I have a real problem with the Coumadin Cookbook. It gives recipes that completely avoid Vitamin K. This was written in the days when ANY Vitamin K was to be avoided.
Since then, people have gotten more enlightened about Vitamin K. It's okay to take it - just be consistent with it and adjust your warfarin dosage to compensate for its effects. Occasionally binging on Vitamin K WILL lower your INR, but having a low INR for a few days won't put you at risk of stroke -- it takes longer than that for a clot to form.
Also - there are two Vitamin Ks. K1 is the one that disrupts the clotting process. K2 (without a trace of K1) doesn't. The body needs both. A K2 supplement should have no effect on your INR -- I've tried it, and haven't, personally, seen any changes to my INR.
I agree with you that you need K1. I have said elsewhere that the main percieved long term side effects of Warfarin are actually side effects of Vitamin K1 deficiency. The Coumadin Cookbook gives a long list of Vitamin K1 values for foods in an appendix. Since I have a target consumption of 300 mg per day, the list is invaluable to me. I supplement it with data from the US Department of Agriculture data base. I then look at my spreadsheet, see how much K1 I have consumed and take vitamin K1 pills to make up the difference to the nearest 12.5 mg (That is as small as I can split them) My spreadsheet includes K1, K2 values in one area and Carbohydrates, Fats and Protein in grams for each food I consume in another area. I need both sets of data for two different medical reasons. The Coumadin Cookbook recipes are useful for adding food without any K to the foods with known amounts of K1. Usually, I just consume singe food items and am too tired to cook fancy recipes.
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Unlike you, I did get a reaction to K2. It dropped my INR significantly. As a result, I am VERY slowly reintroducing very small amounts of K2 in pill form. I have noticed that K2 is present in highly variable amounts depending on how much it is grass fed. My INR tends to shift in the Fall and Spring as the season goes on. I blame this on the variable K1 and K2 in the green grass in the grass fed products as the seasons march on. My goal with my meter is to slowly adjust to the changes as you suggested elsewhere.
You mentioned "The body needs both" for K1 and K2. It does indeed! Our daughter purchased a copy of "Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox: How a little known vitamin could save your life" From Amazon's writeup - "Dr Kate Rheaume-Bleue is a licensed Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine" So my natural skepticism shot up and I checked her references on the National Institute of Health, PubMed, site.
Recall, "Trust But Verify". My (now retired) endocronologist said that the most dangerous publication in the United States is the New England Journal of Medicine. Every important newspaper, evening news show and magazine in the country headlines their breaking medical research articles. None even notice their many retractions.
The references about Vitamin K2 check out as do the correlations between osteoporosis and atherosclerosis. To oversimplify, K2 drives a natural body system that moves calcium from where it should not be to where it should be. Vitamin D and other minerals also play a role. The body is really a well orchestrated system. There are no single silver bullets to fix the systems but lots of places where a missing ingredient can cause the system to fall apart.
I got my Coag-Sense from Wilburn Medical. They required a prescription but no insurance. I paid more then the eBay price but it was new and came in a bundle with a one year supply of lancets, transfer tubes and test strips. They shipped it to my house. I am still learning to use it. One of their staff said that they cannot sell the CoagUChek except to doctors and medical organizations for rental and that this is a requirement from Roche and not from them. He also indicated that this was why the Coag-Sense was so popular with their customers. They provided good service on their two sales to me. Since I have not needed any warranty service, I cannot speak to that. It works perfectly.
I have a very good laboratory and use the same two phlebotomists. 3 of my Lab readings have had corresponding Coag-Sense readings within 0.2 INR units of the Lab. The other two (The highest and the lowest) were within 0.4. On two occasions, I got the same reading on my Coag-Sense. On these occasions, I got the same (0.2 offset) readings from my lab. When I run the Lab and Coag-Sense through a regression analysis, the resulting Coag-Sense readings predict the Lab readings at less then 0.1 for 4 readings and 1.5 for the fifth (at the lowest reading). I feel like I have won the lottery. When you plot the predicted lab readings from the regression analysis over the actual lab readings you can hardly tell them apart ! - )
Thank you for posting your experience with the Coag-Sense. Mine is the second generation. I cannot say that I am a fan for the experience of using it but I am a super fan of the results. If you have a cooperative lab that will tell you whether and how they have calibrated their Laboratory equipment and what their reagent(s) is, go for it. The Coag-Sense has to be wonderfully calibrated and validated. Apparently, my labs manager had the lab equipment and reagent properly validated. So far, they will not talk with me. The Coag-Sense applications to the FDA indicate that their system is. Go Coag-Sense ! - )
Walk in His Peace,
Scribe With A Lancet
It comes back in range just by getting to the lake, relaxing for 2 weeks and eating a balanced diet.
