Vitamins : Benefits Of Vitamin K For The Elderly

Article by Alison Addy

This article about Vitamin K tells how we can get our required amount as well as the many benefits we get from Vitamin K.

Sources of Vitamin K

Almost everyone has watched ‘Popeye’ on television and has been in awe as he gained instant strength when he ate his spinach. We’ve all just assumed that it was the spinach that made him strong. Very few people take the time to wonder what it is in spinach to make him so powerful. What looked like magic to many kids was actually Vitamin K, which is the main vitamin in spinach. Other leafy green vegetables that are high in Vitamin K are lettuce, collards, kale and broccoli. A rule of thumb is the greener the vegetable, the higher the Vitamin K content.

Other sources of Vitamin K in your diet can come from olive oil, soybean oil and cottonseed oil. Parsley is very rich in Vitamin K. In fact, if you take 2 tablespoons of parsley, you’ll get 153% of the recommended daily amount of Vitamin K. The major dietary form of Vitamin K is Vitamin K1 (Phylloquinone). Good sources of Vitamin K1 are chicken egg yolk, cow liver, butter and most cheeses.

Vitamin K for Blood Clotting

Many of the vitamins we take in our diet are common to all of us such as Vitamin C or Vitamin D. We all know Vitamin C comes from oranges and fruit and Vitamin D comes from milk among other foods. However, we’re not all as familiar with some of the other vitamins as we should be such as Vitamin K. In fact, until it’s called to our attention, many of us aren’t aware of the many benefits of Vitamin K. The most important benefit of Vitamin K is its ability to help our blood clot. For example, when you are cut, if your blood does not clot, you would continue to bleed. Without this important vitamin in our system, bleeding could become out of control and cause a serious life-threatening condition. Therefore, you see the seriousness of having the proper amounts of Vitamin K in our body, whether it’s from the vitamin-rich foods we eat or in vitamin supplements.

Vitamin K for the Elderly

Helping our blood to clot may be the most important function of Vitamin K, but it is not the only important function for this vital vitamin. Vitamin K is said to help strengthen the bone density of the elderly. (Popeye definitely had strong bones!) This is very beneficial to the elderly in helping to prevent osteoporosis, a degenerative disease caused by weakened bone tissue. Although some don’t believe this has been scientifically proven, with all its other good points, it can’t hurt to take this vitally important Vitamin K on a regular basis.