Vitamin K2, Saturated Fat and Other Fats, Unhealthy Gut Flora - Major Components Missing In a Healthy Vegan Diet

When I found that forum post regarding the tooth protocol from Weston Price, as well as reading tons and tons of stories and health articles, it lead me to hypothesise that many vegan health failures stem from these main issues:

1. Unhealthy gut flora or some other intestinal problem which is preventing the absorption of nutrients (which could be as simple as a lack of fat eaten with the food and lack of fat or low fat in the diet, specifically saturated fat*)
2. Lack of oil eaten with the dark leafy greens (which if you don't eat oil with your greens and other food, you can't get the ideal amount of nutrients from them)
3. Too little fat, and saturated fat, in the diet (Yes, I know I've repeated myself.)
4. Not converting K1 to K2
5. Not getting enough of D and calcium, or getting enough, but no K2 which would not do the teeth and bones (or the entire body) any good.

*If you see the healthy vegans and babies a few posts back, did you notice the coconut? I did.

You'll have to read most of the posts on this blog to follow along with the background on these points, I don't want to reiterate all the stuff I've covered over again.

Fat-soluble vitamins are responsible for mineral transport and delivery so intake of vitamin A, D and K as well as saturated fat are necessary. You see you can eat all the calcium you want and it will never get into your blood without A and D. And it will never get out of your blood and into your bones and teeth without vitamin K2. (Activator X turns out to be K2)

Vitamin K2 in particular can significantly lower bacterial count in your mouth, but it can also change your saliva from phosphorous taking to phosphorous bearing. See source at VegSoc Australia

Dr. William Davis, MD wrote about K2 and some of the research: Food sources of vitamin K2. When you read this, and I suggest you read it several times, you'll see how K2 plays a VITAL role in our health and why lack of it (when all other components are there as far as vitamins and minerals from veggies) will make you one unhealthy vegan.

Another interesting fact: Since mammals synthesize a small quantity of Vit K2 forms from vitamin K1, then eating lots of green vegetables should provide substrate for some quantity of K2 conversion. However, work by Schurgers et al have shown that K1 absorption is poor, no more than 10%, but increases significantly when vegetables are eaten in the presence of oils. (Thus arguing that oils are meant to be part of the human diet. Does your olive oil or oil-based salad dressing represent fulfillment of some subconscious biologic imperative?)

--The MK-4 form of vitamin K2 [animal derived] is short-lived, lasting only 3-4 hours in the body. The MK-7 form, in contrast, the form in natto, lasts several days. MK-7 and MK-8-10 [natto derived] are extremely well absorbed, virtually complete.

You can get K2 from a supplement or from yucky natto. Yes, there is natto supplements but there's no mention of whether or not K2 is in those supplements, they just talk about enzymes on the bottle (I just went to the health food store). As you can see from the study at that link, you can increase your absorption of K1 and turn it into K2 by adding fat/oil in your kale salad and I would suggest probiotics because your intestines, to put it frankly, might suck. But to be safe, if you are experiencing any teeth issues, please consider taking a supplement or learning to love natto. You can get the supplement it at Pangea, a very popular vegan shop!

Whatever diet you're on, be sure that you get K2: Vegan K2

Now, I would not get all up in arms and start downing K2. There's got to be a way of checking your levels. If you are a heart patient, go to your doctor.

Anyone want to help me write up a questionnaire for vegans about their teeth?

I don't want to give the impression that there's a whole bunch of vegans with tooth decay. That is not the case. There is an alarming amount of them, though. The link at the end of this post is a mom at mothering.com asking about healthy vegan teeth. She gets a lot of answers from vegans with good teeth, teeth improvements, but not much detail.

Where do you live?
Do you go outside much?
What supplements do take and how much and how often?
What do you eat consistently?

These are the kind of questions I need. I want them really detailed.

I got my best dental reports last year (actually I can't recall having a cavity in recent years, only childhood ones needed refilling) when I became a kaletarian, that is I ate cooked and raw kale a lot. My intestines work great and they are even better now with the probiotics. Kale has lots of K. But eating it and absorbing it are two different things for many people, the ones with the teeth issues. So this questionnaire would be like trouble shooting to see what people are doing right and doing wrong.

I think some of the health issues can be pin pointed to lack of fat or saturated fat in the diet. I don't shy from coconut and coconut ice cream or sauces with coconut in them.

On an ex-vegan blogLetThemEatMeat.com, Jack Norris, RD of VeganHealth.org and Vegan Outreach said: “Saturated fat can help boost cholesterol and steroid hormone levels if they are low and can improve sex drive – I know of one person who went this route and got his sex drive back.”

This is good because I'm a newly wed! Saturated fat may also help the body take the nutrients from plants too, I have to read more about it. To dismiss the work of a decent guy like Weston Price, who is not like the foundation in his name, is really close minded.

Visit this page: http://www.mothering.com/community/forum/thread/1214954/anyone-a-vegan-and-have-healthy-teeth

Plus, we may very well do better on K2. Natto here I come or a supplement...

Exposing the Lies of the Raw Vegan Diet and Hypocrisy. Dangers of the Raw Vegan Diet from a Vegan who's sick of the lying

http://www.shazzie.com/life/articles/raw_vegan_children.shtml

These are some excerpts from that page, you must visit it.

This is written by:

Shazzie is the UK's most prolific and popular raw food writer, speaker and chef. She's written four books, two ebooks, published around 500 raw food recipes and is the Managing Director of Detox Your World (Rawcreation Ltd). She is regularly interviewed and quoted in the media on raw food, natural parenting and holistic living. Shazzie lives in Cambridge with her four year old raw daughter Evie.

However, all the while I was researching this information, I saw huge amounts of misinformation being fed to the raw food community. I also saw children with very damaged teeth, stunted growth and developmental problems.

Worryingly, the children of some of those who actively promoted raw food had experienced the worst symptoms. If these children were put on a raw or cooked vegetarian (not vegan) diet, and were given supplements, they caught up. Those who are still raw vegan are still experiencing development and growth issues.

I was most concerned that these "raw food promoters" never, not once publicly stated what had happened to their children. In fact, when other raw parents were having issues with the development of their children, these very same raw food promoters and coaches told them to keep on doing what they were doing. This caused the raw food community to remain oblivious to the dangers of raising children raw.

and

Take these examples:

One mother experienced severe growth defects in her children on the raw vegan unsupplemented diet and resorted to feeding them large quantities of dairy and meat. She has since stood shoulder to shoulder with the other raw vegan dogmatists and writes on raw food forums pretending to be someone else! She says that she has been successful in raising her children raw vegan, yet she clearly hasn't.

The raw vegan child who was severely behind his development schedule and had flourosis. His mother, a "raw food coach" altered his diet (to cooked vegetarian plus supplements, plus some fish in the early days) and he eventually he began to sit, crawl and catch up. Even after this harrowing experience, this coach continued to tell mothers of children that weren't thriving on the raw vegan diet that raw vegan is OK, and to eat more fruit. She has never made a public statement about this experience and continues to be vague about what makes a healthy raw food diet for adults and children.

The raw vegan family in the USA who have several children. The last child wasn't even sitting up by the age of two. All the children are extremely thin and "bird like".

The raw vegan fruit promoter who says all non-vegan children are too tall and so vegan children are supposed to be small.
The tiny raw girl on YouTube who has hardly any top teeth due to visible decay.