Vitamin K regulates normal blood clotting by helping the body transport calcium. It also may help reduce bone loss, decrease risk of bone fractures and may prevent calcification of arteries and other soft tissue. And now researchers in Germany suggest that individuals with higher intake of one of the two types of vitamin K are less likely to develop and die of cancer, particularly, lung and prostate cancers. These findings come from an investigation including more than 24,000 Germans between the ages of 35 and 64, none of whom had cancer when they enrolled in the decade-long study. Over time, the researchers found that the study participants with the highest intakes of vitamin K2, found in meat and cheese, were 28 percent less likely to have died of prostate, lung, colon or breast cancer than the men and women with the lowest intakes of K2, even after such lifestyle and risk factors as age, weight, exercise habits, smoking and fiber and calcium consumption were taken into account. The researchers noted that in the lab K2 has been shown to promote the process by which abnormal cells in the body self-destruct. The study was published online March 24, 2010 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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