Vietnamese Tossed Salad with Steak Strips

We are omnivores.

We are not herbivores, nor are we carnivores.  These terms are classified according to the types of teeth we have in our heads (or lack thereof).  They are not utilized randomly, in a feely-touchy sort of fashion that comes and goes with the winds.  It is not a—”I feel sort of herbivor-ish today, so maybe I’ll have a salad for lunch.”

Most animals are either herbivores or carnivores.  There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, they are unable to adapt to external situations, thereby lessening their chances for survival.  We are lucky in that we actually have a choice in the matter.   We have been given the gift of the Four Teeth:  incisors, canines, premolars, and molars.  This means we have the ability to eat anything we can find that does not make us sick.

For us, if we can’t find any meat sources, we can eat roots, leaves, nuts, and flowers for awhile and that would see us through for days or weeks until we get a nice decent kill to augment our food sources.   Let’s say there’s a blizzard blowing outside and nothing is growing at the moment; we can also exist on an animal carcass for quite awhile before we have to go back out of our caves and look for roots or leaves.  We need both meat and plant life to stay healthy.  This is not a concession to any religious ideology (although I am a Taoist and I do believe in balance and harmony of everything).  This is simply the truth.

Let me repeat myself again for those of you who are still not clear on this.

Steamed Chilean Sea Bass

WE ARE OMNIVORES.

This means that to be at our optimum health, we need to eat a balance of both plant and animal substances.  Eating only meat will cause us to become unbalanced and develop diseases; likewise, eating only plants will also cause an unbalance and results in diseases.  Taoism is all about achieving balance within ourselves, as well as all things external.  This includes the food we eat.

Now, why am I ranting and raving on about this?  I’m really not trying to pick fights with the vegan or the vegetarian community.  I could care less what others eat.  If they want to deprive themselves of adequate nutrition, be it on their heads.  It has nothing to do with me.  I am writing this post to zero in on a very important vitamin, namely that elusive ‘activator X’ that Dr. Pete Peterson talked about, which as it turns out is actually K2.

What does this have to do with being an omnivore?  K2 (menaquinone) is ONLY found in bacterial and animal sources.  When animals consume vitamin K1, which is found in plentiful supply within green leafy vegetation, their tissues convert part of the nutrition into vitamin K2.  The mammary glands appear to be especially efficient at making this conversion, presumably because vitamin K2 is essential for growing infants.  Vitamin K2 is also produced by lactic acid bacteria, which of course also makes a host of other products that are not in and of themselves, meat.

OK, OK, fine.

I will admit that technically, you don’t have to eat meat to get K2.  You can eat this fermented bean dish and get a high dosage of K2, but be forewarned.  The fermentation process involved with making this dish requires the workings of lactic acid bacteria, and these bacteria produce forms of K2 that are chemically different from those that animals produce.

Also, for those who have an issue with eating living organisms, last I heard, bacteria is a legitimate form of micro-organism and yes, you will be consuming them, body and all, as you eat their fermented processes.

And besides…

(eww…)

Fermented beans (Nattō – なっとう) is not a good tasting food dish.  Trust me on this.

So, let me backtrack to the real reason for this posting.

K2

When I first heard about K2, I thought it was some miracle vitamin. How can one vitamin do all that it purports to be able to do, yet have received so little press? Shouldn’t this information be given to those who really need it the most, namely women and children?

Of course, when I realized the benefactors of this information would be women and children, I sighed. When did women and children ever make the cut when it came to being provided with important information? When did osteoporosis or children’s teeth development matter that much to men any way?

Well, here is the scoop.

• Vitamin K2 is only synthesized by animal tissues, including the mammary glands, from vitamin K1, which is found in association with the chlorophyll of green plants in proportion to their photosynthetic activity. *  Although humans do have a limited capacity to convert vitamin K1 to K2, this converted K2 is vastly inferior to obtaining K2 through a diet rich with K2.  Humans require PREFORMED K2 in the diet to obtain and maintain optimal health.
• Vitamin K2 is the magic ingredient that activates proteins which are dependent on the vitamins A and D to work.  In other words, any protein that needs a command from A and D to do anything at all will simply not have the ability to carry out those commands without the ability to bind calcium to themselves.  K2 looks around, finds free-floating calcium, snags it, and brings it to the protein, which then binds to it and does what it needs to do.  A good example of this is Osteocalcin, a protein that is used to deposit calcium and phosphorus salts into bones and teeth.
• Our body will only produce osteocalcin in the presence of both vitamins A and D; however without K2, osteocalcin does nothing even in the presence of A and D, because it requires K2 to confer upon it, the physical ability to bind calcium.  Without Vitamin K2, the body cannot remove calcium from arteries where it’s not needed, and direct calcium to the bones where it is needed.  This leads to a combination of both osteoporosis AND atherosclerosis.
• Speaking of which—vitamin K2 deficiency causes calcification of the cardiovascular system. That’s because, as I stated above, it takes the excess calcium from the blood and transfers it to the bone tissues. Cardiovascular calcification is ubiquitous in populations aged 63 and above. According to “The Rotterdam Study, which prospectively followed just over 4,600 men aged 55 or older in the Netherlands, the highest intake of vitamin K2 was associated with a 52 percent lower risk of severe aortic calcification, a 41 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), a 51 percent lower risk of CHD mortality, and a 26 percent lower risk of total mortality.” *  In this manner, not only does K2 repairs and increases bone mass in people with osteoporosis, it also protects arteries from calcification, thereby lowering the risk of heart disease in people with cardiovascular disease. **
• Vitamin K2 pulls calcium out of saliva and adheres it to teeth to regrow dentin and reverse damage done by bacteria.  It does this by changing the chemical behavior of saliva from phosphorus-accepting to phosphorus-donating.  Although more research needs to be done, preliminary studies conducted by German researchers in 1955 showed that ingested K2 was far more effective than topically applied K2, such as those that could be found in chewing gum laced with K2.  So basically, K2 will also keep our teeth from rotting out of our heads.

But of course, as I have stated on many occasions.  I am no health nut.  I rarely ever do things just for the health benefit (unless it’s exceedingly easy OR it tastes really good any way…I’m a glutton…I freely admit).  The main reason that I am interested in K2 has little to do with osteoporosis and mostly to do with a tiny little gland in my head called the pineal gland (more about the pineal gland in my previous post, Star Wars, the Force, and the Third Eye).

This little gland, called the pineal gland, is responsible for many magical visions that I, as a modern-day writer, artist, and musician rely upon for my continued creative works.  Unfortunately, as we age, the pineal gland also calcifies.  Dr. Jennifer A Luke discovered this phenomenon back in 1997 when she wrote a paper entitled The Effect of Fluoride on the Physiology of the Pineal Gland.

Fluoride is identified as the culprit which causes calcification of the pineal gland.

Umm… yeah, it’s the same stuff we brush our teeth with, drink as part of our water additive, and bathe every day in.

Now, I’m NOT gonna stop brushing my teeth, drinking water, and bathe just to keep my pineal gland from hardening.  First of all, that just seems like a tedious way to deal with the situation, and I do my best to go with the flow, be like water, you know, just find the simple solution and go with that.

Well, in the spirit of (being rather lazy and wanting to keep brushing my teeth, keep bathing, yada yada yada) being a Taobabe, I decided to add K2 to my diet every day.  The absolute BEST source for K2, as highly recommended by David Wilcock, is skate liver oil.  It is literally swimming in K2.  I take two skate liver oil caplets and two cod liver oil caplets a day.  At ten calories per capsule, that’s not too bad, and it’s simple enough.  Swallow the capsules with your lunch (or your dinner if you forget to do it at lunch).

It doesn’t matter, really, the minute shades of grey.  After decades of neglect, my pineal gland is probably a brick by now.  Still, we have to try what we can to get it to buzz again, and if, along the way, I reverse my genetically predisposition for osteoporosis, or if my arteries become less clogged and healthier, or even if I just get some stronger teeth, it’s all good.

It’s all good.  🙂

…

* http://www.westonaprice.org/fat-soluble-activators/x-factor-is-vitamin-k2#article

**  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15320745