A Natural Defense Against Respiratory Disease

By Jamie Bussin and Joel Thuna

Not too long ago we were all obsessed with our lung health because of a little thing called Covid-19. And then, because I think we all got fatigued discussing it, we moved on from focusing on our lungs. But Covid didn’t disappear and with increasing temperatures and climate change creating more air pollution and sparking forest fires that release particulates into the atmosphere, perhaps we should still educate ourselves about what we can do. 

I spoke with Master Herbalist Joel Thuna on Episode #165 of The Tonic Talk Show/Podcast about a readily available supplement that could help with your lung health, vitamin K2 MK-7. This is a digest of that conversation. 

What Do Your Lungs Do? Every cell in your body needs oxygen in order to live. The air we breathe contains oxygen and other gases. When you breathe in, your lungs expand to take in and process the air. Once in the lungs, oxygen is moved into the bloodstream and carried through your body. In every cell in your body, oxygen is exchanged for a waste gas called carbon dioxide. Your blood carries carbon dioxide to your lungs. When you breathe out, your lungs contract and push carbon dioxide out.

It is natural for your lungs’ abilities to decline gradually as you age. This can make breathing slightly more difficult as you get older. Beyond this natural decline, there are several ways your lungs can get damaged. The most common damage occurs from smoking, vaping and second hand smoke. 

Smoke damages your airways and the small air sacs (alveoli) that expand and contract in your lungs.  This leads to lung diseases including COPD, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. In both of these conditions airflow is reduced due to inflammation, scarring and breakdown of both lung tissue and the small airways in the lungs. The same damage that smoke causes can also be as a result of long-term exposure to lung irritants (chemicals, fires) and chronic bacterial infections. 

Pneumonia is an infection that inflames lung alveoli. The air sacs can fill with fluid or pus, reducing the ability to take in oxygen. This causes cough with phlegm or pus, fever, chills and difficulty breathing. Pneumonia can be caused by a variety of organisms, including bacteria, viruses and fungi.

COVID-19 is insidious in how it affects your lungs. It attacks them on multiple fronts. It can cause pneumonia causing the lungs to become filled with fluid and inflamed, leading to breathing difficulties. While most people recover from pneumonia without any lasting lung damage, the pneumonia associated with COVID-19 may be severe. Even after the disease has passed, lung injury may result in breathing difficulties that might last.

If the pneumonia does not resolve, but actually worsens, more alveoli become filled with fluid leaking from blood vessels in the lungs. Eventually, severe shortness of breath sets in and leads to acute respiratory distress, a form of lung failure. These are the patients who are unable to breathe on their own and require ventilators to survive. People who survive respiratory distress and recover from COVID-19 may have lasting damage and scarring in their lungs.

In order for your lungs to work properly they need to be soft, supple and elastic. With these properties they can expand and contract, fully enabling them to receive and push air (and with it oxygen and carbon dioxide) so that we can breathe. There is one special protein that enables tissue (lungs, arteries, skin and connective tissue) to remain soft, supple and elastic. This protein is not collagen. It is roughly 1000 times more flexible than collagen. It’s called elastin. 

It is no coincidence that elastin sounds very much like elastic. Think of elastin fibres as elastics. They stretch and contract enabling tissues that contain them to expand, contract and return to shape time and again. Much like many other bodily structures, your elastin peaks when you are young and slowly degrades as you get older. This is one reason why skin sags more with age. 

Elastin has one rather glaring flaw. It really likes calcium. Elastin will pull calcium from wherever it can get it (surrounding tissue). Unfortunately, calcium binds to elastin, reducing its elasticity. This is called elastin degradation. If enough calcium is present, the elastin becomes degraded and can no longer stretch and in effect becomes useless. This results in stiffening and hardening of the lungs, reducing their ability to expand and contract, reducing your ability to breathe.

This elastin degradation combined with scarring, is the net effect of lung diseases. The two processes of damage combine to slowly decrease lung capacity and destroy lung tissues. 

Vitamin K2 MK-7 plays a vital role in calcium metabolism in our bodies. It activates Matrix GLA Protein, the protein responsible for removing calcium from our arteries. K2 MK-7 also activates Osteocalcin, the protein responsible for putting calcium into bones and teeth. Together these proteins take calcium away from where we don’t want it and put it where we do. 

Luckily for us, Vitamin K2 MK-7 also removes calcium from your lungs to deposit into your bones and teeth. By removing the calcium from surrounding tissue, it leaves it unavailable for elastin. This has the net effect of preserving elastin, enabling your lungs to remain soft, supple and elastic. 

Primarily because of this property, researchers have found that supplementing with Vitamin K2 MK-7 reduces your risk of multiple lung diseases including COPD and emphysema by a staggering 39%.

Supplementing with Vitamin K2 will not prevent COVID-19 infection. However it can help to weather the storm if you’re infected. COVID-19 causes blood clotting and degradation of elastic fibres in the lungs. Vitamin K2 MK-7 reduces degradation of elastin, preserving lung health. Vitamin K2 also activates proteins c, s and z, which together regulate clotting and coagulation. 

In multiple studies, researchers looked at patients who have contracted COVID-19 and found “a link between vitamin K2 MK-7 deficiency and the worst coronavirus outcomes”. Essentially the patients with lower daily intakes of K2 MK-7 were more likely to have serious (bad) outcomes from the virus. They found that when fighting COVID, the body rapidly used up K2 MK-7 stores, so having larger stores could help.