Vitamin "E" Warning -

Just when we thought something was good for us....found this article at www.ctv.ca - Ontario Canada Television - news/health issues.
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Vitamin E may do more harm than good
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CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Wed. Nov. 10 2004 12:45 PM ET

People who take vitamin E supplements in the hope that it will help them live longer may be doing themselves more harm than good, a new study has found.

People taking high doses of vitamin E may be more likely to die earlier, said Dr. Edgar Miller of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the study.

"I think people take vitamin E because they think it is going to make you live longer, but this (study) doesn't support that," Miller told reporters Wednesday, admitting he was surprised by his team's findings.

Miller and his colleagues didn't conduct a new study on the vitamin, also called alpha-tocopherol. They simply re-analyzed 19 studies conducted between 1993 and 2004.

The trials involved more than 136,000 mostly elderly patients in North America, Europe and China. The dosages of vitamin E ranged from 16.5 to 2000 IU per day, with the median around 400 IU.

His team found that people who took 200 IU (international units) of vitamin E a day or more for a year died at a higher rate during the study than people who did not take supplements.

"It's about a five per cent increased risk at 45 years in the trials pooled together," Miller told a meeting of the American Heart Association.

"That doesn't sound like a lot, but if you apply it to 25 per cent of the (U.S.) adult population taking vitamin E, that is significant."

The trials involved older adults with chronic diseases and the authors don't know if the findings would apply to younger, healthy adults.

People often take vitamin E for its antioxidant properties, hoping it will help counter oxidation by unstable "free radical" molecules, which damage cells and can accelerate aging and lead to heart disease and cancer.

According to the analysis, there is no increased risk of death with a dose of 200 IU per day or less; there may even be some benefit. But in higher doses, the vitamin may actually promote oxidative damage and may overwhelm the body's natural antioxidants, Miller says.

The average U.S. diet supplies 6 to 10 IU of E, from such things as nuts, oils, whole grains and green leafy vegetables. Multivitamins usually contain about 30 IU.

About two-thirds of people who take vitamin E supplements take 400 IU or more, Miller says.

"We don't think that people need to take vitamin E supplements, that they get enough from the diet," he said.

Health Canada recommends 1,000 IU of Vitamin E as a daily upper limit.

Miller says he still doesn't know at what dose the benefits of vitamin E end and the ill effects begin.

"The big questions that need to be answered are: What is the dose? And how low a dose – in what combination – would be most useful?" he says.

The findings are also published online by the Annals of Internal Medicine.

© Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Inc.

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