Vitamin K has since more than 25 years been known to serve as a powerful nutrient factor in the preservation of homeostatic bone turnover, along with blood clotting biochemistry. Hence, vitamin K2 should be considered and consequently classified as a hormone. A large bulk of evidence published over the past 10 years establishes vitamin K2 in this category of substances. It has been stated that a true hormone is a product of living cells, which circulates in body fluids (such as blood) and elicits a specific and often stimulatory effect on the activity of cells situated remotely from its point of origin.

Hence, vitamin K2 may be closely involved in or serving as a traditional molecular ‘link’ between hormonal receptors and intracellular signalling pathways.

Among these genes are important biological markers of cellular characteristics or features (also known as cell phenotypes), as well as a set of molecules known to be involved in both hormone-induced, G-protein-mediated cell signalling, either directly or indirectly activating so-called sirtuins and/or histone deacetylaces (HDACs), known as determinants of cell types and their specific functions in a given tissue. Vitamin K2 binds to the intranuclear receptor SXR and results in the activation of a plethora of genes, both directly and indirectly.

Vitamin c cell turnover