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Vitamin E Therapeutics




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Why Vitamin E?
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VITAMIN E: A CURE IN SEARCH OF RECOGNITION

by Andrew W. Saul

(Reprinted with permission from the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, 2003; Vol. 18, Numbers 3 and 4, p. 205-212.)


The most common reason for irreproducibility of successful vitamin E cures is either a failure to use enough of it, or a failure to use the natural form (D-alpha, plus mixed natural tocopherols), or both. For example, in an oft-quoted negative study (27), researchers who gave 300 milligrams of synthetic vitamin E to patients who had recently had a heart attack saw no beneficial effect. Such failure is to be expected. You can set up any experiment to fail. The Shutes would have used only the natural form, and four times as much.

Natural vitamin E is always the dextro- (right-handed) form. On the other hand, "synthetic vitamin E is a mixture of eight isomers in equal proportions containing only 12.5% of d-alpha tocopherol. One mg of dl-alpha tocopherol has the lowest Vitamin E equivalence of any of the common vitamin E preparations." (28)

There may be other differences. "Vitamin E derived from natural sources is obtained by molecular distillation and, in most cases, subsequent methylation and esterification of edible vegetable oil products. Synthetic vitamin E is produced from fossil plant material (coal tar) by condensation of trimethylhydroquinone with isophytol." (12)

While personal philosophy is the only possible basis for a decision to conduct a study using only the synthetic form of a vitamin, the use of low dosage is generally explained away by alleging doubts about safety. Tweet