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Cardiovascular disease is the reigning champion Cause of Death in the western world. Even though the medical world has known for decades that hardening of the arteries is the single greatest predictor of heart failure and stroke, cardiovascular disease remains at the top.
Knowing the indicators have not given us the ability to stop heart disease.
Only recently have we begun to understand why arteries harden. And it is this why that leads to a new understanding, an integrated approach to restoring flexibility in the arteries. And it all points to one key vitamin to turn it around.
The Willow and the Oak: Why Hardened Arteries Cause Heart Attacks
Most people have heard the fable of the willow and the oak tree. The short version goes like this:
A big storm comes and while the flexible, pliable willow tree gets blown around in the gale-force winds, the big, stiff oak tree snaps and falls to the ground.
It couldn’t handle the force.
Your arteries are naturally designed to bend and flex with the pulse of your blood. Like the proverbial willow tree in the storm, this ability to dynamically move with the physiological stress of blood pressure keeps you healthy.
When arteries become hard, they become brittle. And like the oak tree, they can snap and rupture.
Hidden Cause of Hardened Arteries
The physiological cause of hardened arteries is calcium deposits [1]. Doctors have known this for years. This is not new information.
What is useful is why the calcium gets there, because the calcium isn’t the cause, it’s the symptom. Underneath these calcium deposits are injuries: damaged arteries trying to heal.
What kind of damage? Damage from toxins, from pathogens, and from inflammation. This creates a very specific biochemical environment on the wall of the artery.
One that attracts calcium.
When there is free calcium floating around in the blood, it binds to the damage site, calcifying the wound site, hardening arteries, and paving the way for heart attack and stroke. [2,3]
This implies a new path to heart health: managing inflammation and detoxification. But there’s one more thing going on here, one that, when addressed, can help reverse arterial hardening in just a few weeks.
Why is there free calcium in the blood?
The Vitamin K Connection
Normally, when an artery is injured by toxins or inflammation in a healthy adult, the tissue will become inflamed, the immune system will quickly clean up the problem, and the wound will heal in a few days.
However, when calcium is circulating in the blood, it attaches to the wound site and stays there.
Under normal circumstances, 99% of calcium is stored in the bones, with very little in the blood. The calcium stays in the bones because of a vitamin that acts like glue: Vitamin K.
Vitamin K is actually a group of many different related vitamins, of which K2 is the most famous. This group of compounds acts together to help bind calcium into the bone matrix. When you become deficient in the vitamin K complex, the glue begins to fail and calcium leaches into the bloodstream. [4]
This means underneath the big umbrella of cardiovascular disease lies a hidden Vitamin K deficiency that turns systemic inflammation and toxicity into heat attacks and strokes.
Reverses Hardened Arteries
Clinical trials in humans show that vitamin K complex can actually “unstick” this calcium from the arteries and help it get back to the bones.
A single vitamin functionally reverses the symptom of hardened arteries [5,6]
Where do we get it?
The vast majority of our body’s vitamin K is produced by our gut bacteria, adding cardiovascular disease to the long list of conditions helped by rebalancing your microbiome. Before spending large amounts of money on expensive probiotic pills, try incorporating more fermented foods into your diet:
Raw yogurt (pasteurization destroys the probiotics)
Kefir
Miso
Saurkraut and other fermented vegetables
Komboucha
The next major source of vitamin K is our diet. Dietary sources of vitamins are naturally complexed with other compounds that make them easier to absorb. Vitamin K is most abundant in leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli. Any quality green-drink powder will also contain high levels of vitamin K (try our Perfect Greens Formula).
The richest natural source, however, is the Japanese fermented bean paste Natto. (Tip: start slow with natto, while remarkably healthy, it can be something of an acquired taste).
Guide to Supplementation
After gut bacteria and dietary sources, supplements are the next step you want to take. There is a synergistic relationship between vitamin K and vitamin D. Vitamin D pulls calcium into the bones, and vitamin K keeps it there. Therefore, you will want to look for vitamins that combined these two together for maximum benefit.
Also, both vitamin K and vitamin D are fat soluble so you want to be sure to take them with fat to ensure maximum absorption and get the most from your money.
Chemical Sabotage
One of the most surprising findings of recent studies is that many widely prescribed pharmaceutical drugs actually suppress the actions of vitamin K. Most of these are popular blood pressure prescriptions like warfarim, phenprocoumon, and acenocoumarol. [7]
If you are taking any of these drugs, you will want to take extra precautions to supplement vitamin K and vitamin D.
Also, becasue of the gut’s role in vitmain K production, be aware of antibiotic use. If you are on antibiotics, you will need to repair your gut and may want to supplement vitamin K and vitmain D until your microbiome is rebalanced.
Dr. Minkoff’s Recommended Mulit-Vitamin
If you’re looking for the highest quality multi-vitamin to cover all your bases in one source, try BodyHealth’s Complete-Multi + Liver Detox. It was personally formulated by Dr. Minkoff so he could have a multi-vitamin he felt comfortable recommending to his patients. The result is one of the most comprehensive and bioloigcally effective vitamins on the market.
*This website, including products, articles, and educational content are not intended to diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease. The statements on this website have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration. This website does not provide medical advice. The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only.
Dr. David Minkoff
Dr. David Minkoff graduated from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 1974 and was elected to the “Phi Beta Kappa” of medical schools, the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Fraternity for very high academic achievement. He then completed both a Pediatric Residency and Fellowship in Infectious Disease at the University of California at San Diego.
He worked at the University of California and Children’s Hospitals in San Diego as an attending physician in infectious disease while conducting original research on Ribaviron, a broad spectrum anti-viral agent to fight disease. He also co-directed a neo-natal intensive care unit and worked in emergency medicine.
In 1992, Dr Minkoff’s wife Sue, a Registered Nurse, became interested in nutrition and health and began to go to lectures from some of the experts in the field. At the time, Dr Minkoff was pretty fixed in his view of traditional medicine and it took a lot of convincing to get him to come to one of these lectures. After hearing Dr Jeffrey Bland speak, Dr Minkoff had a eureka moment and began pursuing the alternative field with a vengeance. Based on this new knowledge Dr Minkoff and his wife set up a small clinic in 1997 to help some friends with their medical problems. What began as an experiment blossomed into Lifeworks Wellness Center, one of the most successful clinics for complementary medicine in the United States. In the process, he gained expertise in Biological medicine, integrative oncology, heavy metal detoxification, anti-aging medicine, hormone replacement therapy, functional medicine, energy medicine, neural and prolotherapy, homeopathy and optimum nutrition. He studied under the masters in each of these disciplines until he became an expert in his own right. Dr Minkoff is one of the most in demand speakers in the field and wrote an Amazon best selling book called The Search For The Perfect Protein.
The demand for the products and protocols he discovered became a catalyst for founding BodyHealth.Com, a nutrition company that now manufactures and distributes cutting-edge nutritional solutions for the many health problems of today. Dr. Minkoff writes two free online newsletters, “The Optimum Health Report” and ”The BodyHealth Fitness Newsletter”, to help others learn about optimum health and fitness.
Dr. Minkoff is an avid athlete himself and has completed 44 Ironman Triathlons. To keep his fitness maximal, he lives the lifestyle he teachers to others and tries to set an example for others, so they can enjoy a life free of pain and full of energy.
by Dr. David MinkoffOctober 20, 20214 min read0 Comments
If you’ve ever had a shock and felt the adrenaline surge in your body then you’ve felt cortisol. It’s a wake-you-up, get-you–ready-for-action hormone.
It really is. It hits its lowest point around midnight, so you can go to sleep, and then peaks again about an hour after you’ve gotten up in the morning, getting you to wake up and get ready for the day.
It’s nick-named the “stress hormone” because it’s released in moments of stress. So in a dangerous situation, or if you get scared suddenly, you’ll feel it.
But… when we have too-high levels of cortisol for too long, it can makeusfeel stressed… even if we have no reason to be.
by Dr. David MinkoffOctober 14, 20218 min read0 Comments
Alright, so we know that when sugar comes into the body Insulin is released to shuttle that sugar into the cell. And if the cell is full, then it connects the sugars in chains and stores them as something called Glycogen in your muscle and liver cells for use later on. And if those are full then it connects the sugar to fatty acids and stores it as body fat. And, while Insulin is in the blood stream, fat burning is prevented.
We also know that, given too much sugar for too long, the cells start resisting it and refusing to let it in when Insulin tells them too, causing them to have less sugar to make energy with as well as causing more of it to be converted to body fat.
by Dr. David MinkoffOctober 14, 20215 min read0 Comments
This is the second article in a series on Insulin, Insulin Resistance, Sugar and Body Fat, as a well as an overall series on hormones, so stay tuned!
Alright, if you read the first article in this series (Link this to first article) then you understand that when sugar is in the blood stream the hormone Insulin is released to send it into the cells for energy, or to store it as energy in the muscles as something called Glycogen, or to convert it into fats known as Triglycerides — body fat.
And that while insulin is in the bloodstream almost no fat burning can take plac
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