The Vitamin E Factor: The miraculous antioxidant for the prevention and treatment of heart disease, cancer, and aging

by Andreas Papas

Overview

It is too early to conclude that vitamin E has all the beneficial effects attributed to it, but even if only 25% of current expectations were to be fulfilled, vitamin E would become an important weapon against a range of chronic diseases.

The book is not simply scientific and education but also a please to read.Dimitrios Trichopoulos, MDVincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060984434
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/23/1999
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Andreas M. Papas, Ph.D., is a senior technical associate at Eastman Chemical Company and adjunct professor at the James Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University. He has extensive experience in antioxidant and vitamin E research and has edited the widely accliamed scientific book Anitoxidant Status, Diet, Nutrition, and Health.

Read an Excerpt

Part One

THE HISTORY OF VITAMIN E

A rags to riches story:
From a vitamin looking for a disease ...
To the shady lady of vitamins ...
To the master antioxidant and
supernutrient!

Good fairies attended every phase of the advent and early history of vitamin E.

-- Herbert M. Evans, 1962

THE DISCOVERY

If good fairies were indeed helping, they chose some really good researchers. The year was 1922 and the place the University of California at Berkeley. Herbert A Evans, a young research physician specializing in embryology, and his assistant, Katharine S. Bishop, were feeding their laboratory rats a special semipurified diet. This diet was developed by two groups of pioneer nutritionists of that era, Drs. Thomas B. Osbome and Lafayette B. Mendel and Drs. Henry A. Mattil and R. E. Conklin.

SEMIPURIFIED AND PURIFIED DIETS: AN IMPORTANT RESEARCH TOOL FOR NUTRITIONISTS

Instead of whole foods, sermipurified diets contain mostly ingredients isolated in pure form and only a small amount of whole food. For example, the diet used by Evans and Bishop contained starch to provide carbohydrates, milk casein for protein, lard and butter for fat, brewer's yeast for micronutrients including some vitamins, and salts for minerals. Unlike semipurified diets, purified diets do not contain whole foods--only pure ingredients.

Semipurified and purified diets have been great tools for nutrition research. By excluding a nutrient from the diet, researchers can evaluate the effect of its absence on survival, growth, andhealth. By introducing increasing amounts of the nutrient in the diet, they can determine what is the minimum amount required for survival, good growth, and health. And they can keep increasing the amount until they find the level that causes toxicity and death.

Drs. Evans and Bishop saw their rats grow well. The females, however, would become pregnant, but their pregnancies would not go to term. Their pups would die in the womb and be resorbed or be born dead. When they supplemented the rats' diet with fresh lettuce and, in later studies, with wheat germ, healthy pups were born. They figured that something was missing from the diet but did not have the foggiest idea what it was. The mystery ingredient was dubbed as Factor X.

Drs. Evans and Bishop relayed their observation to Professor Mendel, the leading developer of the diet. His response was vintage professorial; uncovering the mystery of Factor X, he suggested, would make a splendid project for a graduate student--assign one! The lucky fellow was Karl E. Mason.

Vitamin E is born: Continuing their research, Drs. Evans and Bishop found that Factor X was in the lipid extract of lettuce. This was a clear clue that it was a fat-soluble substance. Mason found that deficiency of this factor caused damaging lesions in the testis (male reproductive gland) and uterus of rats. They figured that Factor X was really important and deserved a real name. This was the era when vitamins were being discovered. Factor X appeared to have the attributes of a vitamin.

UNSUNG PIONEERS OF VITAMIN E

Unbeknownst to Drs. Evans and Bishop, Dr. Barnett Sure at the University of Arkansas observed independently that a missing factor in the diet was making male rats sterile. He proposed in 1924, one year earlier than Dr. Evans, the name vitamin E. The letters A, B, and C were already taken, and D was spoken for.

Also Dr. Matill and his group at the University of Iowa described briefly an atrophy (poor growth) of the testis before Dr. Mason had.

Sure and Matill. deserve major credit for their contribution to the discovery of vitamin E.

Evans proposed one year later the name vitamin E for the same reasons as Dr. Sure. "We have adopted the letter E as the next serial alphabetical designation, the antirrachitic vitamin now being known as vitamin D," Dr. Evans wrote in 1925.

THE FRUSTRATING DECADE (1925-1935): A VITAMIN LOOKING FOR A DISEASE

The excitement from the discovery of vitamin E did not last very long. It was soon overshadowed by the slow progress in figuring out its function.

Scientists were seriously hampered in their research. They did not know whether vitamin E was a single compound or what its structure was. And there was no pure or even concentrated vitamin E to use in their studies. Wheat germ was a good source-but how much was there? There was no method to analyze for vitamin E or to measure its potency!

GETTING THE WRONG LABEL: SEX VITAMIN (AND SHADY LADY)

If vitamin E is essential for reproduction, some reasoned, then it must be able to cure problems of fertility and reproduction. And sure enough it would help the sex drive! The initial excitement of veterinarians and clinicians (and many other people) turned out to be a major disappointment. And the stories about sex drive made good fodder for jokes--not the impetus for good science! The labels "sex vitamin" and "shady lady of vitamins" haunted vitamin E for decades.

In retrospect, the small progress made was important! Scientists uncovered the devastating effects of vitamin E deficiency on the muscles and the nervous system (including the brain). They also described the conditions of

• Paralysis of baby rats suckling vitamin E-deficient mothers

• Chicken encephalomalacia, which is a softening, almost rotting of the brain that results in death of chickens

• Muscular dystrophy in guinea pigs and rabbits

It was also during this decade that scientists began to suspect that vitamin E acted as an antioxidant!

HINDSIGHT IS TWENTY-TWENTY: LEARNING FROM HISTORY

My studies concerned a description of the process of degeneration of the germinal epithelium of the male rat, which is preventable, but not repairable. (emphasis added)

-- Karl E. Mason, 1925

We have learned since then that vitamin E deficiency may go unnoticed for years without clinical symptoms. The story of Vicki the elephant in chapter 5 is a classic example of how unnoticed muscle and nerve damage can pile up. We also learned that depleted tissues get replenished slowly and the nerve tissue even more slowly. When the clinical symptoms appear it is usually too late for repair!

Table of Contents

Foreword by Jean Carper

Introduction

Part 1. Getting to know the vitamin E family
1. The history of vitamin E
2. Getting to know the vitamin E family
3. What is esterified alpha-tocopherol?
4. Why natural vitamin E is better

Part 2. From our gut to our tissues: How vitamin E is absorbed and transported in our body
5. Learning from Vicki the elephant: Absorption and use of Vitamin E
6. Oil and water do not mix or do they? How vitamin E is absorbed
7. Diseases (mostly genetic) that cause vitamin E deficiency

Part 3. How vitamin E works in our body
8. The burden of proof
9. The master antioxidant plus...
10. Keeping the bad cholesterol LDL from becoming really ugly

Part 4. Major chronic diseases: The role of vitamin E
11. The heart and vitamin E — Part 1
12. The heart and vitamin E — Part 2
13. Cancer: Great expectations
14. Vitamin E and diabetes — The great management tool
15. For your eyes only
16. Rays of hope for delaying Alzheimer's (and other horrible diseases of the brain)
17. AIDS — An indispensable partner
18. Autoimmune diseases — Can vitamin E help?

Part 5. Improving health and the quality of life
19. Aging with good health (and grace)
20. Exercise
21. Let's get (very) personal
22. More than skin deep

Part 6. Where to find vitamin E, which form to use and how much
23. Finding vitamin E in foods
24. How much vitamin E should I take and which form
25. A Guided tour of the vitamin counter (in your neighborhood health store, drug store or grocery store)
26. How safe is vitamin E?

Part 7. What does the future hold?
27. My crystal ball

Epilogue

Appendix
1. The vitamin E family. The chemical structure of tocopherols and tocotrienols
2. The one stereoisomer of natural d-alpha-tocopherol and 8 stereoisomers of the synthetic dl-alpha-tocopherol
3. The official potency table for various vitamin E forms

References
1. e-References (Internet resources)
2. Books
3. Scientific papers

Index

What People are Saying About This

Jean Carper

... a gem of a book, packed with fascinating facts and advice on how to use vitamin E to save your life and improve your health... You can open to any page and be happily confronted with biographical data of all types about vitamin E-anecdotes, history, easy-to-understand chemical profiles, tales of its exploits in conquering the cellular enemies that bring disease and premature death-as well as sensible concrete recommendations for taking vitamin E supplements. In some places, Dr. Papas makes a chemistry lesson as easy to swallow as eating ice cream. I have never seen a better book on a major vitamin anywhere than Dr. Papas' book on vitamin E.
— (Jean Carper, USA Weekend columnist and author of Miracle Cures, Stop Aging Now!, Food Your Miracle Medicine, and The Food Pharmacy)

Dimitrios Trichopoulos

... even if only 25% of current expectations were to be fulfilled, vitamin E would become an important weapon against a range of chronic diseases. The book The Vitamin E Factor by Dr. Andreas Papas is a superb account of the biochemical characteristics, the nutritional properties and the current evidence concerning the health attributes of vitamin E. The book, however, is not simply scientific and educational but also a pleasure to read.
— (Dimitrios Trichopoulos, M.D., Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health)

Juergen Reimann

.... excellent reference book for all scientific questions in connection with vitamin E and which an interested lay person might be eager to know more about. Thanks to the bibliography detailed in every chapter, it is quite easy for the interested reader to become more engaged in the in-depth scientific aspects of the vitamin E factor. Additionally, all this makes Andreas M. Papas' book a kind of encyclopedia for people with an interest in the vitamin E research.
— (Dr. Juergen Reimann, Chairman, HERMES Institute for Health Research, Munich, Germany)

Deborah A. Ray

Dr. Papas' superior presentation of tocotrienols to the nation will have a major impact on the therapeutic use of nutrition into the 21st century. We heartily recommend Dr. Papas' book to all of our nutritionally savvy listeners. Cardiology will take notice as the use of tocotrienols is destined to have a positive effect for all patients who wish to prevent and treat heart disease.
— (Deborah A. Ray, M.T. (ASCP) and Donald J. Carrow, M.D. Hosts of Here's To Your Health radio show )