Best vitamin E supplement?

[casting-out-nines]

I've been reading about the Shute brothers' experiences and would like to start supplementing vitamin E.

What I want from a supplement:

• 400 IU per capsule
• natural, not synthetic
• no soy
• inexpensive and readily available in Canada (I don't want to pay additional shipping and duties to import a niche product from another country)

You wouldn't think that'd be a tall order, but it's turning out to be.

The vitamin E the Shute brothers used was derived from wheat germ oil. Unfortunately, no major company seems to be manufacturing vitamin E from wheat germ anymore. I thought about simply taking expeller-pressed wheat germ oil, but assuming I could even find some at a reasonable price that wasn't rancid, by my calculations, I'd have to take about 20 tablespoons a day to reach 400 IU, which is way more polyunsaturated plant oil than I'm willing to consume. Besides, I'm gluten-intolerant and that probably wouldn't be a wise thing to do.

The only alternative I'm seeing to soy is supplements made from sunflower seed oil.

Of the sunflower-based supplements, these two fit my budget and are easy to obtain:

• Now Sun-E 400: https://www.nowfoods.com/products/suppl ... 0-softgels
• Natural Factors Whole Earth & Sea Sunflower Vitamin E: https://naturalfactors.com/products/who ... -vitamin-e

Does anyone have any thoughts on these products?

Of the two, I prefer the ingredients in the Now product, since it uses rice bran oil as a filler rather than flaxseed oil. Flax is extremely high in phytoestrogens, and though the research isn't clear on if the types of phytoestrogens in flax are harmful, I'd rather steer clear of it. I can't stand the taste of the stuff and suspect that may be my body's way of telling me to avoid it.

Then there's the question of which form of vitamin E should be taken. The claims are all over the map and confusing.

The A.C. Grace company states that:

Taking a Vitamin E supplement with only d-alpha tocopherol instead of the entire mixed tocopherols family of isomers can actually deplete the level of d-gamma tocopherol in the body.

https://acgrace.com/collections/feature ... ls#science

But the Linus Pauling Institute's article on vitamin E implies that the body probably doesn't have much use for anything other than d-alpha-tocopherol: https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-E

Dr. William Wong goes so far as to call all the other tocopherols and tocotrienols "mere window dressing" and that products containing them are a scam: https://drwongsessentials.com/dry-e-500-iu/

But according to a post on this forum,

All eight forms should probably be taken. They compete with each other for absorption, so tocotrienols and tocopherols should be taken separately.

viewtopic.php?p=62825#p62825

Another poster on the forum claimed that taking a sunflower-based supplement containing only d-alpha-tocopherol made him virile, while A.C. Grace's Unique-E killed it: viewtopic.php?p=57202#p57202

I wish there were a resource site like the Vitamin C Foundation dedicated to vitamin E. Good information on vitamin E is hard to come by on the Web! It's hard to sort the facts from misinformation and disinformation.

[pamojja]

There is indeed a lack of research in the other isomers of vitamin E. It is certain that alpha-tocopherol does reduce gamma-tocopherol, if supplemented exclusively. Guess nobody really knows how significant that is in the long run. Gamma tocopherols do have some anti-cancer, and tocotrienols anti-CVD activity.

[casting-out-nines]

Yesterday I came across a bottle of wheat germ oil at a local health food store. It was cold-pressed, had an expiry date, and was stored in a dark glass bottle in a fridge, so it looked like the real deal. The bottle held half a liter and was $20 Canadian. Wikipedia says there's 149 mg of vitamin E per 100g of wheat germ oil, so if I've done the math right, that means the whole bottle contains a little over 600 IU of vitamin E. Yikes! That makes wheat germ oil by far the most expensive way to supplement vitamin E.

[casting-out-nines]

I came across a Webber vitamin E supplement at a pharmacy whose label said it was free of soy, but the source material wasn't specified. Curious, I contacted the company and got this response:

Ultimately, the source of the Vitamin E is soybean oil. However, through multi-step purification processes, the Vitamin E is isolated to a level of purity that allows us to disclaim soy as an allergen.

So in Canada, at least, a supplement made from soy can in some circumstances legally be labeled as soy-free.

Does it matter if the vitamin comes from soy? According to Now's FAQ, it doesn't:

Is vitamin E from soy bad for me?

Possible, but highly unlikely. When the vitamin is isolated by distillation from a vegetable oil (i.e., soybean oil) and purified, other parts of the plant are typically left out of the material in the process. This means that phytoestrogens and isoflavones, as well as potential food allergens, are typically absent from this pharmaceutically pure vitamin.

https://nowfoods.ca/vitamin-e-faqs/

[casting-out-nines]

I took the plunge and picked up a bottle of the Whole Earth & Sea Sunflower Vitamin E at a local health food store after learning online that flax seed oil doesn't contain phytoestrogen (phytoestrogenic lignans are present only in the seeds). I may report back on my experiences in a few weeks for posterity. I've wanted to try vitamin E for years but had trouble finding a soy-free product and was confused about which form to get. It's perfectly clear after skimming a pdf of one of the Shute brothers' books that vitamin E was until only recently synonymous with alpha-tocopherol and that all the early research into the vitamin was done using that form.

There are some interesting descriptions of animal experiments, including ones with race horses, on this old Tripod site: https://ironjustice-ivil.tripod.com/vite.html

[GWS]

Here I thought Tocotrienols were the superior form of Vitamin E, the one the body uses......I'm beginning to think, that finding someone who really knows these vitamins and what they really do, and which form the body needs and can assimilate and use efficiently, is the most difficult search.

[pamojja]

A literature search would inform. Like this comprehensive recent review, I immediately find with a quick search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9544065/

I liked tocotrienols too, for their distinct effect on CVD at 200 mg/d. In the 15 years I supplemented had about 350 mg of alpha-tocopherols, as much of the other tocopherols, and about 110 mg of tocotrienols in average per day. However, the expensive prices for tocotrienols have risen dramatically, forcing me to reduce the dose now.

[GWS]

The article you cited would seem to confirm what I thought, but is gobblygook talk that only a scientist could understand. The more I read the less I get what they are trying to say......maybe they don't understand it anymore than we do.

Quoting,

The tocotrienol therapeutic efficacy was overshadowed by the tocopherols until recent years during which the tocotrienols were recognized as being more potent in treating a wide range of diseases thus playing a prominent role in health and disease. As such, more preclinical and clinical studies are needed to improve its medicinal properties which are confirmed as being more curative than the tocopherol forms which were thought to be more therapy?wise superior to the tocotrienols."

Doubletalk? or what?

[pamojja]

In science one has to differentiate between test-tube, animal, or human studies, further there are placebo-controlled randomized trials in humans. The most expensive, and if replicated, the most dependable of all studies. But since natural compounds can't get patented, they almost never happen.

One has to read and learn to analyze a study by oneself. Sometimes the title or conclusion only reflect what the investor in this study wished for. But actually the opposite of what the results section of a study actually found. This is no joke.

On the other hand, scientist for not becoming unemployed alone, have to write: Further studies are warranted.

Then there are experts who can't differentiate as much. Therefore, the diverging opinions of 'experts'.

[pamojja]

[GWS]

So now I know: Science........or the blind leading the blind, and lucky guesses.....

You for you, are you taking tocotrienols or tocopherols, or both at different times of the day....since they seem to cancel each other.

It's very unsettling to be taking a vitamin that causes even more damage to those who start a regimen, then stop it, and the body then falls apart in a way that maybe it wouldn't have so quickly had they not started it at all........that's what it seems.....for vitamin E and C. But then for some people like me, there was no other choice......clogged arteries is a one way street and a "dead" end without them.

[pamojja]

Scientists just want to find out the truth, and for that are most critical of their own assumptions. Though an income is important too, as for all of us.

Experts are a mixed bag. And appeal to authority by their followers is simply a fallacy in rational discussions. Not the experts fault alone

I don't think vitamins cancel each other out. Only in the case of sole alpha-tocopherol it is known, that others levels will be less. The others don't even have official vitamin status, some overlapping properties, but only some till now not that assured properties would be less.

So when I take them at different times, I don't do it out of fear they would cancel each other, but the additional not so sure properties only. Just as I again, I take many other things, which do appear to have the same properties.

..such as neuroprotection, radio-protection, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and lipid-lowering properties.

In Ayurveda either one takes very high doses of a single dried herb, Arjuna at 5 g/d for example against CVD. Or one combines a combination of herbs with similar properties at much, much smaller doses. Where the various herbs properties synergize. 1+1 then becomes more than 2. And unwanted side effects of high-dose single herbs less likely.

[pamojja]

It's very unsettling to be taking a vitamin that causes even more damage to those who start a regimen, then stop it, and the body then falls apart in a way that maybe it wouldn't have so quickly had they not started it at all........that's what it seems.....for vitamin E and C.

Not at all. Some people simply are in such good health, so that they don't need any additional vitamin C or E at all. Despite drinking alcohol and smoking, they reach their age in good health.

Others not that healthy fall apart anyway. Vitamin C or/and E may prevent that in that unhealthy. But they fall apart when stopping, just as before. There is no evidence it could then even be faster. Besides, falling apart by itself can be very fast. As in a cardiac arrest.