Vitamin E: Health Fact Sheet by

What is Vitamin E, why do you need Vitamin E, Food sources of Vitamin E

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As natural health supplements Vitamin E needs more fanfare, and in this writer’s opinion it has been bumped from the limelight by other supplements that have vied for the public’s attention.

As a vitamin it is vital to many body processes and its reputation as the “youth” or “longevity” vitamin is well deserved. Every cell in the body needs it and every body system can do with a dose of it.

Researchers in the 1920’s discovered rats could not breed without it and thus they dubbed it the “fertility” vitamin. It even earned it the technical name of tocopherol, which is derived from the Greek word tokos meaning “offspring,” and phero meaning “to bear.”

Vitamin E is divided into two divisions – tocopherols and tocotrienols. In each of these divisions there are alpha, beta, delta and gamma versions. The mostly widely used version and the mostly commonly found in nature is alpha-tocopherol. This will be the focus of this article.

What is Vitamin E?

Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin derived from food and found in the lipid layer of the walls of all your cells. Being fat soluble means that it prefers to store itself where ever there is fat tissue, and can be absorbed into your cells with great ease. Levels of Vitamin E are concentrated in the heart, muscles, adrenals, uterus, testes and pituitary tissues.

Why does my body need Vitamin E?

In a nutshell Vitamin E protects body tissues and the walls of your cells by helping to remove what is essentially waste or biochemical debris left over after cellular metabolism. Technically Vitamin E is an antioxidant acting to remove free radicals. Free Radicals are known for the damage they do to the body and are often referenced as causing premature aging or playing a part in the disease process.

Is Vitamin E an Antioxidant?

Vitamin E acts as an antioxidant. It helps to stop fats being damaged in the body. A person who has gone through excessive amounts of stress, either physical or mental may end up looking haggard.  The stress created free radicals damage the fatty lipid cell wells making the person’s appearance look worn out. Think of an antioxidant as a hired cleaner to clean up the mess after a day’s hard work in the factory of your cell.

Inside the cell are smaller structures and one of them is called the mitochrondria. All the energy you use for day to day activities is produced in these structures and vitamin E helps to keep these running. Vitamin E helps protect them and without that protection your body’s energy production would become sluggish. Imagine never cleaning your kitchen. There would be a point where trying to make a meal would become arduous. That’s essentially what would happen in your cells without vitamin E.

While this is the essential mechanism of vitamin E, its broad spectrum of action means it plays an important role all over the body.

Vitamin E Supporting the Cardiovascular System

Vitamin E protects red blood cells and helps reduce the stickiness of platelets (cell fragments in your blood needed for healthy clotting). If platelets become too sticky then they can accumulate in various nooks and crannies and can play a part in unhealthy clots, plaques and artery hardening.

Red blood cells need fully intact cell membranes to perform at optimum levels. If their walls are damaged then oxygen and nutrients being transported around the body can become sluggish. Sluggish blood, just like sluggish traffic in a city, means sluggish transport. This can result in low energy.

Artery walls take a daily beating. It’s not surprising given that blood travels somewhere between 12,000 to 40,000 miles around the body per day depending on levels of exertion. Vitamin E helps protect the walls of the artery, giving it a vital role in cardiovascular disease. And guess what the artery walls are made of? Millions and millions of cell membranes “glued” together.

Some people use vitamin E for treating and preventing diseases of the heart and blood vessels including hardening of the arteries, heart attack, chest pain, leg pain due to blocked arteries, and high blood pressure.

Vitamin E and your Vision

Vitamin E will support eye health and support healthy vision. It concentrates in the lens of the eyes acting, once again, as an antioxidant, and will protect the back of the eye (retina) from degeneration. Vitamin E has a use in cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration.

Vitamin E and Reproductive Health

• Vitamin E is needed for sperm production and is involved in resolving procreation issues. Again it helps protect the cells that make sperm – antioxidant action.
• Vitamin E supports the female reproductive system during menopause, menstruation, PMS, and is pivotal in maintaining the health of the uterine lining.
• The uterus is lined with reproductive tissue that is hormone sensitive, which increases the chances of the tissues being damaged depending on the quality of the hormones the body makes. As the uterus is made up of millions of cells that grow and thicken each month in expectation of pregnancy, it is highly susceptible to oxidant damage. In both of these cases Vitamin E will provide its antioxidant protecting action, and provide support during abnormal menstrual symptoms.
• Women can use vitamin E for preventing premenstrual syndrome (PMS), painful periods, menopausal syndrome, hot flushes, tender breasts, breast cancer, and breast cysts.

Vitamin E and Skin Health

Probably the best known use of Vitamin E is for healing skin and skin health in general. The list for skin research references goes on for two pages. Anything to do with skin where a scar may be left over, as in acne, cuts, ulcers, burns, chicken pox, etc – think of Vitamin E both topically and internally. Wrinkles and wounds all benefit from Vitamin E.

However be aware that you will need to exceed the RDA. When Vitamin E is ingested it does not concentrate in one tissue or body part, even if another body part needs it in a higher dose. Skin also seems to be the last place it heads for. This fact is not based on research but commonly held naturopathic knowledge.

Vitamind E and Respiratory Health

All day long your lungs breathe in and out microscopic air particles that threaten to damage the cells and the tissue lining your lungs. Fumes, paint, pollution, air conditioning, infection, others germs, smoke, etc all require immune cells in your lungs to remove offending particles before they can damage the lungs. In some cases they are overwhelmed and this is where Vitamin E can help repel the damaging particles by rendering them harmless through its antioxidant action.

The Importance of Other Nutrients

When a molecule of vitamin E performs its job as an antioxidant it literally gives away a part of itself to help keep cell walls and body tissues stable. Having done its biological job, the vitamin E is rendered useless to the body. However, if there is vitamin C or glutamine present they rejuvenate the vitamin E back into action.

A diet high in vitamin E but lacking in other nutrients (vitamin C, glutamine, alpha lipoic acid, cysteine) is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. The other nutrients help plug the vitamin E leak when they are present.

Food Sources of Vitamin E

The following foods are rich in vitamin E:

• avocados, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, spinach, watercress, brussel sprouts
• green leafy vegetables
• blackberries, mangoes
• corn oil, olive oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil
• mackerel, salmon
• nuts, wholemeal and wholegrain products
• Wheat germ

Daily Intake of Vitamin E

Vitamin E deficiency is rare in the west and is only seen in famine or health conditions where people cannot absorb fats and oils, and thus fat soluble vitamins. The table below is from the Linus Pauling Institute of how much Vitamin E is needed each day.

RDA is set on the amount needed while healthy and disease free. It is not based on how much Vitamin E might be needed to support the body during menstrual difficulties and other health issues that could benefit from vitamin E.

The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for Alpha-Tocopherol
Life Stage	Age	Males; mg/day (IU/day)	Females; mg/day (IU/day)
Infants (AI)	0-6 months	4 mg (6 IU)	4 mg (6 IU)
Infants (AI)	7-12 months	5 mg (7.5 IU)	5 mg (7.5 IU)
Children	1-3 years	6 mg (9 IU)	6 mg (9 IU)
Children	4-8 years	7 mg (10.5 IU)	7 mg (10.5 IU)
Children	9-13 years	11 mg (16.5 IU)	11 mg (16.5 IU)
Adolescents	14-18 years	15 mg (22.5 IU)	15 mg (22.5 IU)
Adults	19 years and older	15 mg (22.5 IU)	15 mg (22.5 IU)
Pregnancy	all ages	-	15 mg (22.5 IU)
Breast-feeding	all ages	-	19 mg (28.5 IU)

 

Vitamin E Toxicity

If used based on the chart above there is little to no chance of toxicity. The upper daily limit for adults is set at about 1000iu. Even at this dose for a prolonged period of time there is conflicting data and in some cases little data about toxicity.

Part of the reason for this could be the fact that no particular organ stores Vitamin E. Toxicity of any nutrient normally occurs when too much of it accumulates. Vitamin E’s action last up to about 48 hours.

Conclusion

Vitamin E is a much needed nutrient by the body. Most people have adequate levels from their diet, however there are situations where the body may require more Vitamin E than the diet can provide. In these situations supplementing with Vitamin E is recommended.