The Vitamin–Liver Cancer Link I Didn’t Expect

The typical talk in relation to vitamin K is its relationship to cardiovascular disease. But the reality is that there's a new Meta analysis of 11 mostly randomized controlled trials that caught me by surprise because it looks at what happens when people supplement with vitamin K and we test

cancer, specifically liver cancer. As usual, I not only went through the meta analysis, but I opened up as many individual randomized controlled trials as I could get my hands on.

That's eight additional studies. And as usual, the there's disagreement, especially in the biggest randomized control trial.

But have no fear, I have answers and clarity that shall shine through like a ray of sunshine through clouds in the heavens.

Okay, before I jump into the data, you may be wondering, like I was, exactly how vitamin K is proposed to offer this benefit.

I mean, it's a vitamin, okay, but what exactly is it doing? There's a bunch of proposed mechanisms, like, I'm talking like eight or more.

So we aren't going to go over all of them. Happy to cover that in future analyses for you. But some of the cooler ones are the initiation of cell cycle arrest.

So when your cells divide, same with cancer cells, they undergo cell division, the literal copying and appropriate division of components of the cell to form a new cell.

This whole process is driven by something called the cell cycle, meaning different signals that have to come together and report in.

Yes, ready to divide during the initial phase, called G1. It's this checklist that vitamin K is believed to inhibit because one protein called cyclin D1, which is critical for this checklist, is produced less, meaning that the cancer cell has less signaling telling it to divide.

A key feature of cancer. Another described mechanism is that vitamin K can force something called differentiation.

Now, one of the key issues with cancer is that they remain partially undifferentiated. That means that they do not have the identity like a muscle cell or a brain cell or a liver cell and so on.

So they are able to divide constantly because they're not programmed to stop dividing like many other cells.

But vitamin K essentially slaps them on the wrist and forces them to differentiate,

receive an identity, a job, stopping them from their hooligan ways of constantly dividing for no reason other than to cause havoc.

Damn teenagers. That's two in a broad sense. Like I said, much more to explore here. And if this video does well, I'm happy to delve into the nerdy details and discuss the various ways vitamin K is supposed to protect against cancer and combat cancer.

For now, let's just say that vitamin K makes it more difficult for Cancer cells to divide. Now, when we put 11 studies together, like the researchers of this meta analysis did, we get results like these.

I know it looks like a lot, but it's actually pretty easy to understand. There's three graphs because the researchers separated the data by how long people were liver cancer free over one year, two years or three years.

Now you can see the studies on the left side and the data extracted from each study in the middle. But importantly to you are the visual results on the right side.

So each box represents the comparison of vitamin K supplementation to the control group. So the non vitamin K, if the boxes move to the left, that means that there's reduced risk of developing liver cancer.

Even easier is to look at the overall results, all the studies combined shown on the black diamond in each graph.

And clearly by the black diamond, there's reduced risk of developing liver cancer if people supplemented with vitamin K.

One thing that annoys me about some meta analyses is the weaknesses in design though. For example, this analysis mixes randomized controlled trials with associative studies.

This can be an issue because randomized controlled trials are more rigorously controlled for influencing factors on the results.

And associative studies are, to put simply, not. Fortunately, the majority of the included studies were controlled trials.

So the influence of these less controlled studies is likely pretty small. There are still other gripes that I have, but that's the biggest one.

Still saving you from my complaints. We can say that this analysis indicates a reduced risk of liver cancer recurrence from vitamin K consumption.

Notice how I said recurrence, meaning people who already had liver cancer or had significant liver disease of some sort.

That's important, especially as I turn your attention to the biggest study, notice this one included in the analysis, the Yoshida study has a big square because it's a big study, which means it has a lot of weight, I mean a lot of influence.

Yet you'll notice that it sits firmly in the middle line, indicating in no uncertain terms that vitamin K does not have a benefit when consumed.

So why is that? Fortunately, this is one of the studies I could get my hands on. And sure enough, there's no doubt, as seen here, we're looking at disease free survival.

So the higher the lines remain, the better. You can see that the three lines tough to tease out, but it doesn't really matter because the black line, the non vitamin K supplemented, is not much different from both vitamin K supplemented groups, meaning that there's no benefit of vitamin K.

Confirming that big square in the meta analysis. This result is not isolated. In fact, several other studies show the same result.

No effect of vitamin K supplementation. There are a number of possibilities from the fact that some studies were shorter in duration and you're measuring a long acting disease like cancer to the people tested, considering that most studies were quite small.

But the most consistent explanation that I've found is the outcome itself. Remember the word recurrence?

That means that people had cancer treated or surgically removed the liver cancer and then were placed on vitamin K as a preventative.

However, if we look at other outcomes, like people who still have liver cancer, which was not included in the meta analysis as it focused on recovery from cancer, there are some encouraging results here.

The participants were given the cancer treatment, which is the blue line or the cancer treatment plus vitamin K the green line.

We're measuring the progression of already existent liver cancer. The lower the lines go, the worse. Clearly the vitamin K had a noticeable effect and again this is confirmed in other studies.

So based on this dividing feature, the outcome, we could tentatively say that vitamin K used as a preventative for future liver cancer after liver cancer treatment has mixed evidence and a lot of uncertainty.

However, when a person currently has liver cancer and is treating that liver cancer with medicine plus vitamin K, there's better evidence that vitamin K is effective.

This leaves us with two outstanding questions though. One, you may be watching this thinking, well dude, I don't have or nor have I ever had liver cancer, so would it be effective for me?

And two, bro, quit playing with me. What's the dose? What's the type of vitamin K? Tell it to me straight.

All right, all right, we'll discuss those next and quickly. But if you're interested in learning how vitamin K may be more effective for some people based on particular features, or how vitamin K affects something called DCP which is related to liver cancer, or the impact of vitamin K on overall mortality risk, then check out my full analysis.

It's included as a physionic insider. What do we have for them, Janine? That's right, a library of 100 plus ad free videos, accompanying articles, one paragraph summaries for every single video, live sessions with me.

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A private podcast access and more. Well, Janine, sounds like the physionic insiders is the place to be to join.

Where do they need to go? Ah yes, of course. Well you heard it there folks. The description box of the video naturally.

Thank you Janine. There's a single study that's been done in people without liver cancer and when measuring how likely it is to develop initial liver cancer.

The higher the lines go, the worse as more people develop liver cancer over several years. Clearly, the vitamin K supplementing group had lower risk.

I should point out though, this was a small study only including women and was limited to women with liver disease like cirrhosis.

So while not liver cancer, they weren't in great shape to start. So the results may be different when testing people with healthier livers over time and looking at spontaneous cancer.

So we should frame this as we have early human evidence that vitamin K may be protective against developing initial liver cancer.

Across every study, the most common form of vitamin k was vitamin K2. The doses ranged from the bottom end of 30mg up to 90mg total daily consumption.

Usually vitamin K was consumed two or three times throughout the day and in capsule form. Also keep in mind that these studies are small, so the ability to really assess safety is always dampened.

And there can be some interactions between vitamin K and certain medications. So don't jump in without a good think and maybe, I don't know, a discussion with your physician.

And talking about vitamin K, I have more on its effects right here. Or if you prefer more on ways of reducing cancer risk, then check this out right here.

Year. As always, I deeply appreciate you swinging by. I hope to get to speak to your stone solid, unsmiling face again in the next video.

What was that, a smile I saw? No, must have been a flicker of the light. I'll catch you in the next one.

Bye.