With the way we name our vitamins — A, B, C, D, E — understanding them should be as simple as learning the alphabet, right?
I’m afraid not. In fact, their complexity often leads to chronic confusion among healthcare professionals and a headache for consumers who might try to keep up with current recommendations.
Vitamin E is a prime example. When you hear about a new study that says it may help prevent cancer, or halt heart disease, or perhaps even that it’s absolutely useless, the study or report just names “vitamin E” — and makes no further distinctions. But there are actually eight different forms, plus synthetic and natural varieties. And those differences make a big difference. There’s only one molecule of difference between the synthetic and natural versions of vitamin E — but in science, one molecule means a lot.
The fact of the matter is that the synthetic versions just don’t do the job as well as Mother Nature herself. In numerous studies, natural vitamin E outperforms the synthetic: it is found in the blood at much higher levels, and is excreted at much lower levels, meaning more of it is being put to use throughout your body.
Some scientists are starting to understand this, but there’s no consensus on the matter coming anytime soon. And getting the word out to consumers is an even more daunting task. Especially when we still have more questions than answers.
This spring, scientists and vitamin manufacturers converged at a conference that focused solely on vitamin E — the first gathering of its kind in over 15 years. Most attendees agreed that the current RDA values are not nearly enough, and that it is virtually impossible to get enough vitamin E through your daily diet. Unfortunately, they couldn’t agree on what the right amount should be. One researcher went so far as to postulate that we might each have our own individual optimal level that we need to achieve. That one could take some time.
And although there seems to be widespread recognition among researchers that the natural form is better than synthetic, they didn’t take a stand on the matter. The problem is that until scientists can reach some agreement on this issue, the research they produce will continue to be conflicting, contradictory, and confusing. They’re comparing apples to oranges, but acting as if all fruit is the same.
It doesn’t exactly take scores of scientists at a fancy conference to confirm what has proven to be true over and over — nature does a better job of matching what our bodies need than scientists do. Dr. Wright talks about vitamin E in Nutrition & Healing quite often — most often cautioning his readers to take additional vitamin E when they take fish oil supplements, to prevent the essential fatty acids from oxidizing too rapidly. His general recommendation is to take 400 IU of vitamin E as mixed tocopherols daily.
Reali-tea
Q: I appreciated your recent e-Tip about tea (7/15/04 e-Tip, subject line: “Sprout it from the rooftops”), but you didn’t mention oolong tea. Is that technically a real tea or is that some kind of herbal tea? Does it have the same health benefits as tea?
JVW: Oolong tea is part of the “real” tea family that also includes black, green, and white varieties. Oolong is sometimes referred to as semi-fermented and is somewhere in between black tea and green tea in terms of how long it is processed. It is a very popular variety in China in particular.
Because it is a true tea, oolong shares many of the same benefits of green tea. However, since it does undergo the fermentation process for slightly longer, it may contain less of some healthful elements than green tea, but more than black tea. Its caffeine content is also in the middle of these two varieties as well.
What is a tocopherol?
The word “tocopherol” crops up in just about any conversation about vitamin E. That’s because it was the original word for vitamin E, before it was assigned a letter of the alphabet. It comes from the Greek words “tokos” meaning childbirth, and “phero” meaning to bring forth. When it was first identified in 1922, it was used to cure reproductive abnormalities in rats. It would be another 34 years before vitamin E’s antioxidant properties were discovered. It was around that time as well when the eight different forms of vitamin E were identified and researchers started to form a more complex understanding of this substance.
Yours in good health,
Amanda Ross
Managing Editor
Nutrition & Healing
Sources:
Kiyose C, et al. “Biodiscrimination of alpha-tocopherol stereoisomers in humans after oral administration.” Am J Clin Nutr 1997; 65(3): 785-789
Burton GW, et al. “Human plasma and tissue alpha-tocopherol concentrations in response to supplementation with deuterated natural and synthetic vitamin E.” Am J Clin Nutr 1998; 67(4): 669-684
Traber MG, et al. “Synthetic as compared with natural vitamin E is preferentially excreted as alpha-CEHC in human urine: studies using deuterated alpha-tocopheryl acetates.” FEBS Letters; 437(1-2): 145-148
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