Vitamin K Resources

This post is a collection of links to articles and resources that I have authored on the subject of vitamin K and I have now updated it to reflect the publication of the second edition of my book – which I am delighted to tell you is now officially a bestseller – Vitamin K and the Newborn – and my most recent blog posts on this topic.

My early Vitamin K articles

The first article that I wrote about vitamin K was published in 2001. The title reflected the ideological and practical question that most interested me at the time; that of whether nature had really ‘got it wrong’. This article generated some really interesting discussion with a lovely paediatrician named Edmund Hey, who is sadly no longer with us. I have discussed some of his work in my book, Vitamin K and the Newborn.

Here’s the first article I ever wrote: Vitamin K: a flaw in the blueprint? And another early piece that I wrote was Deconstructing Prophylaxis.

What is Vitamin K? Why is it offered to all newborn babies? Does my baby need it? This book guides the reader on a journey through the information, debate and research on this topic.

More recent articles

But time and ongoing learning change things, and some of what is my earlier articles and the 2003 booklet has now been superseded and corrected by more recent research findings.

I continue to be interested in the ideological questions that we were raising at that time, especially as vitamin K really does seem to be the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Several thousand babies need to be given vitamin K in order to prevent each case of vitamin K deficiency bleeding (or VKDB; a disorder formerly known as haemorrhagic disease of the newborn). Unfortunately, there is little research interest (as is so often the case) in questions such as (1) how we might be able to pick out the babies who are truly at risk rather than giving it as universal prophylaxis and (2) whether and why it might benefit babies to have a relatively low level of vitamin K compared to adults.

Below, you’ll find several blog posts which contain useful information.