I've have racked my brains over my blood pressure. Up until around ten years ago, it tended too run low. Then suddenly it began to become to high. The next thing you know I was hearing about taking blood pressure medication. N O NO.
"Well, what's your plan?" the doctor would say. "Diet. Exercise. Niacin supplements. I don't know."
The doctor sent me home with a blood pressure monitor, and even set me up on a program whereby I was called in the morning and asked if I had checked my blood pressure and what it was. At the time I had decided to go on a fast, and every morning it would be about 105/70. What??
But eventually I would eat and be back at the doctor's office with blood pressure of 160/95. I insisted this only happened at the doctor's office because of white coat syndrome. A nurse in a purposefully green jacket saw my alarm and asked, "Are you afraid of me?" "Yes." "????" Well, patients check in but they don't check out.
And so the days went by, and I heard horror stories of what happened to bad patients with high blood pressure. I even met some of them. One man in the waiting room said that he had had kidney failure from high blood pressure. He was 45 and now on dialysis. I really didn't know what to do. Besides that, I read that people taking blood pressure medicine may decrease their risk of stroke, but not of heat attack. I was doomed. This just wasn't going well.
And it seemed like I was being blamed. Since I didn't know what to do, I hoped for the best.
Then a couple of weeks ago I read that most people are deficient in Vitamin K2, which regulates blood calcium. A deficiency would cause atherosclerosis. Up to that time I had thought that the solution for that was green leafy vegetables. Why did I think that? Well, I was told that by doctors. "Vitamin K is in green leafy vegetables," they said. If you google that right now, and ask, what food contain Vitamin K2, you will find medical university sites that will tell you to eat plenty of green leafy vegetables to get Vitamin K2.
How much Vitamin K2 would be in cabbage, kale, spinach, etc? None. NONE. The only vegetable source of Vitamin K2 is natto. People don't eat that around here.
What seems to have happened is that I began to go to the doctor and be encouraged to take calcium, especially since I'm female. Then a few years ago I was tested for Vitamin D and was surprisingly deficient. So I took Vitamin D and calcium.
But then without adequate K2, the calcium does not build bones but winds up in the arteries and other places, like kidneys.
Therefore, when I heard about this, I began taking Vitamin K2 and wondered what was going on in doctor land. Watching videos on this, there is even one famous physician arguing of the dangers of taking K2 since he believed that reducing the calcium in the blood would cause the plaque in the arteries not to harden, and that would make it more dangerous. I think this was a case of overthinking. Or possibly discovering that evidence has proved a long held tenet wrong and trying to justify it. Another video was of a doctor touting taking Vitamin D and "Vitamin K," which is what has led to all the confusion in the first place. Vitamin K1 and Vitamin K2 are totally different things. Vitamin K2 should be taken with Vitamin D.
So I've been taking Vitamin K2. Then a thought occurred to me. Maybe this had affected my blood pressure.
For the first time in a long time my blood pressure was down to normal levels. Yay!
What foods contain K2? Meat, cheese and eggs. And natto. But I did eat an abundant amount of meat, cheese and eggs. I have even been criticized for that. It seems that modern methods of farming have depleted K2 from these food sources. Are supplements a must? Well, I think if you're taking calcium and Vitamin D, yes, you should also supplement with K2. And considering that at least 80% of the population has a deficiency of K2, it would seem like a good thing to do.
And that's my story.
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