There is a lot of hype about the health benefits of calcium and plenty of controversy over the best form of this essential mineral. According to Dr. Michael Murray N.D., calcium deficiency is a very real and common health problem. I also see this is my practice.

There are still patients of mine coming in for follow up visits expressing concern about continuing their vitamin E after hearing the negative research on Vitamin E. Here is my retort.

 Vitamin E has been safely used by tens of millions of Americans and Canadians over the past 55 years.   The Journal of the American Medical Association in  March 2005 published a study entitled “Effects of long-term vitamin E supplementation on cardiovascular events and cancer: a randomized controlled trial”. The conclusions of the researchers were that taking Vitamin E could increase the risk of developing heart failure and several earlier reports suggested that using large doses of Vitamin E causes small increases in death rates. However there are good reasons to believe their recommendation to not take vitamin E is premature and that taking the right form of vitamin E is not dangerous to health and may still be considered useful for preventing heart disease.

Dr. Alan Gaby M.D. wrote an article for Emerson Ecologics Healthnotes Newswire and other authors including Dr. Burford-Mason Ph. D, Dr.  Abram Hoffer M.D. and the researchers at Life Extension came to the following similar conclusions to this and other negative research on Vitamin E.

1.    These studies use synthetic vitamin E or the dl-alpha tocopherol form. In fact this information is not even included in some of the papers and was only determined when the researchers contacted their manufacturers! The researchers themselves didn’t even know what they were using! What this suggests is that neither the researchers nor the prestigious journals these studies are published in believe there is a meaningful difference between the natural and synthetic forms of Vitamin E. In actual fact there are at least eight different tocopherols in vitamin E and the one that is researched the most is alpha-tocopherol and there is growing evidence that gamma-tocopherol may be the more potent tocopherol in protecting against heart disease and cancer and alpha-tocopherol, when administered alone, blocks the absorption of gamma tocopherol.

2.    Many of the studies on vitamin E are meta-analysis, in that they looked back in the research from the past and they picked the studies that were more negative than positive, skewing the results. In the John Hopkins study in November of 2004 if they had not omitted studies the researchers would not have found that vitamin E shortened people’s lives.

3.    In these studies people were elderly, had multiple diseases and were no doubt taking prescription medications. In fact the rebuttals from numerous other scientists are published on the Annals of Internal Medicine’s website but these never made it into the news media.

4.    They failed to make comments on the studies they evaluated which reported the benefits of Vitamin E: reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease, heart and blood vessel disease, age-related macular degeneration and several forms of cancer.

5.    When a study uses the words “all cause mortality” they blame Vitamin E on causing deaths due to murders, accidents, floods and famines!

6.    During the same week of the JAMA article in March 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine published three studies confirming the iatrogenic effects of anti-inflammatory drugs Vioxx and Celebrex.

7.    The Lancet  came to a different conclusion based on the same study: the Lancet study showed that alpha- tocopherol was not a miracle cure for gravely ill individuals with coronary disease, occlusive arterial disease, or diabetes. While not a glowing recommendation for the use of Vitamin E, it certainly did not conclude that its use increased the risk of all cause mortality.  

8.    Why does evaluating 19 studies nullify 1000’s of others that came before it? There is true science to support vitamin E and:

a.   62 % lower death rates from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

b.   treatment of tardive dyskinesia

c.    treatment of age related macular degeneration

d.   prevents lipid peroxidation of the DHA fatty acid in the brain preventing Alzheimer’s Disease

e.   accelerates healing from burns

f.     treatment of Crohn’s disease

g.   the Shute brother’s research in the 1940’s showed a 46 percent lower risk of having a heart attack

h.   improves the immune system (especially when taken along with vitamin C)

i.      lowers C reactive protein (CRP) 49%  acting as an anti-inflammatory not just an anti-oxidant

j.     improves the function of insulin

k.   prevents oxidation of LDL cholesterol 54%

l.    lowers the risk of retinal and kidney complications in early stages of diabetes

m.  lowers bladder cancer mortality by 40%

What do I tell my patients? If you are seriously ill and aging one vitamin such as vitamin E is not going to do you much good. You need to take many anti-oxidants together to have a synergistic effect so include selenium, vitamin C, CoQ10 and R-lipoic acid. Take a mixed organic NON GM soy source vitamin E to get the benefit of all the tocopherols not just one. Don’t wait until you are 80 to take vitamins!

If the Harvard group back in 1950 had not discredited the Shute Brothers their science that Vitamin E caused a 40% reduction of heart disease that would have meant a saving of 2000 deaths per day in America! The non acceptance of new ideas is nothing new just like two hundred years ago when 100,000 sailors died in 40 years before Sir James Lind’s science that citrus fruits would prevent scurvy was accepted. How much longer will society permit doctors the luxury of doing nothing especially when the suggested treatments are safe, effective and economical?