Supplements are selling better then ever, in pharmacies, health food stores and online supplement websites too. Many of us, are consistently relying on supplements to support our health and body and spending big bucks monthly on some of the so called 'supplements'. The questions is, how much do you know about the quality, ingredients and effectiveness of these supplements? Do you know that some of these supplements may do more harm then good?
Today, I want to discuss about Vitamin E supplement. Yes, the ones which are widely sold and available in almost all pharmacies and health stores. As few have good knowledge about nutrition and how the body works, we tend to be influenced by commercials and so called health experts, and rely on paying for supplements hoping to slow down the decline of our health, or tackle some of our health symptoms along the way. But, how many of us, really know that the almost all of the Vitamin E products sold in the market are synthetic, partial and low quality?
Many clinical trials unfortunately use synthetic (man-made) vitamin E on participants, which do not confer healing benefits. Would you expect it to? They use a fraction of the whole molecule of vitamin E called “ALPHA” tocopherol, and for this reason their results are bad. Well of course!! What do you think happens to a human being when you cheat them out of 7 other parts of vitamin E? Think about it, seriously, take a moment to think. How far can you possibly get building that puzzle with one piece? I would say, not very.
What do you think happens to humans when you give them lab-created compounds that do not match what naturally occurs in nature? Vitamin E is awesome, and it’s just as awesome as vitamin A, vitamin D and other essential nutrients that your body requires for optimal health. Vitamin E is a fat-soluble nutrient so it feeds and nourishes fatty tissue, especially your heart, pancreas, liver and brain. Your brain loves E, especially if you’ve had a TBI (traumatic brain injury).
Vitamin E is like super fuel for your brain but if you take a low-quality form. Sadly, there’s a lot of junk out there. Unnecessary fillers, binders, colors, excipients, even the isomer of your E. Same with other nutrients such as ketones (from coconut or palm oil), choline, curcumin, and healthy fats. Now, check this out. Do you see “dl- alpha tocopherol” on your label? All synthetic forms of vitamin E are labeled with a dl- prefix. The synthetic form is generally 50% less bio-available to human body. Natural E has the d- prefix only (not dl) and is easily recognized by your cells.
Natural E, as it occurs in nature is part of a family of 8 compounds, alpha tocopherol is just one of them! So when you take conventional E supplements you are getting one-eighth of what you should be getting. Worse than taking one-eighth of pure vitamin E, when you take poor quality supplements of E, you are flooding your body with one isomer, and thus depleting the other 8 forms of E. Eventually, it will get tilted out of balance.
Now, let's talk a bit about tocotrienols. This is the less talked about puzzle piece of natural E. Collectively speaking, the tocotrienols (all four of them) have very strong antioxidant activity. Tocotrienols are 50 to 70 times more potent than tocopherols and penetrate deeper into fatty tissues like your brain, and liver. Tocotrienols are found in mostly in palm oil, soybean oil and rice bran oil with trace amounts in wheat, rye and barley. Please do take note on the contamination of gluten in these products. Other sources of tocotrienols include oats, grapefruit seed oil, nuts especially walnuts and hazelnuts, high quality olive oil, flax seed oil, sunflower oil. Again, do take note on the vegetables oils which may do more harm then good to the body due to oxidized fats (trans fat) and other chemical compounds during processing.
Meanwhile, did you know “gamma” tocotrienol protects mammary tissue? That is huge news to women who live in fear of breast cancer or those who have recovered. There is also another brand new study on asthma, comparing tocopherols with tocotrienols, where the researchers come right out and said, “Clinical trials of tocopherol supplementation to assess the impact of antioxidant activity in asthma have yielded equivocal results. Tocotrienol exhibits greater antioxidant activity than tocopherol in several biological phenomena in vivo and in vitro.” The favorable results were just published (May 2015) in Pulmonary Pharmacology and Therapeutics. I have included both studies in the links down below.
There are many studies which showed positive results which tied to this awesome nutrient. It is crucial that our body assimilate sufficient amount of Vitamin E for bodily functions on daily basis. Diet and nutrition is crucial, and ensuring the gut health for optimum digestion and assimilation is the key prior to investing on any of these supplement products. Although today's post is about Vitamin E, but the message here is to be aware of the supplement products you buy in the market or any pharmacies. The end goal is still to focus on your diet and lifestyle factors especially stress levels. Chronic stress will depletes most of your anti-oxidants levels and neurotransmitters as well. And if you would to purchase any Vitamin E supplement, ensure it is non-synthetic and contains not only a single form.
Complete Vitamin E:
alpha tocopherol
beta tocopherol
delta tocopherol
gamma tocopherol
alpha tocotrienol
beta tocotrienol
delta tocotrienol
gamma tocotrienol
Studies/references:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25956071
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15792944
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