There is a long list of vitamins and minerals our bodies need in order to function to the best of our abilities. A healthy body means a healthy mind, and if your body has a vitamin deficiency it can often lead to depression, anxiety and lethargy. Most of our foods can provide us with a good range of vitamins, but it can be hard to make sure we get enough of the vitamins we need.
Even taking a multi-vitamin tablet may not give us enough of the vitamins we need if we have a specific vitamin or mineral requirement. Many people need extra iron in their diet and take an extra supplement in addition to an iron rich diet of red meats and green leaves. Vitamin K is an important part of our diet that some people struggle to get enough of. Here is a quick guide to vitamin K and what you can do to get more in your diet.
What are the Effects of Not Getting Enough Vitamin K?
Vitamin K can be found in a lot of foods, but not often in large quantities. If you are not getting enough in your diet, you may be experiencing easy bruising or any bleeding taking a while to stop. Vitamin K is important to our blood and bones, and a deficiency in vitamin K is often associated with osteoporosis and coronary heart disease.
People who have had gastric band surgery for weight loss or for health reasons often suffer a vitamin K deficiency, as a small amount of vitamin K is produced by the bacteria in our colon. People who suffer from ailments that effect the bowels, such as short bowel syndrome, will also need extra vitamin K in their diet.
How to You Get More Vitamin K into Your Diet?
Although a good multi-vitamin can give you some of the vitamin K you need, it is important to try and find natural vitamin K that you can add to your diet. Celery is a food that has a high density of vitamin K and celery juice is extremely powerful as a supplement to increase your vitamin K intake.
Many other green leaved vegetables also provide a healthy vitamin K dose, like kale, spinach, chard and parsley. Oily fish, livers, and red meats also have a decent amount of vitamin K in them, so if you want to cook yourself a meal dense in vitamin K, steak and spinach is a good start.
How Do I Know It Is Working?
An increase in the amount of vitamin K in your diet should be noticeable within the first week. If you have been experiencing any bruising or blood clotting issues, you should see some improvement in this, and an improvement in digestion. The bacteria in our bowels that produces vitamin K, also processes it for our bodies. Healthy and active bacteria in our bowel helps our body’s whole digestive system function, and you should see a marked improvement in your body’s overall digestion when you increase your consumption of vitamin K foods. You will have noticed that vitamin K rich foods are also very healthy foods in general. Eating more of these foods will give you lots of other health benefits too.
Getting more vitamin K in your diet isn’t too hard, and the health benefits are obvious. Many vitamins are naturally abundant in the foods we eat, and a part of multi-vitamin tablets, but vitamin K is often under-represented in the average diet. You should think about adding more vitamin K to your diet through vitamin supplements, and celery.