Too Much Vitamin E

Nips

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Apr 22, 2013
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400 UI a day too much?

Can you overdo it?

Im currently in hospital so only have access to hospital food meaning I cant eat a proper diet.
 

jaketthomas

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I have taken upwards of 1600 i.u. per day with only positive effects. 400 i.u. is nothing.
 

4peatssake

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Nips said:
400 UI a day too much?

Can you overdo it?

Im currently in hospital so only have access to hospital food meaning I cant eat a proper diet.
Can you get someone to bring you in some oj and milk, Nips? Or ask the nurses or dietician to at least give you extra cartons of milk with your food. Usually, the nurses have milk and juice etc. on the floor. Even chocolate milk as that will give you more nutrients and calories to tide you over and allow you to eat less "hospital food." You'd have to be more careful with the juice at the hospital.

If you can move around, you can go to the hospital shop where they'll likely carry milk and oj. Someone could bring you some pork rinds too, maybe?
 
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Nips

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Yeah I get some semi skimmed milk here. Will buy some orange juice.

How do these relate with vitamin e?

I read that Unique E is the best. Whats wrong with the common place vitamin e supplement?
 

4peatssake

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Nips said:
Yeah I get some semi skimmed milk here. Will buy some orange juice.

How do these relate with vitamin e?

I read that Unique E is the best. Whats wrong with the common place vitamin e supplement?
Sorry about that. I should have been more clear. My comment wasn't related to the Vit E, just that you are stuck eating hospital food and how that would horrify me and I'd be looking for other solutions. ;)

As for the Unique E vs. other Vit E supplements, the caution with others is to watch out for the excipients and the source. From what I understand, many Peatarians have had good results with Unique E. I cannot vouch for it personally as I use Progest E but if I were to supplement Vit E only, Unique E is the one I would try first.
 

Gabriel

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Too much vitamin e may be harmful and increase mortality, at least if you take some isolated form of vitamin e (i.e. only alpha-tocopherol). So if you supplement vitamin e, you should watch out only to take a natural mixture that resembles the composition of real foods. Avoid cheap supplements.
 

FunkOdyssey

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Gabriel said:
Too much vitamin e may be harmful and increase mortality

This. I personally would not take more than 400iu daily and only as long as necessary. I'd be comfortable at 50-100iu indefinitely but its difficult to find good quality supplements in that small dose.

The hypothesis that the mechanism of high-dose alpha tocopherol harm in humans is depletion of gamma tocopherol is just that: an untested hypothesis. All we have is good data demonstrating increased risk of dying when you take high doses of vitamin E.
 
J

j.

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Gabriel said:
Too much vitamin e may be harmful and increase mortality, at least if you take some isolated form of vitamin e (i.e. only alpha-tocopherol).

Synthetic alpha-tocopherol. As far as I know, Ray Peat advises a natural mix of tocopherols.

I recently posted a study in the scientific studies section where they used up to 3200 IU of natural alpha tocopherol with improvement in some markers of oxidative stress and no apparent side effects.
 
J

j.

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FunkOdyssey said:
All we have is good data demonstrating increased risk of dying when you take high doses of vitamin E.

There is no evidence of that occurring when you take a natural mix of tocopherols. Synthetic and natural alpha-tocopherols are different substances.
 

FunkOdyssey

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j. said:
FunkOdyssey said:
All we have is good data demonstrating increased risk of dying when you take high doses of vitamin E.

There is no evidence of that occurring when you take a natural mix of tocopherols. Synthetic and natural alpha-tocopherols are different substances.

There's no evidence of that occurring, or not occurring, because there are no long-term studies that used high doses of mixed tocopherols looking at mortality rates. You're gambling that the explanation for increased mortality in high-dose vitamin E studies was the lack of mixed tocopherols or the presence of unnatural isomers in some studies. Hopefully that explanation turns out to be the correct one, because there are many other possible explanations, including blocking of autophagy, disrupting free radical signaling, epigenetic changes...
 
J

j.

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FunkOdyssey said:
There's no evidence of that occurring, or not occurring, because there are no long-term studies that used high doses of mixed tocopherols looking at mortality rates.

There are studies that conclude that high doses of natural alpha-tocopherol are safe.
 
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j.

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Mega-dosing natural alpha-tocopherol apparently would not lower your cholesterol or triglycerides. These guys had 3200 IU for 4 months and it didn't lower those numbers: Link 1 Article
 

burtlancast

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It's perfectly safe to take 800IU per day of NATURAL alpha tocopherols.
People have been taking up to 4000 IU and even more to solve many different health problems.

The Shute brothers have detailed their 30 year experience with vit E in 5 books.
The only exception is people who contracted rheumatic fever when young and damaged their cardiac valves. Those cannot take more than 150 IU per day.

When one takes more than 400 IU, he needs to monitor their blood pressure, as it can increase temporarly. If this happens, one can use any treatment to lower blood pressure and wait 1 month or 2 for the body to normalise to the increased output of the cardiac muscle.

Vit E is perfectly safe if non synthetic. The pharma industry is yet again trying to demonise vitamins, exactly like it attempted with vit C.
 
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Nips

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So this Unique-E product is the safest and best to use?

Easy to get a hold off in the UK?
 

Gabriel

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burtlancast said:
It's perfectly safe to take 800IU per day of NATURAL alpha tocopherols.
People have been taking up to 4000 IU and even more to solve many different health problems.

The Shute brothers have detailed their 30 year experience with vit E in 5 books.
The only exception is people who contracted rheumatic fever when young and damaged their cardiac valves. Those cannot take more than 150 IU per day.

When one takes more than 400 IU, he needs to monitor their blood pressure, as it can increase temporarly. If this happens, one can use any treatment to lower blood pressure and wait 1 month or 2 for the body to normalise to the increased output of the cardiac muscle.

Vit E is perfectly safe if non synthetic. The pharma industry is yet again trying to demonise vitamins, exactly like it attempted with vit C.

"The results indicated that natural vitamin E has roughly twice the availability of synthetic vitamin E. " (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/67/4/669.short)

In the studies with synthetic alpha-tocopherol increased mortality appeared especially in the high dose groups (see fig 3 here. If natural alpha-tocopherol is even more potent than synthetic, I would expect even higher increase in mortality. :2cents
 

Mittir

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Gabriel said:
In the studies with synthetic alpha-tocopherol increased mortality appeared especially in the high dose groups (see fig 3 here. If natural alpha-tocopherol is even more potent than synthetic, I would expect even higher increase in mortality. :2cents

This study ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19267994) analyzed the study you cited and they found that different methodologies of meta analysis give different answers. Statistical analysis is very confusing for average people .
 

burtlancast

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Gabriel said:
"The results indicated that natural vitamin E has roughly twice the availability of synthetic vitamin E. " (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/67/4/669.short)

In the studies with synthetic alpha-tocopherol increased mortality appeared especially in the high dose groups (see fig 3 here. If natural alpha-tocopherol is even more potent than synthetic, I would expect even higher increase in mortality. :2cents

If you're expecting anything truthfull from the medical racket when it comes to giving a natural therapy a fair evaluation, you're simply deluding yourself. :shootself

Fraud in medical trials, associated with scare tactics announcements, is rampant. These people aren't going to sink their own boat.
The cholesterol fraud, with the very profitable statins, exemplify this perfectly. You will find scores of so called double blind trials claiming to prove heart attacks are prevented by lowering cholesterol. :naughty

They clearly are not.
 
J

j.

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Gabriel said:
In the studies with synthetic alpha-tocopherol increased mortality appeared especially in the high dose groups (see fig 3 here. If natural alpha-tocopherol is even more potent than synthetic, I would expect even higher increase in mortality. :2cents

hahaha
 

Gabriel

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@Mittir: Thanks for pointing out this paper, I wasn't aware of it! Meta-analyses are indeed a very tricky thing..

In their results the authors state: "In the adjusted model both low and high dose vitamin E supplementation are
estimated to have beneficial effects compared to control treatment, ORLowDose vs. Control=0.88
(p=0.002) and ORHighDose vs. Control=0.96 (p=0.402). Low Dose treatment significantly reduced the
risk of all-cause mortality. In trials with high dose supplementation a minor beneficial effect
compared to control treatment is found, possibly a null-effect merely, as shown by the nonsignificant
p-value."

In their discussion they state: "The protective effect of low dose treatment indeed is reduced or even
removed if the vitamin E dosage is enhanced, but vitamin E treatment still does not turn to be
harmful. Along with increasing dosage the mortality risk of vitamin E treatment changes from “better” to “as good as” control treatment.


I conclude, that the beneficial effects of synthetic alpha-tocopherol in low dose supplementation are migitated in doses higher than 400IU/d. So supplementing 800IU of natural alpha tocopherol - which has been found to be more potent than synthetic alpha-tocopherol - may cancel out any beneficial effects of vitamin e supplementation. Maybe that phenomenon is related to the effect that high doses of alpha-tocopherol deplete gamma-tocopherol levels. So a mixed natural alpha-gamma tocopherol supplement may be the best choice when experimenting with high-dose supplementation.
 

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