The ECS, K-2 Deficiency, Osteoporosis, & Root Causes of Disease

The ECS, K-2 Deficiency, Osteoporosis, & Root Causes of Disease

You may have heard me mention Complementary and Alternative Medicine or CAM therapies and if not, this will be a great read for you…

Complementary and Alternative medicine is one of the ways that I truly believe that we can use to improve our healthcare system today. CAM therapies use conventional and alternative medicine together to do what is best for a patient and improve patient outcomes and quality of life.

 If you listen to our stories that I share on Instagram, you heard me mention the pros and cons of conventional medicine. One of the big pluses is how amazing acute care is. In fact, it’s almost hard to imagine that there could be room for improvement because it is that great (emergency medicine rocks!). Our emergency medicine team (trauma and ER docs, neurosurgeons, etc.) is the absolute top of the line, but if we are to improve our healthcare system that we all know and love, it starts with discussing how we face chronic disease. This is where the problem lies.

How we treat chronic disease here in America desperately needs improvement. When we are dealing with something like high blood pressure (hypertension), high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia), or type II diabetes, it’s important to note that medication doesn’t actually help us get better. In fact, most of the time, if not all the time, we actually get worse as the years go by. This is because medication isn’t designed to address the root causes of our diseases. They are meant to mask a symptom and if you ever stop taking that medication you will quickly find out that the problem is still there. 

I have said it before and I will say it again, this is a business model acting as our healthcare system. Be wary, this is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing. Don’t get me wrong, there are great docs out there that help to get patients off their medications, but for the most part, this isn’t the case. The pill approach to healthcare is faulty because we are chasing a symptom while the root cause of our problem (why we got here in the first place) is still running rampant, causing us to never really get “better”. If we ever want to focus on really improving our state of health, we should always look at addressing the root cause of disease. Any other approach to address chronic diseases other than focusing on the root cause isn’t really benefiting us in the long run. 

The problem with long term dependence on medications puts extra strain on our healthy cells and organ systems (liver, kidneys, gut, etc.) and over time, these medications eventually cause more side effects, including organ failure (1). The truth is they interrupt different physiological processes that are necessary for our body to function. Whether we are destroying the gut lining (mucosal membrane lining our GI tract), altering our gut microbiome, or inhibiting nutrient absorption, this can have a negative impact as time goes on. We are digging our grave early taking multiple medications at once and there is just no way to really sugar coat that. This is no secret (or it shouldn’t be anyway) that medications are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US (2). Globally we are in one of the worst states of health here in the U.S. although we consume more pharmaceuticals than anywhere else in the world (2). Shouldn’t that mean that we would be in the best state of health if we take the most medications? That’s what they want you to believe, but that is far from the truth.

If we ever want to improve the lives of patients, we will shift our focus from chasing a symptom to understanding the underlying causes of a disease's process. When we address root causes, we change lives forever. Check this out.  

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) often goes hand in hand with dental caries (cavities) and osteoporosis (weak, spongy, & brittle bones), but why is this? It all comes down to calcium. Calcium can “leak” from our bones and teeth and goes places that it shouldn’t (cardiovascular system, ie. arteries & veins, heart, etc.) and this can take place if we are not absorbing and utilizing a special vitamin called vitamin K-2. 

So, if you are deficient in calcium and you decide you will just supplement calcium, be weary. There are other nutrients that are needed for the utilization of calcium. More calcium isn’t always better and, in this case, a calcium supplement could be far worse. Studies show that if you are taking more than 1 gram of calcium supplement daily to battle bone degeneration, you are increasing your risk for CVD by 20% regardless of supplementing with vitamin D (helps activate and store calcium), but why? (This will all tie together shortly, bear with me lol).

One example that I was discussing is arteriosclerosis (calcium leaking from bones being deposited into our vascular system causing hardening of the arteries), plaque buildup, and high blood pressure (this happens if we take more than 1g of calcium supplements daily). We may have a medications to address arteriosclerosis, chigh cholesterol, and high blood pressure, but are we really helping? What about a nutrient test? Is your body breaking down, absorbing, and properly utilizing the nutrients we need? This is where addressing the root cause comes in. Studies show that vitamin K-2 (fat soluble vitamin) helps to drive calcium into our bones, preventing it from “leaking” from our bones which causes osteoporosis, dental caries, and even arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries from calcium being deposited into our vascular system, also leading to high blood pressure from the inability to regulate blood pressure through vasoconstriction and vasodilation). 

If we are dealing with arteriosclerosis, cavities, or plaque buildup, we need to make sure we have adequate levels of Vitamin K-2, as vitamin K-2 will make sure calcium stays where it needs to be and stays out of where we don’t need it to be (cardiovascular system in this case). Vitamin K-2 is what is needed to activate osteocalcin, which is what is needed to bind calcium together. If we are addressing bone degeneration, the first thing we need to do is to make sure a patient has adequate levels of K-2 so we can make sure calcium stays where it needs to be and studies show that just taking more calcium can cause us to end up on a worse state than what we began with.

I share this type of information because I want to highlight the importance of addressing the root cause of disease because this is how we get better and nutrient absorption and utilization is something that is overlooked by our medical community. We focus more on labs and blood work. Why? Again, because this is how we chase symptoms. This is how they keep you a customer, I mean patient forever. 

This is how we get off long term medication dependence and this is how we improve our quality of life by addressing the root cause of disease. I share this because I fell victim to conventional medicine where they just tried to put me on medications for low testosterone and the beginning stages of heart disease, which I was able to reverse on my own through extensive research and lifestyle modifications. Addressing the root cause is important because we want to get better, right?

In addition to vitamin K-2, I want to share about the endocannabinoid system (ECS) and the role it plays in bone regulation and growth. I have mentioned this before in previous blogs and at our ECS Club meetings in chiro school, but it is worth noting again because when we talk about osteoporosis and the root cause of disease, the ECS is the receptor system that we can use to address the root cause of osteoporosis. Say what?!?! I know, wild. Check this out.

Whether you have a vitamin K-2 deficiency or not enough calcium in your diet, your bone will become porous and spongy like due to density loss, causing patients to be very susceptible to fractures, which is deadly in the elderly when discussing falls. This is very common among women over 50 and a growing problem due to the lack of nutrients in our foods and depleted soils. In addition to K-2, I want to show you a way to bio hack your bone cells and increase bone density. 

Treatment for osteoporosis includes medications like bisphosphonates, receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand inhibitors, estrogen agonists/antagonists, parathyroid hormone analogues, calcitonin, vitamin D, weight bearing exercises, but the progression of bone degeneration still happens and this is still a growing problem, which means we need improvement (4). 

Like I mentioned previously, the ECS is the receptor system that maintains bone cell regulation so we can use this receptor system to communicate directly with our bone cells (osteocytes). When we are dealing with osteoporosis, we lose bone density, which means our bones cells are breaking down faster than we are building it. This net negative is not a good thing, and we need to address this dysregulation between our osteocytes. 

Two important osteocytes that play a role in build regulation are out osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Our osteoblasts build bone, and our osteoclasts break down bone and this dysregulation between the two is where the problem is. We need to reestablish homeostasis within these two bone cells, so we are building faster than we are breaking down. We need to restore homeostasis between these two and what better receptor system to use (ECS) than the one that maintains homeostasis within the body and directly communicates with these osteocytes (bone cells). 

Osteoblasts and osteoclasts have CB2 receptors for which CBD can attach to and we can directly “control” their activity. Being that the ECS is the receptor system that maintains homeostasis throughout the body, we can use this complex receptor system to reestablish a balance between our osteoblasts and osteoclasts, encouraging them to build up faster than we are breaking down (5). This will help reinforce bone density and strength, addressing osteoporosis at a cellular level, which is an absolute breakthrough in medicine.

By making sure we have adequate K-2 and calcium in our diet and utilizing the ECS system, we can help address the root cause of dysregulation within our osteocytes (bone cells) and encourage bone building and remodeling, making weak and brittle bones strong again. 

This is one way in which the ECS plays a role in the root cause of bone loss, and this is a powerful information that we can use to improve how we address bone degenerative diseases. 

What makes me most upset is that we have discovered that the ECS directly regulates bone growth since 2008 (5). Which means we have known how to directly communicate with our bone cells (which conventional medications are unable to do through medications) for about 16 years. I want to know how many people facing bone degenerative diseases like osteoporosis were told about the CBD and the ECS. Most likely not a single person in 16 years. That is a problem!

We don’t need to get rich off medications and accomplish nothing more than chasing a symptom. The only way to improve our state of health and improve how we face disease is by addressing the root cause of disease and the use of the ECS and importance of vitamin K-2 is just one example of this for bone health and the prevention of CVD. When we know better, we do better.

One amazing plant with seemingly endless potential, now that's what I call medicine!

Bee Well,

Brandon Farless

References

1. Hosack, T., Damry, D., & Biswas, S. (2023). Drug-induced liver injury: a comprehensive review. Therapeutic advances in gastroenterology, 16, 17562848231163410. https://doi.org/10.1177/17562848231163410

2. Gøtzsche P. C. (2014). Our prescription drugs kill us in large numbers. Polskie Archiwum Medycyny Wewnetrznej, 124(11), 628–634. https://doi.org/10.20452/pamw.2503

3. Myneni, V. D., & Mezey, E. (2017). Regulation of bone remodeling by vitamin K2. Oral diseases, 23(8), 1021–1028.https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.12624

4. Tu, K. N., Lie, J. D., Wan, C. K. V., Cameron, M., Austel, A. G., Nguyen, J. K., Van, K., & Hyun, D. (2018). Osteoporosis: A Review of Treatment Options. P & T : a peer-reviewed journal for formulary management, 43(2), 92–104.

5. Bab, I., & Zimmer, A. (2008). Cannabinoid receptors and the regulation of bone mass. British journal of pharmacology, 153(2), 182–188.https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bjp.0707593