IMPORTANT: The information on this site should never be used to self medicate or to self diagnose. Always contact your health care provider before using any kind of supplementation or making any extreme change in diet.
Just say someone, not you or I of course but someone, had a child and they didn’t give the child any food that contained vitamin E such as sunflower seeds, almonds, olives, whole grains or even berries, and who doesn’t like berries? Let’s say, too, the child won’t drink milk. He would not be getting the vitamin E he needed, if any, to stay strong. No normal person would deliberately try to make their child sick but by not making sure the child is getting enough of this powerful vitamin the door is being left open for many attacks to be made on his body.
WHAT IS VITAMIN E?
Alpha, beta, gamma & delta – No not university sororities this time but prefixes for tocopherol & tocotrienol making up the eight members of the Vitamin E family.
WHAT DOES VITAMIN E DO FOR US?
1. The first group of the Vitamin E family, Tocopherols -alpha, beta, delta and gamma tocopherol, work together with four other powerful disease fighters: vitamin C, selenium, glutathione and vitamin B3 (niacin) to stop out of control oxygen containing molecules or free radicals as they are usually called from going crazy and trying to rob other molecules to get their electrons. These amazing 5 vitamins selflessly give up their own electrons to save our bodies’ cells from damage.
2. Vitamin E also is highly instrumental in helping cells to communicate. If our cells couldn’t communicate nothing would happen in our bodies. We wouldn’t be able to think, see, move, hear or anything else. Everything would stop working and we would die.
3. The more potent members of the Vitamin E family, the Tocotrienols alpha, beta, delta and gamma tocotrienol, are more fussy. They protect neurones (nerve cells) from becoming damaged,
4. Helps to prevent certain types of cancer.
5. Helps to reduce cholesterol production.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON’T GET ENOUGH VITAMIN E?
A child or any person for that matter who does not get enough vitamin E is in danger of developing many health problems.
So if this child who just eats hamburgers and french fries and washes them down with a soft drink starts having trouble standing up because his muscles are too weak or he’s having trouble seeing because he’s developed retina damage or maybe he keeps falling over because his coordination is affected its probably because he isn’t eating anything with Vitamin E in it. If he’s eating candy bars and Vachon cakes to get some energy they won’t help much in the energy department if his cells aren’t communicating very well. As he gets older and those poor eating habits persist he may end up with cancer or high cholesterol problems because the free radicals were not prevented from attacking the other cells in his body and cancer cells were allowed to grow from damaged cells.
Of course it’s unlikely that there will be no Vitamin E in the child’s diet. Even hamburger has some alpha tocopherol in it but with low amounts there is a high risk of nerve damage and damage to the neural pathways to the brain. The ever despised cancer cells will be able to grow with little to stand in their way.
Of all the antioxidants in the land of antioxidants Vitamin E is considered to be one of the most powerful.
With Vitamin E our cells are protected, the cells in our skin stay younger longer, our nerves respond better and our brain cells communicate more efficiently. Vitamin E protects the cells on our skin against ultra violet rays.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE GET TOO MUCH VITAMIN E ?
According to the American Heart Association we can get too much Vitamin E. Taking 400 IU’s per day or higher can lead to premature death.
The average amount of vitamin E we need in a day is 15 mg, which is equal to 22 IU’s but many experts suggest 20 mg would be more beneficial. The one thing to remember is that too much Vitamin E can be a bad thing. More than 360 mg or 400 IU per day is not good. Our bodies store this vitamin for days because it is fat soluble so the excess is carried into the body to be stored instead of transported out like excess ‘water soluble’ vitamins are.
If we eat 60 mg of Vitamin E on Monday technically we really wouldn’t need any until Thursday. On average between 15 to 20 mg a day is good, until the research tells us otherwise. The Health Canada recommended daily allowance is 10 mg.
Not to worry because getting too much is not that easy unless you consume very large amounts of wheat germ oil, raw almonds or sunflower seeds every day.
WHERE DO WE GET VITAMIN E?