Vitamin K
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Vitamin K is a vitamin which unlike many vitamins, is produced inside of the human body, more specifically it is produced by bacteria found in the intestines. Vitamin K is lipophilic , which means that vitamin K is soluble in lipids which are organic compounds which are necessary for the structure and maintenance of living cells. Like all lipids, vitamin K is hydrophobic, or insoluble in water. Vitamin K is necessary in the body for the chemical modification of certain proteins and is a requirement for the proper coagulation of blood in the event of some sort of an injury to the body. The presence of vitamin K in the body is directly responsible for helping to prevent hemorrhaging, blood clots which would obstruct the proper flow of blood through the blood vessels and embolisms, which travel from one part of the body to other parts and may cause blockages in areas some distance away from where the initial injury occurred. A vitamin K dietary deficiency is extremely rare and normally only occurs if the body's intestines have been severely damaged.
It was Danish scientist Henrik Dam who accidentally discovered the existence of vitamin K. This happened while he was doing an experimental investigation of cholesterol and its effects on the diet of chickens. He put the chickens on a strict cholesterol free diet and within a short period of time, they started to hemorrhage and show signs of other blood related conditions. When he immediately added purified cholesterol to their diet there was no improvement, which led Dam to realize that there was something in the diet which the chickens had originally been eating besides the cholesterol which had a direct correlation to the prevention of these blood related problems. He began referring to this previously unknown component as the coagulation vitamin. An interesting bit of trivia is that vitamin K became so named because it was initially reported in a German publication which referred to it as the Koagulations Vitamin . Henrik Dam and fellow scientist Edward Adelbert Doisy were the ones responsible for the majority of the research done on vitamin K which led to the knowledge that we know have concerning its chemical structure and nature. In 1943, the two renowned scientists shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for the work which they had done in researching this new vitamin now known as vitamin K.
Foods and food products which can be used to supply a natural supplement to the body's natural supply of vitamin K should it be needed are vegetable oils, such as soybean oils, and dark green vegetables, such as spinach and broccoli. Dandelion greens are also a good source of vitamin K when available.
