Very often, the effects of vitamins and vitamin deficiencies are spread over a period of time. If your body doesn’t get enough of a particular vitamin, it can take weeks, months, or even years of low levels before the effects are apparent. And when you start a vitamin regimen, it can take a significant amount of time for your body to start showing the effects of having sufficient levels.
Vitamin K, also known as potassium, is commonly associated with leg cramps. If a vitamin K deficiency is the cause of your leg cramps, adding the vitamin to your daily routine is likely to provide relief in a relatively short period of time.
One of the biggest (but least well known) reasons for vitamin K in the human body has to do with blood clotting. This vitamin allows the blood to clot so that it forms clots naturally. This makes it important for anyone taking blood-thinning medications to carefully monitor the amount of vitamin K they add to their body. If you are taking a blood-thinning medication, talk to your doctor before adding any vitamins to your daily routine or changing your diet, especially if those changes involve vitamin K supplements or vitamin K-rich foods.
One of the biggest myths about vitamin K is that bananas are high in vitamin K and can be used in place of vitamin K supplements. In fact, bananas are not a particularly good source of vitamin K. For example, half a cup of broccoli contains 200 times the amount of vitamin K as a banana. Green vegetables are among the highest in vitamin K content, with kale, turnip greens, broccoli and spinach topping the list. Cabbage, green beans, and parsley are also included in the list of foods rich in vitamin K.
While green foods are a good source of vitamin K, they are not the only source. You’ll also find that strawberries are a moderately high source of vitamin K, as are dill pickles.
Not all the vitamin K needed by the body is consumed. In fact, this is one of the few vitamins that the body actually helps make. Babies do not have much vitamin K present in their bodies when they are born, so a baby’s blood may not clot as it should. To combat this, many hospitals give babies an injection of vitamin K shortly after birth to start the body’s natural processing of this important vitamin.