How to Combine Vitamin K with D3
Vitamins D and K are essential for healthy bones, helping your body absorb and safely distribute calcium, though deficiencies, deficits and imbalances can seriously affect your health. To help you get the most from these vitamins, here are several tips on how best to combine vitamin K with D3 as part of a healthy lifestyle:
Get Vitamins From Your Diet
Because vitamins D and K are present in a wide variety of natural foods, it’s possible to get your Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) from diet alone. Furthermore, eating a balanced diet means that you don’t have to worry about drug interactions and you’ll get a wide variety of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that you won’t find in vitamin supplements, making it healthier overall.
However, because natural sources of vitamin D (such as sunshine and oily fish) are often lacking in the Western diet, it’s worth asking your doctor if supplements are right for you.
Be Careful Not To Take Too Much
Taking a combination of vitamin K with D3 causes your body to absorb more calcium from external sources and better retain it, potentially raising your blood calcium to unsafe levels. Excessive blood calcium (hypercalcemia) is linked to muscle pain, high blood pressure and kidney stones, so you might be causing more harm than good if you take high-strength vitamin D and K supplements together.
Vitamins D and K Help to Build Bone
As we’ve already explained, these vitamins help to absorb and retain more calcium in your bones and teeth, making a combination of vitamin D and K excellent for building bone strength. But most people don’t need to build up their bones (with some exceptions), so taking vitamin D and K together may just be raising your calcium levels unnecessarily, increasing your risk of hypercalcemia.
You (Probably) Have Enough Vitamin K
Because a lot of foods contain enough vitamin K to meet your RDI, vitamin K deficiencies are extremely rare in adults, and you (probably) don’t need to take vitamin K with D3 supplements. Unless you have a vitamin K deficiency, then it isn’t necessary to take vitamin D and K together. Additionally, the main symptom of a vitamin K deficiency is excessive bleeding, which makes it easy to diagnose and highly unlikely that you are deficient and unaware.
Conclusion
Many details about the relationship between vitamin D and K are still unknown, but it’s clear that vitamin K can benefit your heart and bones. However, there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that vitamin D supplements are harmful when you’re low in vitamin K, so our stance is that you do NOT need to take vitamin K with D3.
Nevertheless, you should try to get plenty of vitamins and minerals from a balanced diet, as this eliminates the risk of drug interactions and overdoses. If you’re still unsure of whether vitamin D and/or K supplements are right for you, we recommend consulting your doctor, as supplementing doesn’t offer many benefits for people with healthy levels of these vitamins.