misleading! as a quick search gets me to wikipedia page Stigmasterol - Wikipedia and its a plant sterol that leaks into animals milk that consumed the plant.it can be found in almost all raw plant!

did i miss something?
 
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schultz

schultz

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@schultz there is also a wulzen factor and some of people in WP circle call it the "X" ,there is also vitamin k2 as you mentioned.

i havent read lot of their articles or books , but their claim that wulzen factor only can be found in raw milk seems to be misleading! as a quick search gets me to wikipedia page Stigmasterol - Wikipedia and its a plant sterol that leaks into animals milk that consumed the plant.it can be found in almost all raw plant!

did i miss something?

I don't know much about the Weston Price Foundation. I read the book by Weston Price that he published in the 30's or something. He died in 1948 and doesn't seem to be connected to the modern day foundation with his name connected to it. I don't know anything about stigmasterol either. Activator "X" was a nutrient in dairy that Weston Price discovered when he was studying vitamin D. He realized there was something else besides Vitamin D having an antirichotic effect, and for lack of a better name (and not knowing what it actually was) he called it Activator "X", because it "activated" vitamins A and D. The activator "X" Price referred to is almost certainly vitamin K2

This article by Chris Masterjohn talks about it: On the Trail of the Elusive X-Factor: A Sixty-Two-Year-Old Mystery Finally Solved - Weston A Price

I like reading Masterjohn's stuff, and Ray has even mentioned him before and seems to know who he is.
 
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schultz

schultz

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@schultz that study about vitamin k intake effect on milk is interesting,however here>> Butter, Grass-Fed, without salt Nutrition Facts & Calories it still shows very little vitamin k in grass fed butter!

I trust that study , probably grass feds on market are not really grass fed , OR what they feed the animals are not fresh green grass, and it is just hay! At least some periods of year.

I heard anecdotally of someone getting different butter tested and they claimed Kerrygold actually had very low amounts of vitamin K2. My guess is that it varies. Around here in Ontario, milk should have the highest K2 in the spring and fall when the grass is greenest. Hay is probably deficient in a lot of vitamins, though I think the sun shining on the hay creates a bit of D2.

I think someone has created that food bio or something as it doesn't seem to be a USDA or NCCDB analysis. If you look up butter you'll notice that it has very small amounts of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium and B12, but this grass-fed analysis from Nutritiondata lists those all as zero.

I am very tempted to send my goat milk in for analysis but it seems like it would cost a bit of money and I would want to make sure they test for MK-1 all the way to MK-13 and not just MK-4. Beef liver, for example, has been shown in at least 1 study to have some long chain vitamin K2 in the range of MK-10 to MK-13. I'm not sure if anybody has figured out how useful these ones are as there is little information on them. They tend to only test for phylloquinone and menatetranone, but it could end up that a lot of foods contain the long chain menaquinones. Pork for example seems to contain some of the longer chain menaquinones according to this paper Measurement of Multiple Vitamin K Forms in Processed and Fresh-Cut Pork Products in the U.S. Food Supply. - PubMed - NCBI

Apparently these long chain menaquinones are very lipophilic and I was thinking maybe they are more of a storage form of vitamin K2. Characterization of vitamin K from bovine liver
 

paymanz

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I heard anecdotally of someone getting different butter tested and they claimed Kerrygold actually had very low amounts of vitamin K2. My guess is that it varies. Around here in Ontario, milk should have the highest K2 in the spring and fall when the grass is greenest. Hay is probably deficient in a lot of vitamins, though I think the sun shining on the hay creates a bit of D2.

I think someone has created that food bio or something as it doesn't seem to be a USDA or NCCDB analysis. If you look up butter you'll notice that it has very small amounts of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium and B12, but this grass-fed analysis from Nutritiondata lists those all as zero.

I am very tempted to send my goat milk in for analysis but it seems like it would cost a bit of money and I would want to make sure they test for MK-1 all the way to MK-13 and not just MK-4. Beef liver, for example, has been shown in at least 1 study to have some long chain vitamin K2 in the range of MK-10 to MK-13. I'm not sure if anybody has figured out how useful these ones are as there is little information on them. They tend to only test for phylloquinone and menatetranone, but it could end up that a lot of foods contain the long chain menaquinones. Pork for example seems to contain some of the longer chain menaquinones according to this paper Measurement of Multiple Vitamin K Forms in Processed and Fresh-Cut Pork Products in the U.S. Food Supply. - PubMed - NCBI

Apparently these long chain menaquinones are very lipophilic and I was thinking maybe they are more of a storage form of vitamin K2. Characterization of vitamin K from bovine liver
interesting , i also think about mk7 , dont know much about longer ones.

in liver there should be more than what they report on these databases like ND.same for natto , maybe they dont count mk7!

so according to that pork study even regular butter/lard may contain some longer forms of vitamin k , interesting. probably those types also have some favorable activities.

you caught good one!thanks
 

paymanz

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from the pork study @schultz posted , the mk-10 in processed forms are very high , that should be because of high fat content?!

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PeatInspired

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I have a newborn with a slightly small and recessed jaw. I asked RP about infant K2 supplements to help and he said it was safer for me to take it and deliver it through breast milk.
(He also said thyroid and calcium are important in this case.)

Anyone have an idea of how much K2 to take to reach the baby in adequate amounts? I've been doing 1mg Per day.
 

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