Bone Strength Basics – What You Need to Know

Vitamin K2 increases the amount of a specific protein required to maintain bone calcium, reducing the risk of osteoporosis. Some studies on Vitamin K2 have even found that high intakes of Vitamin K2 can stop bone loss in people with osteoporosis.

Your body needs Vitamin K2 to use calcium to build bones. Vitamin K2 deficiency is also associated with insulin resistance, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and may increase your risk of certain types of cancer.

Foods high in Vitamin K2 include raw dairy products such as certain cheeses, raw and grass-fed butter, grass-fed ghee, kefir, as well as natto and fermented vegetables like sauerkraut.

There is increasing evidence that Vitamin K2 can improve bone health and reduce the risk of bone fractures, especially in postmenopausal women who are at risk for osteoporosis. There is also growing evidence that Vitamin K2 has anti-inflammatory activity and can protect your cells from oxidative stress caused by free radical damage.

Vitamin K2 can be broken into two additional categories:

MK-4 (menaquinone-4), a short-chain form of Vitamin K2 found in butter, ghee, egg yolks, and animal-based foods. Try and avoid this in supplemental form, since MK-4 supplements are all synthetic. MK-4 also has a very short biological half-life — about one hour— so getting it from food works best.

MK-7 (menaquinone-7), longer-chain forms found in fermented foods. There’s a variety of these long-chain forms but the most common one is MK-7.
The MK-7, which forms in the fermentation process, has two major advantages. It stays in your body longer, and has a longer half-life, which means you can just take it once a day in very convenient dosing.

Collagen 101

Collagen comes from the Greek kolla (glue) and is our body’s most abundant protein. It is essentially the “glue” in our body to support our connective tissues, cartilage, bones, tendons and ligaments, as well as provide structural support to the skin. As we age, our body’s natural ability to produce collagen begins to decline. Because bone is a complex tissue, bone strength depends on the quality of bone tissue and several nutrients such as collagen.

Type I collagen is the most abundant type of collagen in our body, but it is also the major structural component of our bones, organs and skin. Collagen provides a “framework” of sorts to our bone strength, which also allows bones to be strong and flexible. As collagen levels begin to decline (due to age, oxidative damage, stress etc) the crosslinking process of collagen in forming strong bones begins to decline, which can lead to bone fragility, bone collagen abnormalities and osteoporosis.

Magnesium

Roughly 60% of our total body Mg is stored in the bones; low levels of magnesium have been associated with an increased risk of osteoporosis fractures, as low magnesium levels can inhibit vitamin D and calcium homeostasis and absorption in bones.

A study done in the European Journal of Epidemiology found that men who had high serum magnesium levels were 44 percent less likely to have bone fractures.

Magnesium is essential to all living cells (which your bones are), including both osteoblasts and osteoclasts (aka bone building and bone breaking cells). In fact, bones of Mg deficient animals have been found to be brittle and fragile.

Magnesium deficiency can contribute to the development of osteoporosis directly and indirectly by acting on crystal formations on bone cells, by impacting the secretion and activity of parathyroid hormone and promoting low-grade inflammation.