Vitamin E Health Benefits

Along with vitamin C, vitamin E is one of the most popular supplements purchased at health food stores. It is also commonly used in beauty products, such as anti-aging face creams, as it is known to be very effective at helping the skin to heal itself and maintain a youthful looking appearance for longer.

Although vitamin E can be found in a variety of different foods, most people are not getting as much of it as they should. The main reason for this is that modern day food manufacturing processes strip away much of the natural vitamin E that our foods contain.

In addition, vitamin E tends to be found at the highest concentrations in fats such as unrefined oils, so if you are on a low fat diet, or don’t consume much fat, then you are unlikely to be getting adequate amounts.

Why Is Vitamin E Important?

Despite its name, vitamin E is not actually a single vitamin as it is made up of a group of different compounds known as tocopherols and tocotrienols as shown below:

•    alpha tocopherol
•    beta tocopherol
•    gamma tocopherol
•    delta tocopherol

•    alpha tocotrienol
•    beta tocotrienol
•    gamma tocotrienol
•    delta tocotrienol

It is important to be aware of these different compounds, especially when you are buying supplements, as it is thought that they all work synergistically together to produce the health benefits that vitamin E provides.

In order to understand these benefits however, it is first necessary to examine the biological effects that vitamin E has in the body.

Note: Supplements will usually contain a mixture of tocopherols or tocotrienols.

Antioxidant

One of vitamin E’s most beneficial roles within the human body, is in its ability to act as an antioxidant and protect against free radical damage. It is essential to understand this basic process, as the large majority of the health benefits that come from vitamin E come as a direct result of its antioxidant activity.

In general, there are two main sources of free radicals. The first source comes as a result of normal biological processes, such as the digestion of food. The second source, comes as a result of the external pollutants that you are exposed to in your environment. It is these external free radical sources that tend to be the most harmful.

Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of free radicals as they are produced as a natural byproduct of oxidation reactions. So as long as you are breathing oxygen, then you will always be exposed to some amount of free radicals. However, even if you could eliminate all free radicals, it would not be desirable to do so as they play many important roles within the body such as being used by the immune system to destroy invading pathogens.

So having free radicals in your body isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but once you start to get exposed to too many free radicals, then that’s when they start to get nasty. A good example of just how damaging free radicals can be is the example of iron that has been left to rust.

The reason the iron rusts is due to an oxidation reaction that occurs as a result of it being exposed to the oxygen in the air. The free radicals released as a result of this reaction, causes the oxidized iron to rust and literally start to decay and crumble apart.

A similar process occurs in the body, only this time it is not metal that is being oxidized, it is the cells of your body. Over time, continual oxidation reactions will slowly damage your body and cause you to age faster and possibly even develop a disease such as cancer.

The good news however, is that by ensuring that your diet contains a plentiful supply of antioxidants, you can help to prevent or slow down this damage from occurring, and by doing so, also slow down the rate at which you age and reduce your risk of developing disease.

So what about vitamin E?

As was already mentioned, vitamin E is an antioxidant, and there are two ways that all antioxidants can help to protect against free radical damage.

The first, is to prevent things from becoming oxidized. If you can stop something from being oxidized, then you will also stop all the free radicals that would have been produced as a result of that reaction. The second way antioxidants can protect against free radical damage, is by binding to free radicals and neutralizing them so that they cannot cause any damage.

Now, this is where things start to get really exciting when it comes to the health benefits that vitamin E can provide. Water soluble antioxidants, such as vitamin C, cannot be stored in the body or dissolved in fat.

As a result, much of their antioxidant activity is confined to neutralizing free radicals in non lipid, or non fat, regions of the body such as blood plasma and the liquid regions of cells (the cell cytosol). Fat soluble antioxidants on the other hand, such as vitamin E, can be stored in the body because they dissolve in fat.

Protecting Cell Membranes

Surrounding each one of your cells is a fatty layer known as the cell membrane. This membrane basically controls what comes into a cell, how that cell functions and also helps to protect the genetic material within that cell from damage.

Your cell membranes are therefore very important for keeping your body healthy, because once they become damaged, the genetic material within a cell can more easily be damaged which can then cause a cell to function abnormally or even die.

All cell membranes are subject to damage as a result of oxidative reactions, however, some cell membranes are more resistant to that damage than others. Cell membranes that are protected by vitamin E for example, are likely to remain healthier for longer than cells which are not protected by vitamin E. By combining fat and water soluble antioxidants together, you therefore give your cells the best protection against free radical induced damage.

At this point it is also worth noting that the fat you consume in your diet is eventually incorporated into your cell membranes. Some fats, such as saturated fats, are highly resistant to oxidation and so provide cells with good protection against free radicals.

Other types of fats, such as polyunsaturated fats, are very easily oxidized and so provide poor protection for cells. If your diet contains a lot of polyunsaturated fats, then taking vitamin E is even more important because it can help to slow down the rate at which your cells are damaged by maintaining the integrity of your cell membranes.

Heart Health

Vitamin E has long been touted as being beneficial for cardiovascular health, and one of the reasons for this may be due to its antioxidant activity. However, before we get into that, lets just set the scene so that you can see exactly where vitamin E could be of potential benefit.

The arteries of your cardiovascular system transport blood around the body. But when they become damaged, or start to degrade, the body tries to repair that damage with cholesterol.

Like most things in the body, cholesterol is subject to oxidation, and when it becomes oxidized, it also starts to become sticky. Over time this cholesterol can start to accumulate in your arteries and form a plaque, which is basically just a big deposit of cholesterol that sits on the inside of the arterial wall.

Arterial plaques can reduce the ability of blood to flow around the body (atherosclerosis), and sometimes can even block off the blood supply to regions of the body altogether. When this occurs, a person may suffer from a stroke or a heart attack. Both of which, have the potential to be fatal. As an antioxidant, vitamin E can help to prevent the oxidation of cholesterol, and by doing so, also help to reduce the buildup of arterial plaque which indirectly reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease.

In addition, vitamin E can also benefit heart health by thinning the blood and reducing the stickiness of platelets in the bloodstream, which subsequently, has the effect of improving blood circulation around the body.

Improved blood circulation has many benefits of its own, in particular, the brain benefits tremendously from improved blood circulation as it uses around 15-20% of the body’s oxygen supply which is what is transported in blood.

What Are The Health Benefits Of Vitamin E?

As has just been detailed in the previous sections of this article, the large majority of the health benefits that vitamin E provides the body with, come as a direct result of its ability to act as a fat soluble antioxidant. A summary of the main health benefits of vitamin E are listed below.

• Helps to promote a healthy heart and cardiovascular system.

• Improves blood circulation.

• Protects cell membranes against oxidation and free radical damage.

• Increases immune cell activity.

• Protects skin against damage from ultraviolet light, thus slowing down the rate at which fine lines and wrinkles appear.

• Improves cognitive function and brain health.

• May reduce incidence of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

• May reduce risk of prostate cancer and bladder cancer.

• Can help to prevent varicose veins.

• Can speed up healing of skin wounds.

• Can help to prevent the development of cataracts and macular degeneration.

• Reduces inflammation in the body.

• Useful for treating sun burn.

• Can be used as a treatment for psoriasis.

• Some find it useful for preventing scarring, although some studies suggest it makes scarring worse.

• Reduces the appearance of stretch marks.

• Prevents appearance of age spots.

• Improves the ability of the skin to retain moisture.

• Helps to regulate vitamin A levels.

• Can be used as a blood thinner.

• Helps to maintain a healthy nervous system.

• Can improve insulin sensitivity and lower risk of diabetes.

• Promotes respiratory health.

• Helps with normal premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms.

Vit-E Videos

How Much Do You Need?

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin E is 22 i.u, although many nutritionists recommend taking 200-400 i.u daily. This higher dose can only be achieved with supplements.

The RDA for children is 10.5 i.u and 28.5 i.u for breast feeding mothers.

Where Do You Get It?

Vitamin E can be found in fresh nuts, seeds and unrefined vegetable oils. As vitamin E is fat soluble, it is best absorbed when consumed with a fatty meal.

Cooking food and freezing food may degrade some of the natural vitamin E it contains, so it is best to eat foods fresh and raw whenever possible.

Who Needs Vitamin E Supplements?

Unless you are eating lots of nuts, seeds and using unrefined oils, it can be quite difficult to obtain adequate amounts of vitamin E from your diet as other types of foods tend to be poor sources of vitamin E, especially processed foods/oils.

Furthermore, pollution, contraceptive pills, low fat diets, cholesterol lowering drugs and eating trans-fatty acids can all interfere with your body’s vitamin E levels, and iron and copper can reduce the amount of vitamin E that your body absorbs.

So for most people, taking a 400 i.u mixed tocopherol supplement is a quick, easy and effective way of ensuring that their body is getting enough vitamin E. Such supplements are usually very inexpensive, which also makes them a cost effective way of getting vitamin E all year round.

However, when buying vitamin E supplements, it is preferable to go for the natural rather than the synthetic tocopherols. Natural tocopherols are labelled as d-alpha tocopherol with a “d” at the start. Synthetic tocopherols are labelled as dl-alpha tocopherol with “dl” at the start.

Most supplement manufacturers provide a mixture of tocopherols, although some manufacturers are now also offering mixed tocotrienol supplements as well.

Note: Vitamin E works synergistically with vitamin C and selenium.

Signs Of Deficiency

Some of the signs of a vitamin E deficiency are:

• Infertility
• Loss of libido
• Poor stamina
• Varicose veins
• Piles
• Thread veins
• Premature skin aging

Best Food Sources

Some of the best food sources for vitamin E are:

• Wheatgerm oil
• Hazelnuts
• Sunflower seeds
• Sweet potato
• Rapeseed oil
• Avocado
• Blackberries
• Tomato
• Apricot oil
• Liver