Hey everyone. I've been actively updating about my health issues related to K2, Vitamin D, and bone health on the previously linked blog. I also posted there some videos that I am now recording to visually and verbally document my bone size and health. Doing this partly so my docs will stop telling me it's all in my head and partly so I know it's not all in my head and partly for general knowledge. I encourage others to do the same - so no one can say that you made it up, and to contribute to knowledge about these nutrients.
After all this time, I have figured more things out about my body. Definitely - regardless of what doctors say - have been Vitamin D deficient at roughly 30ng/ml. That was the level on two tests, but that doesn't mean my level has been constant. Furthermore, I don't think from experience that the severity of Vitamin D deficiency is based on D levels alone - it also depends on how long you've been deficient and how much calcium you've been getting, and if you've been taking K2 supplements (bad).
I've lost a bit of weight (10-14lbs), and I first thought it was due to fat loss. I now think it was a combo of fat loss and bone loss because I didn't gain weight when I put some fat back on. I was getting increasing bone pain and even starting to get a lot of bone chills. !!! I haven't heard others report bone chills, but it's like bone pain.... just a spontaneous chill that lasts a few seconds and then goes away, through my skeletal system. I was also getting depressed if I stopped taking Vitamin D. I haven't been taking Vitamin K2 at all in a while because every time I tried it again, I felt horrible. I think the MK-7 makes me feel worse than MK-4 because it lasts longer. MK-7 45mcg, just one pill, made me feel horrible all week. Next time I experiment with K2 will be after raising my Vitamin D level and with MK-4 only and I will cut the pill up because they are too much.
I am now convinced of what someone suggested here before. I cannot say I am absolutely positive, but time will tell. I believe that you cannot take K2 supplements if you are Vitamin D deficient or even nearly deficient - it is very dangerous to the body. You DEFINITELY cannot take either of these without 100% DV of calcium, or else it will destroy your bone. This is my experience. No matter how much I took these supplements, it was a problem. I found that for me personally, calcium supplements became a problem as well. I suspect that the magnesium counteracts the effects of Vitamin D. One lowers calcium levels and the other raises them, in the blood. It seemed like if I took calcium supplements (with magnesium) or ate slices of gourmet cheese, I started to be immediately very thirsty and urinate a lot. That's a sign of hypercalcemia. I take this to mean that the magnesium was causing me to urinate out all the calcium I was eating. I got kidney pains, too, from just small fragments of calcium tablets. I think this is due to Vitamin D deficiency - because if you are deficient, then the body takes a lot of calcium from the bones, and/or the body cannot maintain that level of calcium in the blood because it needs D to do that. Because of this deficiency, then the appropriate magnesium to calcium level changed. So now I'm avoiding magnesium and seem to not get this problem. I have been getting lots of calcium through pizza (processed cheese that I think has less magnesium), soy, and fortified orange juice. I've been taking lots of Vitamin D supplements and gradually feeling less bone pain and chills, less bone sensitivity, smoother teeth. Strangely, though, my mouth feels constantly filled with bacteria despite brushing a lot and using medicated mouthwash. Strange that my teeth are nice and white and smooth, yet coworkers complain about my bad breath daily now. Based on my experiences, I think that when I start taking MK-4 supplements again, this problem will correct itself. However, I'll endure the bad breath for now. Am I the only one having this experience or are people afraid of TMI? Anyway, Vitamin D has antimicrobial properties, so the smooth teeth I'm assuming comes from the calcium. I guess I need the MK-4 to activate the anti-microbial properties.
My vitamin D intake for the past week has been 2500IU to 6500+IU per day. I notice that 5-12 hours after eating a big calcium-rich and Vitamin D breakfast, the bone problems will start coming back. So then I go and eat some more with Vitamin D and they go away again. And none of this apparently requires K2 intake! The only reason I'm tempted to go back on K2 right now is to clean out my mouth. Also I've been eating a small amount of non-organic eggs here and there. That is about the only K2 I'm getting directly. Doesn't do much if anything for my oral health. The thing with MK-4 is that my oral health got really bad when I took it, but if I took it with a lot of Vitamin D, then stopped taking MK-4, suddenly THEN my oral hygiene would get better. My teeth got extremely grainy on MK-4 one time - I assume due to depleting my body of Vitamin D. I guess the Vitamin D was going to kill bacteria, but stopped working on other things. Strange, but I couldn't make this stuff up!
All this has been very complicated and confusing, but I think I'm slowly figuring out how my body functions on these things. There seriously need to be more studies done on K2, and even on the other nutrients. There's debate about the optimal amount of Vitamin D, and think that is because everyone is different, and because it's really dependent on cofactors. That's the problem of modern medicine. We discreetly divide up parts of the body that don't divide up like that in reality. K2 is no more special than Vitamin D or calcium. It's useless without them. It is able to be marketed as a miracle vitamin more so than the others because it's more obscure. I also think that different ethnic groups vary in their required amounts of these nutrients. For example, black people may have less vitamin D but still have lower risk for osteoporosis than other groups. Vitamin D supplements could be more dangerous for groups who traditionally do not eat a lot of calcium. Example, I work in an Asian restaurant and get lots of free food there, but none of it is calcium-rich except for the tofu.
It took me so long just to figure out something as simple as the fact that I need to combine Vitamin D with pizza and/or soy and/or fortified orange juice. And without K2, for now. Rheumatology appointment is in almost two months. Hope they'll test my bone mass because I'm certain that I've lost some. That was freaky. Now I can finally relax and go back to my normal life because I figured out how to at least stave off the bone loss until the UV rays come back. Sucks I got the exact opposite of intention with K2 - to the extreme! Now I hope, perhaps naively, that with diligence I can get my bone mass back up and even higher than it was. I am also planning to start a lot more weight bearing exercises once the weather gets warmer because that's important for bones. Atm, I am just trying to get my body back in a normal range before trying to build extra bone.
