[HN Gopher] Vitamin K2 supplements fail to slow calcium buildup ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Vitamin K2 supplements fail to slow calcium buildup in heart
        
       Author : simmerup
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2023-05-08 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.heart.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.heart.org)
        
       | bitL wrote:
       | That's sad, I was hoping to soften the impact by taking K2
       | supplements now before I get old. What else beside K2 would you
       | recommend for a healthy cardiovascular system?
       | 
       | - Diosmin:Hesperidin 9:1?
       | 
       | - Rutin?
       | 
       | - Arginine?
       | 
       | - Curcumin?
       | 
       | - Ginkgo?
       | 
       | - Nattokinase?
       | 
       | - Serrapeptase?
       | 
       | - Lumbrokinase?
       | 
       | - Omega 3?
       | 
       | - Pycnogenol/OPC?
       | 
       | - Hawthorn berry?
       | 
       | - Kyolic?
        
         | candiddevmike wrote:
         | I almost started taking natto/serra supplements but there's too
         | many reports of it causing bleeding. Seems like natto as a food
         | (fermented soy) is better, but I can't source it locally.
        
           | bitL wrote:
           | Yeah, I have heard of that. But natto is supposed to be rich
           | in K2, some K2 supplements are made out of natto.
        
         | lr4444lr wrote:
         | Cardiovascular exercise at various intensities, done almost
         | every day, and high quality sleep.
         | 
         | Supplement and nutrition research as a disease prophylactic
         | (aside from avoiding the usual suspects) is nowhere near as
         | solid what we know about exercise and rest.
        
           | bitL wrote:
           | OK, good point. Assuming 60 minutes of on average moderate
           | cardio a day, which supplements would you recommend?
        
             | tharkun__ wrote:
             | I would supplement with swiss chard. Really good as the
             | "green" in bacon and scrambled eggs but if kale or collard
             | greens are more your thing I would supplement that to your
             | favorite dish instead.
        
             | lr4444lr wrote:
             | I don't think you'll go wrong with omega3. I take it, it
             | seems to have a low adverse risk profile.
        
         | kypro wrote:
         | Before you randomly start popping supplements the first thing
         | you should be doing if you care about maintaining a healthy
         | cardiovascular system is getting regular blood tests, ideally
         | at least one a year.
         | 
         | Not managing high triglycerides or high LDL cholesterol will
         | put you at a much higher risk than not taking any specific
         | supplement. Some people are genetically prone to heart disease
         | in which case monitoring your cholesterol and taking
         | pharmaceuticals to manage it (if needed) can significantly
         | reduce your risk.
         | 
         | The other thing you should do before you start popping
         | supplements is get your diet right. Reducing sugar, eating less
         | processed foods, consuming healthy fats (especially EPA), and
         | intermittent fasting - these will all help dramatically more
         | than taking any supplement.
         | 
         | Then there is exercise. Doing a 20-30 mins of high intensity
         | exercise a few days a week will help reduce your resting heart
         | rate, improve your metabolism and help maintain a healthy
         | cardiovascular system.
         | 
         | The only supplement I think there is currently good evidence to
         | take for heart health is high dose EPA, but it's pretty
         | expensive... I use Pharmepa Restore personally which I take due
         | to a family history of heart disease. High quality fish oil
         | supplements with DHA and EPA probably have a minor benefit,
         | while cheap fish oil supplements are probably mostly useless
         | for several reasons. If you're going to take fish oil for heart
         | health take one that's pharma-grade and high in EPA.
        
         | gleenn wrote:
         | Capsaicin is supposed to be good as per a news article I can't
         | seem to find but agree with sibling comment that exercise and
         | sleep as well as low cholesterol diet are all good.
         | 
         | (Edited phrasing)
        
         | jodrellblank wrote:
         | I don't recommend it per se, but Dr William Davies' HeartScan
         | blog makes the testable claim that there is a cheap noninvasive
         | scan which gives a good proxy measure of calcium buildup in the
         | heart, and that using it he has interventions which measurably
         | reduce such buildup, and they overlap with common alternate
         | diets like reduced wheat, carbs, I forget what else.
         | 
         | I'm not claiming this is right, but if it is both testable and
         | measurable and not just unsupported claims, it seems it should
         | get more attention. He's also a cardiologist not an internet
         | tree doctor. I don't know if he's a quack.
        
         | Alex3917 wrote:
         | If you do the 8 things the CDC says to do, you're already in
         | the top 1% of the US population for cardiovascular health. Just
         | doing those things is going to be a lot more effective than
         | taking any supplements.
        
       | DoreenMichele wrote:
       | Calcium is critical to start the chemical cascade of the clotting
       | process.
       | 
       | Vitamin K also helps you clot.
       | 
       | I can't fathom what the line of thinking is here.
        
         | bitL wrote:
         | K2 was supposed to help endothelium as well and was known for
         | enabling calcium to move from blood to bones.
        
           | DoreenMichele wrote:
           | Magnesium seems like a better guess and seems to not have
           | been studied for aortic stenosis though it does help with
           | vascular calcification.
           | 
           | https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.117.309182
           | 
           | Especially since heart murmur is a symptom of aortic stenosis
           | and magnesium is critical to regulation of the heartbeat.
           | 
           | https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aortic-
           | stenos...
           | 
           | https://health.clevelandclinic.org/magnesium-for-heart-
           | palpi...
        
             | bitL wrote:
             | Which magnesium type? Oxide, glycinate, threonate...?
        
               | DoreenMichele wrote:
               | My recollection is citrate and glycinate are
               | bioavailable.
        
             | gedy wrote:
             | I was taking reasonable amounts of Magnesium (SlowMag)
             | daily, however it seemed to trigger muscle twitches and
             | fasculations after a while. YMMV
        
               | DoreenMichele wrote:
               | I don't know what you mean by _reasonable amounts daily._
        
       | biggoodwolf wrote:
       | Meh, one of its cofactors is magnesium, unless they controlled
       | for that, this is meaningless.
        
       | lr4444lr wrote:
       | vitamins tested, both at baseline and at intervention, or just
       | give the subjects the pills and image the arteries? I'm guessing
       | the latter, as is almost always done. And we call this
       | "science"....
        
         | comicjk wrote:
         | If the proposed intervention is giving a pill, it seems fair to
         | test that instead of a proxy. The study had hundreds of people;
         | if the effect were big enough to be clinically significant they
         | hopefully would have detected it, even with some patients
         | failing to take the pills.
        
           | lr4444lr wrote:
           | I'm talking about assaying the subjects' blood for prior and
           | subsequent levels of the vitamin under test. Inasmuch as we
           | have no way to tell whether they took the pills, we don't
           | know whether the groups were properly randomized for their
           | pre-intervention levels, diets, or effectiveness at
           | metabolizing the supplement. It may even be the case that
           | people with high CAC scores in the first place (the test
           | population) already suffers from one or more of these
           | problems across the board.
           | 
           | It isn't that hard to test people's blood, and yet the
           | researchers prefer us to take it on faith that their sorting
           | of control and intervention groups ironed all of this out? If
           | I sound unreasonable, I don't apologize for it: public health
           | decisions are important.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | moremetadata wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | ekianjo wrote:
       | > But Diederichsen said most foods contain insufficient levels of
       | vitamin K2 to make an impact on heart health - with one
       | exception. Natto, a traditional Japanese food made from fermented
       | soybeans, is high in vitamin K2.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-05-08 23:01 UTC)