Vitamin K— Bad or good?

Vitamin K can be used for a variety of situations. We all need Vit K, in our diet (green leafy vegetables provide this). If you have a child, or pet that ingests rodent poison (most rodent baits are hemolytic poisons) the Vit K will be used to reverse the blood thinning caused by the poison. Other uses is for persons taking blood thinners, their blood is monitored and if they have thinned to much then Vit K is used to help balance the consistency.

Sorry dear, you heard wrong.

Actually, vitamin K DEFICIENCY leads to poor clotting and increased bleeding time.

Deficiency of vit K is very rare, as it is present in the foods we mostly eat/drink…..eggs, green leafy veggies (spinach, lettuce, etc), milk, some fruits (avocado, banana)

it is of positive outcome when used in emergency situations like profuse bleeding

Yes, it does lead to blood clotting. Why do we need it? Well, do we need blood clotting? Ask someone with haemophilia and they will tell you we do!

Warfarin is a rat poison, it is a vitamin k antagonist. So, we give warfarin to rats, and it kills them, because basically they dont have any vitamin k. What does that say about us needing vitamin k?

Ashley

You’ve been victimized by the popular press. These days, it seems all sorts of foods and activities are labeled “good” or “bad” as if there were some morally objectionable qualities in them. Life is just not so simple. You have to have blood clot, or you’d bleed uncontrollably. Occasionally a clot gets out of hand, or there’s a higher than normal risk of having too many clots, and that has to be modified, but not too much. “Clot-busting” drugs, for instance, revolutionized the treatment of heart attacks back in the 80’s, but a small percentage of the patients treated with these drugs die from bleeding uncontrollably, especially into the brain. All body functions are like that. The body is full of regulating mechanisms to make sure you don’t do too little or too much of any function. Vitamin K is needed, else it wouldn’t be classified as a vitamin. It’s given to every newborn baby as insurance that they’ll have an adequate supply. It’s almost never prescribed otherwise, except in a few situations in which the patient is taking an anticoagulant like warfarin, and the effect of that dose has gotten a bit out of hand, but even then, small changes from the target level (known as INR in the business) are treated with adjustment of the warfarin dosage, and massive bleeding is treated with replacement, as with fresh frozen plasma. It’s only the in-between cases that get a bit of vitamin K prescribed. I suppose there are kooks out there taking vitamin K for no good reason, but that’s a different issue altogether.

THere are 13 coagulation factors. In order for your blood to coagulate, all 13 factors have to be working. If one is not working, then your blood will not clot. Vit-k is an essential ingrediet for the 13 coagulation factors. Hope that helps

Desired result: you want your blood to clot.

Sometimes, when it doesn’t clot, Vitamin K is used. An example of this is found when you’re taking warfarin for a blood clot to ‘thin’ your blood. If your blood gets TOO ‘thin,’ Vitamin K is given.

Vitamin K is found naturally in green, leafy veggie, usually the darker the better, like lettuce, spinach, broccoli, kale, collard greens.

If you’re on warfarin therapy, these are foods to avoid or not to take in great quantities. Dang it, I love those greens, especially my spinach salad!!