Vitamin K
Vitamin K also fat soluble. It is essential for the synthesis of prothrombin a compound involved in the clotting of blood.
Vitamin K is mostly needed to help to stop bleeding, but it has some other jobs as well.
The most important is the crucial role vitamin K, plays building bones. Vitamin K is needed to help hold onto the calcium in bones and make sure it’s getting to the right place.
It actually comes in three different forms:
First, there’s vitamin K1, or phylloquinone. This is the form of vitamin K found in plant foods.
Next, there’s Vitamin K2, also called menaquinone. This the form friendly bacteria in the intestines make.
The last form would be called vitamin K3. This is the artificial form, also called menadione. All your vitamin K ends up in liver, where it’s used to make some of the substance that make blood clot.
Cabbage, spinach, cauliflower, and liver are good source of vitamin K, although moderate amounts are found in many other vegetables, as well as in cereals.
The significant symptom of vitamin K deficiency in humans and in animals is the loss of the ability of the blood to clot which is, of course, a dangerous condition that can result in death whenever bleeding from cuts occurs.
It is believed that humans ordinarily receive adequate amounts of vitamin K in the diet.
As a rule, vitamin K deficiency is rare – almost everyone gets more than enough from their own bacteria and from their food.
Sometime newborn babies don’t have enough vitamin K because they don’t yet have any bacteria to make it in their intestine.
To make up for them, most newborns are given an injection of a tiny amount of vitamin K soon after birth.
When adults get vitamin K deficiency, it’s generally because they eat very few green vegetables or because they have been taking oral antibiotics for a long time.
The antibiotics kill off the intestine bacteria that make vitamin K. Sometimes vitamin K deficiency is caused by liver disease or a problem digesting fat.
The major symptom of vitamin K deficiency is that blood clot very slow, so it will bleed for along time even from minor injuries.
Vitamin K deficiency causes bug black and blue marks from very slight bruises or even for no reason, nosebleeds, blood in your urine and intestinal bleeding.
Vitamin K
