What is vitamin E?
Even though its name makes it sound like a single substance, vitamin E is actually a family of fat-soluble vitamins that are active throughout the body. Some members of the vitamin E family are called tocopherols. These members include alpha tocopherol, beta tocopherol, gamma tocopherol, and delta tocopherol.
Other members of the vitamin E family are called tocotrienols. These members include alpha, beta, gamma, and delta tocotrienol. As increasing information has become available about these forms of vitamin E, more and more of them are understood to have unique functions.
What is the function of vitamin E?
Prevention of oxidative stress
Although humans must breathe oxygen to stay alive, oxygen is a risky substance inside the body because it can make molecules overly reactive. When oxygen-containing molecules become too reactive, they can start damaging the cell structures around them. In chemistry, this imbalanced situation involving oxygen is called oxidative stress.
Vitamin E helps prevent oxidative stress by working together with a group of nutrients that prevent oxygen molecules from becoming too reactive. This group of nutrients includes vitamin C, glutathione, selenium, and vitamin B3. Some researchers believe that vitamin E is the most important member of this oxidative stress-preventing group.
Supporting healthy skin
Vitamin E has sometimes been described as the "lightening rod" of the cell, allowing reactive molecules to strike the cell, like lightening, without causing damage. This "lightening rod" function of vitamin E is particularly apparent in the case of the skin, since vitamin E directly protects the skin from ultraviolet radiation (also called UV light). In numerous research studies, vitamin E applied topically to the skin has been shown to prevent UV damage. When the diet contains vitamin E-rich foods, vitamin E can travel to the skin cell membranes and exert this same protective effect.
Protection against Bladder Cancer
One of the benefits of making foods rich in vitamin E-nuts, seeds, spinach, mustard greens, peppers and olive oil-a part of your healthy way of eating is an up to 50% reduction in risk of developing bladder cancer, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research, Orlando, FL, May 23, 2004.
Bladder cancer, which kills 12,500 Americans annually, is the fourth leading cancer killer among men, and is four times more common in men than women. The study, which included 468 bladder cancer patients and 534 cancer-free controls drawn from residents of Houston, TX, collected data using eating habits questionnaires. Those whose vitamin E intake was in the top 25% had half as much bladder cancer as those in the lowest 25%.
Increasing vitamin E intake to the amount consumed by those in the top group would not be difficult since the actually difference in the amount of vitamin E-rich foods the two extremes consumed was small-the equivalent of a single daily serving of spinach or a handful of almonds.
The research team looked at the two most common forms of vitamin E, alpha- and gamma-tocopherol, and found that only alpha-tocopherol was associated with lower bladder cancer risk. Also, whether study participants got their vitamin E from food alone or from vitamin pills, the reduction in risk was roughly the same. Those with the highest intake of alpha-tocopherol from food had a 42% reduced risk of bladder cancer, and those with a vitamin E rich diet who also took vitamin E supplements had a 44% reduced risk.
