Older adults should monitor their vitamin K1 levels
Scientists: vitamin K1 deficiency (below 0.5 nmol/L) raises the risk of mobility limitation in older adults by 1.5 times. Sources include spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and green tea.
Scientists: vitamin K1 deficiency (below 0.5 nmol/L) raises the risk of mobility limitation in older adults by 1.5 times. Sources include spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and green tea.
Vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) deficiency affects mobility — walking speed decreases and the risk of developing osteoarthritis rises. Ultimately this may lead to disability. Scientists tested the relationship between blood vitamin levels and a person's condition in more than 1,300 men and women aged 70–79.
Specialists determined that a person's mobility was limited if they experienced even minor difficulty when needing to walk 400 meters without rest or assistance, or to climb 10 stairs. A mobility impairment was recorded when a person complained twice within a year about serious problems or complete inability to complete this test.
It turned out that the lower the phylloquinone concentration in a person's blood, the greater the difficulty volunteers had moving without assistance. A minimum concentration — below 0.5 nanomoles of vitamin K1 per liter of blood — raised the risk of mobility limitation by 1.5 times compared with a level of about 1 nanomole, and the risk of mobility impairment by nearly 2 times.
Scientists remind us: this vitamin can be obtained through food. Vitamin K1 is abundant in spinach, lettuce, various types of cabbage, broccoli, green tea, parsley, avocado, kiwi, and bananas.
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