Making a comeback
Vitamin E helps Alzheimer’s patients live longer and slow the progression of their disease
As I was saying yesterday, condemning vitamin E based on a study linking it to a disease in people already at significantly elevated risk hardly seems fair. Particularly when there are hundreds of other studies singing this essential nutrient’s praises, like the one I came across just minutes after sending out yesterday’s e-Tip: Researchers at Baylor College have found that vitamin E can help prolong the lives of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
The research team based their study on previous findings that vitamin E can delay the progression of severe cases of Alzheimer’s. They enrolled 847 Alzheimer’s patients to participate in the trial and divided them into three groups: One group took 1,000 IU of vitamin E per day (which is more than double the amount deemed “dangerous” in the study I told you about yesterday, by the way) along with an Alzheimer’s drug. The second group took the vitamin E on its own, and the third group didn’t take vitamin E at all.
After five years, the researchers found that people in the groups that had been taking the vitamin E were 26 percent less likely to die than the people who hadn’t been taking the nutrient.
As the lead researcher said, these findings are “particularly important because recent studieshave questioned whether vitamin E is beneficial for survival.”
Beneficial? Try essential.
If you have Alzheimer’s, it may be worthwhile to meet with a physician skilled in natural medicine to discuss whether taking large doses of vitamin E might be a good choice for you (to locate such a physician in your area, contact the American College for Advancement in Medicine at 800-532-3688 or visit www.acam.org). But the dose used in this study was higher than the rest of us need on a daily basis. Dr. Wright typically recommends 400 IU of vitamin E per day in the form of mixed tocoperols.
Source:
“Vitamin E may help Alzheimer’s patients live longer, study suggests,” Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com), 4/17/08
