The Lifesaving Truth About Vitamin E
Confused by recent media reports, saying vitamin E does not show heart benefits and could be harmful? I urge you to read the opposite conclusion of a leading vitamin E researcher who says vitamin E shows astonishing lifesaving benefits, and is absolutely safe at common doses up to 800 IU daily.
Taking vitamin E might save over 200,000 women annually from dying of heart disease, says Dr. Maret Traber, a worldwide authority on vitamin E, a member of a National Academy of Sciences committee on vitamin safety and effectiveness, and a professor of nutrition at Oregon State University and the Linus Pauling Institute.
Dr. Traber based the figures on a recent National Institutes of Health study of 40,000 healthy women over age 45 who took 600 IUs of vitamin E every other day, or a placebo, for nearly a decade.
Dr. Traber disputes media reports saying vitamin E did not show benefits. “It’s the most exciting findings about vitamin E in ten years,” she says.
She noted that women who took natural vitamin E had an overall drop in heart deaths of 24 percent.
More remarkable, women 65 and over–prime targets of cardiovascular deaths–who took vitamin E slashed their death rates by 49%–in half! Dr. Traber points out.
That means 208,250 women could be saved yearly by taking vitamin E since about 500,000 American women die of heart disease every year, and 85% or 425,000 are age 65 and over.
If a new drug did that, it would get such publicity that “everybody would want to buy stock in it,” said Traber.
Traber said she is “surprised” that the study results have been dismissed by the media and the medical community.
“I just think they don’t want to believe that a vitamin could be so powerful,” she said.
Also important, says Traber, the NIH study finds vitamin E utterly safe over a long period of time in a large group of people. This should put an end to absurd claims from previous flawed studies that vitamin E can kill you or harm you in any way, she says. There is no evidence whatsoever of harm from vitamin E at daily doses of up to 800 IU., she says.
Dr. Traber advises adults to take vitamin E, especially women in their 40s and 50s to help avoid fatal heart disease as well as other health problems later in life.
