Fitness

More vitamin E is found in the body than any other vitamin. Dr. Henry A. Mattill of the University of Iowa College of Medicine has made the statement: 1 “Perhaps no other of the vitamins mysteriously affects so many and so varied body processes.” Apparently as part of an enzyme which helps to utilize fat, it appears necessary to the function of every cell. It is particularly concentrated in the pituitary, adrenals, and sex glands. Natural vitamin E also prevents vitamin A, linoleic acid, and perhaps other nutrients from being destroyed by oxygen in the body. If obtained in sufficient quantities, it is stored in body fat. Yet when humans are undersupplied with this vitamin, no recognized deficiency disease occurs.

No one doubts that humans need vitamin E. A hundred years ago, before our foods were refined, the daily intake was an estimated 100 to 150 milligrams. Authorities have variously suggested the requirements now to be 30, 60, and even 100 milligrams per day. Vitamin E, like vitamins A and D, can pass into the blood only when taken with fat and when bile is present in the intestine. The American diet supplies slightly less than 6.0 milligrams per 1,000 calories, or about 12 to 15 milligrams per day (p. 303 of ref. 1 below). The National Research Council ” recommends seven basic foods which, if consumed daily, supposedly supply adequate amounts of all nutrients; yet these foods furnish only 5.74 milligrams of vitamin E. The thousands of persons who eat no fat or whose bile flow is inadequate probably absorb little of even these small amounts. Most investigators claim that this vitamin is never toxic; 1,200 milligrams daily has been given to persons without signs of harm. Since vitamin E can be stored efficiently, massive doses would probably never be needed if diets were adequate enough to allow a small excess daily. As conditions are, however, deficiencies can be expected.

Relatively large amounts are required when new cells are forming; Dr. Kenneth C. D. Hickman of the University of Rochester has pointed out that the basic need for vitamin E is during the entire constructive period which reaches its height at adolescence. The need of the growing fetus causes the vitamin-E requirements to be tremendously increased during pregnancy. Even when all growth has stopped, a virile man produces as many as 200,000,000 sperm per ejaculation; the vitamin-E requirement of a man, therefore, may vary with his sexual vigor. It was brought out at the 1949 world conference on vitamin E that the requirement increases tenfold during menopause and that, to maintain health, the aging human may require 50 times the usual intake. I, as one aging human, am going to see that I get generous amounts of this vitamin.

Fruits contain almost no vitamin E. In most medical texts, lettuce is listed as the richest source; 30 heads might supply your minimum daily need. Less than a third of this vitamin found in vegetables is absorbed by humans. Most of the vitamin from grains is discarded when flours are refined, but if the wheat germ is retained, as in the “national loaf’ in England during World War II, little vitamin E is lost. The amount in prepared cereals is practically nil. When oils are highly refined or hydrogenated, much of the vitamin E is sacrificed. Low cooking temperatures harm it little, but 90 per cent is lost in deep-fat frying, as when doughnuts or potato chips are prepared. Even slight rancidity (p. 42) destroys the vitamin both outside and inside the body. The only dependable sources appear to be fresh-ground, wholegrain flour and cereals, wheat germ, and vegetable oils.

The scientific name for vitamin E is alpha tocopherol; other tocopherols with some vitamin value occur in nature. Natural vitamin-E concentrates, prepared by distilling vegatable oils, and synthetic vitamin E, are available in capsule form. The synthetic vitamin cannot prevent the destruction of vitamin A and unsaturated fatty acids (p. 342, of ref. 1, p. 180) in the body, perhaps the most important function of vitamin E. For this reason mixed tocopherols from natural sources are superior to the synthetic product even though 149 milligrams of the synthetic vitamin equal 100 International units of the vitamin from natural sources.

More than three decades ago it was discovered that when animals were deficient in vitamin E, the males became sterile; females lost their young. If the vitamin was supplied, normal pregnancies occurred, but fertility in males could not be restored. Years passed before attention was directed to subtle deficiency symptoms.