This powerhouse nutrient helps prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease, fights free radicals and damage to cells, repairs tissue, reduces blood pressure, slows aging, treats symptoms of PMS, and may increase sperm production. On a more prosaic level, this wunderkind even makes skin and hair healthier and eases leg cramps.

Actually eight different molecules, vitamin E falls into two main categories: tocopherols and tocotrienols, with alpha, beta, delta, and gamma forms of each. Until recently, the “d-alpha-tocopherol” form got most of the good press and is cited as the most potent form of this powerful antioxidant. (The equivalent synthetic form, dl-alpha-tocopherol, is less potent, so read vitamin labels carefully and avoid products that list “dl”.) However, the other Es are also beginning to step up to the microscope, so to speak.

The Latest E-Search

Current research on vitamin E follows a number of different avenues. An update on prostate cancer—the most common form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among American men—reveals that vitamin E, as well as lycopene and selenium, shows great promise in chemoprevention. Further trials, including the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT), will attempt to “clarify the roles of these agents in prostate cancer prevention.” This ongoing, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study includes 32,400 men from across the U.S.

According to a 2006 study released by the National Cancer Institute, in separate trials following 29,361 men over a period of up to eight years, smokers who supplemented with vitamin E showed a decreased risk of prostate cancer.

Vitamin E’s antioxidant status may also be significant in studies related to Alzheimer’s disease. Oxidative stress could be a contributing factor in Alzheimer’s. According to the Rotterdam Study (which followed 5,395 participants in the Netherlands over a period of six years), high intake of vitamins E and C was associated with a lower risk of developing the disease.

The role of vitamin E in heart disease has been examined for a number of years. “Vitamin E may help prevent or delay coronary heart disease by limiting the oxidation of LDL cholesterol,” notes the National Institutes of Health (NIH). (LDL is the “bad,” or harmful variety of cholesterol.) However, results from the Women’s Health Study, conducted between 1992 and 2004 with 39,876 participants, were less than promising in some aspects. The primary goal was to examine the effects of vitamin E on overall cardiovascular disease, including stroke, heart attack, and cardiovascular death. Here, there were no significantly positive results. However, “there was a significant 24 percent reduction in cardiovascular deaths among all women taking the vitamin,” say study investigators, noting, “These intriguing findings deserve further study.” Additionally, there was a decrease in major cardiovascular events among women 65 and older.

Meanwhile, a recent animal study in Hanover, Germany, investigated the effects of vitamin E on heart transplantation, with the conclusion that it may help relieve the stress of cardiac surgery. And let’s not forget the liver. Antioxidant treatment that combined a “cocktail” of SAMe (S-adenosylmethionine) with vitamins E and C greatly protected the liver from tissue injury induced by thioacetamide (a potent hepatocarcinogen) in animal studies.

Tocotrienols: The Other “E”

A recent article about vitamin E in Life Science notes the overwhelming emphasis on tocopherol study and the neglected status of tocotrienols, and then calls upon researchers to remedy the situation. “Tocotrienols possess powerful neuroprotective, anticancer, and cholesterol-lowering properties that are often not exhibited by tocopherols,” the authors note. Going one step further, they state, “An expanding body of evidence supports that members of the vitamin E family are functionally unique. In recognition of this fact, title claims in manuscripts should be limited to the specific form of vitamin E studied.”

Antiaging guru Nicholas Perricone, MD, supports neglected vitamin E tocotrienols, calling them “the new ‘super’ form, which is proving significantly stronger [than tocopherols] as an antioxidant.” Intrigued by research on heart disease and other forms of vitamin E done in the late ‘80s, Dr. Perricone began to study the effects of tocotrienols on the skin and found that “under laboratory conditions tocotrienols are 40 to 60 times more effective in preventing free radical damage than the traditional tocopherols.”

Let the research continue. And the grade: “E” for excellent.

It’s Easy to Be Vitamin E Deficient

• All vitamin E is somewhat unstable and readily used up when in contact with polyunsaturated or rancid fats and oils.
• The processing and milling of food, bleaching of flours, and even ordinary cooking remove most of the vitamin E content from whole foods.
• Fried foods contain oxidized fat byproducts, thereby increasing our requirement for vitamin E to counteract this oxidation whenever we eat these foods—which, by the way, are usually devoid of any vitamin E to begin with!
• Chlorine, a component of tap water, reduces the absorption of vitamin E, adding to deficiency.
• Synthetic estrogen, one of the most widely prescribed drugs in this country, also depletes vitamin E, increasing the body’s demand for this nutrient.
• Since vitamin E enhances the use of estrogen stores in adrenal and fat tissues, its deficiency in our food supply explains, in part, why so many women are placed on estrogen therapy. The estrogen may be present, but not released without the crucial vitamin E. Since estrogen depletes vitamin E, a vicious cycle is started when women take the widely prescribed synthetic estrogens.