vitamin E

Foods Richest in vitamin E

About vitamin E

Basic description

Vitamin E is a collective term for eight naturally occurring fat-soluble antioxidants: four tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) and four tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta). All eight appear in the diet in varying proportions. The group is sometimes referred to collectively as “tocochromanols.”

The most famous of the vitamin E group is alpha-tocopherol. Both with respect to diet and high-dose supplementation, it is among the most intensely studied of nutrients. This is because its ability to help prevent free radical damage is well documented Public health recommendations for vitamin E are typically measured in milligram equivalents of alpha-tocopherol equivalents, or mg ATE. You will find this abbreviation being used throughout our live website charts.

However, despite the current prominence of alpha-tocopherol in public health recommendations and nutrition research, scientists are also interested in potential health benefits associated with lesser studied members of the vitamin E family, especially the tocotrienols. Like tocopherols (including alpha-tocopherol), tocotrienols are naturally occurring forms of vitamin E. Since they cannot be converted by humans into alpha-tocopherol, the tocotrienols are not considered relevant in meeting vitamin E needs. However, preliminary studies suggest that tocotrienols can provide us with health benefits in a way that is distinct from alpha-tocopherol, as well as other tocopherols. We look forward to future research in this area.

In this introductory description of vitamin E, it is also worth mentioning the unusually confusing nature of its units of measurement. There is really no such thing as “milligrams of vitamin E” since this description fails to explain what forms of the vitamin were considered when making the determination. As mentioned earlier, our website chart present vitamin E data in terms of “mg ATE” which stands for “milligrams of alpha-tocopherol equivalents.” However, other types of equivalents can be used in presenting vitamin E data. For example, equivalents of d-alpha-tocopheryl acetate and equivalents of d-alpha-tocopheryl succinate can be used. (These two chelated, synthetic forms of vitamin E are frequently found in dietary supplements due to their longer shelf life).

Many WHF foods are rich in vitamin E, yet the average U.S. adult falls well short of the recommended daily intake. The food source guidance below can help close that gap.

You’ll have a number of foods to choose from to build a menu that is rich in vitamin E. We list seven of the WHF as excellent sources of vitamin E. Another six foods rate as very good sources, while twelve foods are listed as good.

Role in health support

Protection against free radical damage

Vitamin E is a lipid-phase antioxidant. Its fat solubility positions it within cell membrane phospholipid bilayers, where it intercepts lipid peroxyl radicals and protects polyunsaturated fatty acids from chain-reaction oxidation.

When the fats in our membranes become damaged, important cell functions become compromised. Based on this important mechanism, researchers have studied whether diets low in vitamin E are associated with many diseases associated with aging.

Vitamin E also protects lipids in foods before they are consumed, slowing rancidity during storage. The Impact of Cooking, Storage, and Processing section below covers this in detail.

Protection against heart disease

Vitamin E helps protect LDL cholesterol (sometimes referred to as “bad” cholesterol) from free radical damage. Free radical damage typically involves an unwanted interaction with a reactive oxygen-containing molecule. When vitamin E is deficient—and under some other circumstances as well—it is possible for LDL cholesterol to become insufficiently protected and damaged by oxygen. When damaged in this way, the LDL cholesterol is often referred to as “oxidized LDL.” If the process continues, it is possible for oxidized LDL to accumulate in blood vessel walls and create the early stages of hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis).

Diets rich in vitamin E from vegetables, fish, and plant oils—like the Mediterranean diet for example—have been linked to cardiovascular prevention in large health surveys. Understand, though, that the potential benefits of this diet are not limited to or fully explained by vitamin E, and that dietary supplements of vitamin E (in comparison to vitamin E in food) have not demonstrated the same sort of preventive benefit that researchers hoped to see.

Summary of food sources

Five of the seven excellent vitamin E sources are green leafy vegetables. Greens rank high across many nutrients, and their combination of vitamin E density and low caloric content produces strong ratings. Each serving of greens typically provides 15-25% of the daily requirement.

Outside of greens, the foods with the most vitamin E tend to be high fat foods. These include nuts, seeds, extracted oils, and fatty fish. The amount of vitamin E per serving of nuts or seeds can vary widely, but you should expect to receive at least about 10% of your daily need, and sometimes as much as 80% (as we see with sunflower seeds).

Many oil rich-plants give us good amounts of vitamin E. These include olives and avocados, both of which provide between 10-15% of your daily need. Because these oily foods contain more calories, we rate them as good rather than very good or excellent sources. Still, we encourage using these plants or plant oils to help provide vitamin E.

We see a few of our World’s Healthiest seafoods are rich sources of vitamin E. Shrimp and sardines are two examples of this, with each topping 10% of daily requirements. Salmon and cod contain a little less vitamin E, yet can still be solid contributors.

Given that most U.S. residents fall short of the vitamin E DRI, making a few vitamin E-rich foods dietary staples is worthwhile. Meeting intake requirements through food alone is achievable with modest attention to sourcing.

Perhaps the easiest way to make sure you are getting enough vitamin E is by including sunflower seeds as snacks or as part of meals. This recipe for Healthy Turkey Salad contains nearly the whole Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) in one meal. Here are a few more recipes—Pureed Sweet Peas and 5-Minute Collard Greens with Sunflower Seeds—that include sunflower seeds.

We can also rely on meals that contain multiple foods providing more modest amounts of vitamin E, and allow them to stack up to become a more substantial amount. Our Poached Eggs Over Spinach and Mushrooms recipe contains spinach, eggs, and olive oil as sources of vitamin E. Together, they provide one-third of the RDA in only 10% of your daily calorie intake.

Recipes that contain nuts and nut butters will be a nice way to add vitamin E into your meals. You can be creative in the way you do this; for example, our 10-Minute Apricot Bars is a dessert recipe that provides more than 40% of the RDA for vitamin E.

There is a balance between getting plenty of fat-rich foods as sources of vitamin E and overdoing it and letting the calories pile up. As long as you choose wisely, you should be able to cover your vitamin E needs with just a few rich sources.

Nutrient rating chart

Introduction to nutrient rating system chart

Read more background information and details of our rating system

WHF ranked as quality sources of
vitamin E

Food

Serving
Size

Cals

Amount
(mg (ATE))

DRI/DV
(%)

Nutrient
Density

World’s
Healthiest
Foods Rating

Sunflower Seeds

0.25 cup

204.4

12.31

82

7.2

excellent

Spinach

1 cup

41.4

3.74

25

10.8

excellent

Swiss Chard

1 cup

35.0

3.31

22

11.3

excellent

Turnip Greens

1 cup

28.8

2.71

18

11.3

excellent

Asparagus

1 cup

39.6

2.70

18

8.2

excellent

Beet Greens

1 cup

38.9

2.61

17

8.1

excellent

Mustard Greens

1 cup

36.4

2.49

17

8.2

excellent

Chili Peppers

2 tsp

15.2

2.06

14

16.2

excellent

Almonds

0.25 cup

132.2

6.03

40

5.5

very good

Broccoli

1 cup

54.6

2.26

15

5.0

very good

Bell Peppers

1 cup

28.5

1.45

10

6.1

very good

Kale

1 cup

36.4

1.11

7

3.7

very good

Tomatoes

1 cup

32.4

0.97

6

3.6

very good

Avocado

1 cup

240.0

3.11

21

1.6

good

Peanuts

0.25 cup

206.9

3.04

20

1.8

good

Shrimp

4 oz

134.9

2.49

17

2.2

good

Olives

1 cup

154.6

2.22

15

1.7

good

Olive Oil

1 TBS

119.3

1.94

13

2.0

good

Collard Greens

1 cup

62.7

1.67

11

3.2

good

Cranberries

1 cup

46.0

1.20

8

3.1

good

Raspberries

1 cup

64.0

1.07

7

2.0

good

Kiwifruit

1 2 inches

42.1

1.01

7

2.9

good

Carrots

1 cup

50.0

0.81

5

1.9

good

Green Beans

1 cup

43.8

0.56

4

1.5

good

Leeks

1 cup

32.2

0.52

3

1.9

good

World’s Healthiest
Foods Rating

Rule

excellent

DRI/DV>=75% OR
Density>=7.6 AND DRI/DV>=10%

very good

DRI/DV>=50% OR
Density>=3.4 AND DRI/DV>=5%

good

DRI/DV>=25% OR
Density>=1.5 AND DRI/DV>=2.5%

Impact of cooking, storage and processing

The vitamin E in foods degrades slowly over time. For example, at room temperature, wheat flour loses about one-third of its vitamin E at close to one year of storage. That said, most people would be making use of their wheat flour long before this year-long time period.

Similarly, olive oil kept in a closed bottle will lose about 20-30% of its vitamin E over six months of storage. Don’t leave the bottle open, though, as all of the vitamin E will be gone after three or four months if you do. (While leaving olive oil in an opened bottle might sound unlikely, there are a good number of olive oil containers in the marketplace that feature an unsealed spout, and we do not recommend storage of olive oil in this way. You will find many more details about olive oil storage in our Extra Virgin Olive Oil food profile.)

Vitamin E also gets damaged by high heat cooking. For example, heating olive oil at 340°F (172°C) will lead to a destruction of the vitamin E, with almost half lost at three hours, and almost all of it gone by six hours. At WHF, we do not generally recommend any heating of extra virgin olive oil, and if we do include it in a heated sauce or other recipe, we heat it very gently and briefly. The delicate nature of vitamin E, and the fatty acids it protects, are good reasons to avoid heating of this oil. We adopt a similar approach for oil-rich foods like nuts and seeds, which we recommend be consumed in raw or minimally cooked form.

Usually in this section of our nutrient profiles, we discuss how specific nutrients are damaged in the storage of foods. But with respect to vitamin E, it is equally important to note that this nutrient can protect the foods from damage. For example, meat from chickens fed diets high in vitamin E show less evidence for free radical damage to their fats over 10 days of storage. Presumably, this vitamin E richness in the food consumed by the chickens helped protect their body fat from damage by oxygen. (We don’t have research comparing the human health consequences of consuming chicken fat with and without varying degrees of free radical damage. But we do know that animals fed diets that are rich in vitamin E typically provide us with animal foods that have good amounts of this vitamin as well.)

Risk of dietary deficiency

Given that the average U.S. adult eats exactly half the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) for vitamin E—7.5 mg of the recommended 15 mg per day—the risk of dietary deficiency of vitamin E in the United States is substantial. In fact, vitamin E is one of the most common vitamin deficiencies in the United States, with as many as 92% of men and 98% of women failing to reach target intake goals.

In 2006, a research group from Tufts University did a statistical model of the best way to ensure vitamin E nutrition while staying within normal calorie levels and without impairing other nutrient intake. Among their conclusions, they asserted that a low intake of nuts and seeds—70% of their subjects didn’t eat any of either—was predictive of low vitamin E intake. Analyzing this conclusion in reverse, this is further evidence that nuts and seeds can be a good place to start when trying to achieve strong vitamin E nutrition. (Of course, low intake of dark green leafy vegetables by the average U.S. adult is another reason why so many people in the U.S. fail to meet their vitamin E needs.)

At first, it may seem like a paradox that we tend to eat diets high in fat, yet fail to have reliable vitamin E nutrition. That’s because not every type of dietary fat is as rich in vitamin E as nuts or seeds. The way plant cooking oils are manufactured and processed can lead to significant destruction of the nutrient before it ever gets to your plate. Generally speaking, you should expect highly processed foods (e.g., oils made from nuts and seeds) to contain less vitamin E than their whole, natural counterparts (e.g., whole nuts and seeds).

Other circumstances that might contribute to deficiency

Diets that overly restrict fat can limit vitamin E intake substantially. It will not be impossible to achieve vitamin E nutrition with a very low fat diet, but you’ll need to work much harder to do it. For example, if you decided that you wanted to get 100% of your DRI for vitamin E from sunflower seeds alone—our richest WHF source—you would need to allow for 18 grams of fat in your day’s food just to provide that amount. In an 1,800-calorie meal plan, that amount of fat would represent 9% of total calories all by itself. If you consumed an additional 18 grams of fat from all of the rest of your foods on that day, you diet for that day would already be close to 20% fat. On the other hand, if you were willing to obtain your vitamin E exclusively from dark green leafy vegetables, you could get 100% of the DRI from about 5 cups, representing 150-200 calories but only 2-5 grams of fat.

Any disease or medication that impairs the ability to digest fats will also endanger vitamin E nutrition. If this potentially describes you, make sure to talk to your doctor to make sure that you are protected against deficiency.

Relationship with other nutrients

Diets high in polyunsaturated fats—the type found in most fish and vegetable oils—may increase your requirement for vitamin E. Some sources recommend an older standard of an extra 0.6 mg of vitamin E for each gram of polyunsaturated fat. We are not convinced that this level of specificity is well supported, even though the principle of increasing vitamin E intake along with increased intake of polyunsaturated fat makes good sense to us. The WHF recipes tend to be moderate in polyunsaturated fats (and much higher in the more stable monounsaturated fats than most U.S. diets), and as such, we believe that our WHF recommendation of 15 milligrams of d-alpha-tocopherol equivalents per day should suffice for the average person.

Like other dietary antioxidants, vitamin E needs help from multiple nutrients to do its job at maximum efficiency. In particular, vitamin C helps to recycle vitamin E so it can continue to neutralize free radicals over and over again.

If vitamin K levels are low, too much vitamin E can lead to problems involving too easy bleeding from injuries and too slow closing of wounds. The amounts of vitamin E necessary to create this effect are large, however, and probably not achievable via diet alone. (In other words, dietary supplementation of vitamin E would most likely be required to create this degree of imbalance between vitamin E and vitamin K.)

Risk of dietary toxicity

We are not aware of a single published report of adverse effects from dietary vitamin E. Reflecting this lack of evidence for harm, the National Academy of Sciences set the Tolerable Upper Intake Limit (UL) for vitamin E at 1000 mg, more than 60 times the DRI, and more than 100 times what an average American eats in a day. You can feel confident that you are not eating toxic levels of vitamin E in your daily diet. Translated into IU, 1,000 milligrams of vitamin E represents 1,490 IU of d-alpha-tocopherol and 1,360 IU of d-alpha-tocopheryl acetate.

Disease checklist

• Cancer
• Heart attack
• Stroke
• PMS
• Fibrocystic breast disease
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Parkinson’s disease
• Macular degeneration
• Cataract
• Intermittent claudication
• Cold sores
• Immune health

Public health recommendations

In 2000, the National Academy of Sciences established a set of Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for vitamin E. These recommendations included Adequate Intake (AI) levels for infants under one year of age, and Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for everyone else. These milligrams amounts represent alpha-tocopherol equivalents, or mg ATE. DRIs for vitamin E are as follows:

• 0-6 months: 4 mg
• 6-12 months: 5 mg
• 1-3 years: 6 mg
• 4-8 years: 7 mg
• 9-13 years: 11 mg
• 14+ years: 15 mg
• Pregnant women: 15 mg
• Lactating women: 19 mg

The most common DRI for vitamin E—15 milligrams ATE (alpha-tocopherol equivalents) —translates into approximately 22 IU of d-alpha-tocopherol and 20 IU of d-alpha-tocopheryl acetate. We adopted this amount as our recommended intake level at WHF. (The form of d-alpha-tocopherol is a naturally occurring form of vitamin E that is chemically classified as “non-esterified” and d-alpha-tocopheryl acetate is an esterified form commonly found in supplements due to its longer shelf life.)

The 2000 DRI recommendations also included a Tolerable Upper Intake Limit (UL) for adults of 1000 mg per day. As discussed above, this is more than an order of magnitude beyond even what the most vitamin E-rich diet could ever contain. For this reason, we should consider this UL more for supplement intake than guidance around dietary choices. Translated into IU, 1,000 milligrams of vitamin E represent 1,490 IU of d-alpha-tocopherol and 1,360 IU of d-alpha-tocopheryl acetate.

The Daily Value (DV) for vitamin E is 30 IU. The measurement of IU, short for International Units, is an older way to quantify vitamin E with 1 milligram of d-alpha-tocopherol from food equivalent to 1.49 IU.

What events can indicate a need for more high-vitamin E foods?

• Digestive system problems, especially malabsorption
• Tingling or loss of sensation in the arms, hands, legs, or feet
• Liver or gallbladder problems

Excellent sources of vitamin E include: spinach, chard, and turnip greens. Very good sources include mustard greens, cayenne pepper, almonds, sunflower seeds, asparagus, and bell peppers.

WHF rich in
vitamin E

FoodCals%Daily Value

Sunflower Seeds20461.5%

Almonds20644.8%

Spinach4118.7%

Swiss Chard3516.5%

Turnip Greens2913.5%

Papaya11911.1%

Mustard Greens218.4%

Collard Greens498.3%

Asparagus277.5%

Bell Peppers297.2%

For serving size for specific foods, see Nutrient Rating Chart below at the bottom of this page.

• Description

• Function

• Deficiency Symptoms

• Toxicity Symptoms

• Cooking, storage and processing

• Factors that affect function

• Nutrient interaction

• Health conditions

• Food Sources

• Public Health Recommendations

• References

Description

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.

How it 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.

Vitamin E from foods, but not supplements offers protection against prostate cancer and alzheimer’s disease

While the type of vitamin E usually used in supplements is alpha-tocopherol, research published in the December 2004 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates another form of vitamin E, gamma-tocopherol, but not alpha-tocopherol, inhibits prostate cancer cell proliferation, without affecting healthy prostate cells.

Plus, the anti-cancer effect of gamma-tocopherol, when combined with other forms of vitamin E such as delta-tocopherol, appears to be additive.

As noted above, Vitamin E is a generic term for a family of at least eight structurally related molecules. When the first research was conducted on vitamin E by the Shute brothers early in the 19th century, in rats, one fraction of vitamin E, alpha tocopherol, appeared more potent since it was necessary for successful pregnancy and production of offspring. For this reason, the Shutes named the vitamin “tocopherol,” from the Greek word meaning “to give birth.”

More recent research has revealed that, in humans, other vitamin E fractions may be even more beneficial. Gamma-tocopherol has been found to exhibit anti-inflammatory effects, which has led researchers to think this fraction may be more cardioprotective than the alpha-tocopherol found in most supplements. Not only is gamma-tocopherol anti-inflammatory, but it is also highly attracted to the nucleus in cells—the site where mutations in the genetic code can promote the development of cancer.

When Dr. Jiang and his team investigated the anti-carcinogenic potential of various forms of vitamin E, they found that gamma-tocopherol, particularly in combination with other forms of vitamin E such as delta-tocopherol, induced apoptosis (cell death) in androgen-sensitive prostate cancer cells within 3 days of treatment. Alpha-tocopherol alone did not have this effect.

The gamma and delta E fractions appear to induce apoptosis by interrupting the synthesis of sphingolipid, a fatty molecule in cell membranes that acts as a signaling messenger to modulate events inside the cell. In the cell membranes of human prostate cancer cells, the interruption of sphingolipid’s synthesis by gamma and delta tocopherols causes the cancerous cells to self-destruct, while leaving healthy cells unaffected. Both fractions, as well as alpha tocopherol, are naturally present in foods rich in vitamin E, which include a number of greens (mustard greens, turnip greens, spinach, collard greens, and kale), sunflower seeds and almonds.

A high intake of vitamin E from food, but not from supplements (which usually contain just alpha-tocopherol) is also inversely associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Rush University’s Martha Clare Morris, Sc.D., lead nutrition researcher for CHAP, the Chicago Health and Aging Project, found a 67% lower risk of Alzheimer’s in subjects with the highest intakes of vitamin E from food and concluded: “various tocopherol forms rather than alpha-tocopherol alone may be important in the vitamin E protective association with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Other roles for vitamin E

While most of the research on vitamin E has focused on its role in prevention of oxidative stress, a variety of new roles have recently been suggested. Most of these new roles involve the transfer of chemical information from one cell to another, or across different structures inside of a cell. This transfer of chemical information is referred to as “cell signaling,” and many researchers believe that cell signaling cannot accurately take place without the help of vitamin E.

Deficiency symptoms

What are deficiency symptoms for vitamin e?

Deficiency symptoms for vitamin E are difficult to pinpoint and controversial in the research literature. The area of broadest agreement involves malabsorption. In many research studies, low levels of vitamin E are associated with digestive system problems where nutrients are poorly absorbed from the digestive tract. These problems include pancreatic disease, gallbladder disease, liver disease, and celiac disease.

A second area of focus for vitamin E deficiency symptoms is called peripheral neuropathy. This area focuses on nervous system problems in the arms, hands, legs, and feet. Pain, tingling, and loss of sensation in these extremities have been associated with vitamin E deficiency. Although many healthcare practitioners report that skin problems appear closely linked to vitamin E deficiency, there are limited human research studies to support this view.

Toxicity symptoms

What are toxicity symptoms for vitamin e?

When obtained from food sources alone, vitamin E has no documented research of toxicity. Vitamin E supplements, when taken in very high doses of 3000 IU or more, have been shown to have toxic effects. These effects include intestinal cramps and diarrhea, fatigue, double vision, and muscle weakness. Below the 3000 IU level, the research on vitamin E toxicity is inconsistent, but the majority of studies do not demonstrate toxic effects.

An exception to the generally low risk of toxicity associated with vitamin E involves simultaneous vitamin K deficiency. For persons with vitamin K deficiency, high intake of vitamin E can prolong bleeding time and interfere with clotting. In 2000, the National Academy of Sciences set a Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) for vitamin E of 1,000mg (or 1,500 IU of vitamin E in the form of alpha-tocopherol). This daily limit applies to supplemental vitamin E only, and is intended to apply to all individuals age 19 and older.

Factors that affect function

What factors might contribute to a deficiency of vitamin e?

Since vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin, poor absorption of fat in the digestive tract can contribute to vitamin E deficiency. Some specific health conditions that can cause fat malabsorption include pancreatic disease, celiac disease, and gallbladder disease. Premature birth has also been shown to increase risk of vitamin E deficiency in infants.

Nutrient interactions

How do other nutrients interact with vitamin e?

The recycling of vitamin E in the body is intricately connected to four other nutrients: vitamin C, glutathione, selenium, and vitamin B3.

Vitamin C is required to keep vitamin E in its metabolically active form; glutathione (a very small protein molecule called a tripeptide and consisting of three amino acid building blocks) is required to keep vitamin C in its active form; and selenium (a micromineral) and vitamin B3 (in a special form called NADPH) are required to keep glutathione in its active form.

The fact that vitamin E is so heavily dependent on vitamin C, vitamin B3, selenium, and glutathione means that a diet high in vitamin E cannot have its optimal effect unless it is also rich in foods that provide these other nutrients.

At moderately high levels of 1,000 milligrams or more, vitamin E can interfere with the bodily activities of vitamin K. The potential injury to vitamin K metabolism was largely the reason why the National Academy of Sciences, in the year 2000, set a Tolerable Upper Limit (UL) of 1,000 milligrams per day for vitamin E.

Health conditions

What health conditions require special emphasis on vitamin e?

Vitamin E may play a role in the prevention and/or treatment of the following health conditions:

• Acne
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Angina pectoris
• Asthma
• Atherosclerosis
• Breast cancer
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Fibrocystic breast disease
• Gout
• Graves’ disease
• Infertility (male)
• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Macular degeneration
• Menopause
• Migraine
• Multiple sclerosis
• Oral cancers
• Osteoarthritis
• Parkinson’s disease
• Peptic ulcers
• Peripheral vascular disease
• PMS
• Pregnancy-induced hypetension
• Psoriasis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Senile cataracts
• Squamous cancer
• Stroke
• Tardive dyskinesia
• Vaginitis

Food sources

What foods provide vitamin e?

Excellent sources of vitamin E include spinach, turnip greens, and chard.

Very good sources of vitamin E include mustard greens, cayenne pepper, sunflower seeds, almonds, bell peppers, and asparagus.

Good sources of vitamin E include collard greens, kale, tomatoes, cranberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, papaya, raspberries, and carrots.

Drug-nutrient interactions

What medications affect vitamin e?

Use of the following medications can reduce the body’s supply of vitamin E: Anticonvulsant drugs (like Dilantin �) and cholesterol-lowering drugs (like probucol, cholestyramine, clofibrate, colestipol, and gemfibrozil) can significantly reduce the body’s supply of vitamin E.

Long-term, regular use of mineral oil (for example, as non-prescription laxative) can also compromise the body’s supply of vitamin E.

Form in dietary supplements

What forms of vitamin E are found in dietary supplements?

The vast majority of vitamin E supplements contain a single form of the vitamin, alpha-tocopherol. More specifically, most supplements contain a natural form of alpha-tocopherol, called d-alpha tocopherol (or d-alpha tocopheryl acetate). Practitioners often prefer this form of the vitamin over a synthetic version called l-alpha tocopherol.

However, because vitamin E is actually a family of vitamins involving many tocopherols and many tocotrienols, some practitioners recommend vitamin E supplements containing not only d-alpha tocopherol, but other tocopherol and tocotrienol forms of vitamin E.

Supplements containing this wide variety of vitamin E forms are typically referred to as “mixed tocopherol” or “mixed tocotrienol” supplements. Human research studies comparing the effects of different types of vitamin E supplements are too limited to allow definite conclusions, but recent research suggests dietary vitamin E is preferable to supplements containing only one fraction of this nutrient.

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References

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