Ray Peat on vitamin E

"Anything which produces tissue atrophy will tend to produce cancer. The important question is, what will induce differentiation and useful function in cancer cells? There are many substances which promote differentiation and oppose the effects of estrogen, and some of these have been found to be useful in cancer therapy. Among the substances opposing estrogen are dopamine and nickel, prolactin inhibitors; chalones, the tissue specific proteins which inhibit cell division (and possibly more ephemerally, the peptides of memory); the aprotic solvents, DMF and possibly DMSO; progesterone and testosterone; thyroxin and iodine; magnesium ATP, the stable form of the biological energy molecule; vitamin A, a protein-sparing nutrient which promotes differentiation, and vitamin E (and the closely related coenzyme Q, or ubiquinone)."

- Nutrition For Women

"Estrogen seems to increase the bodys need for vitamin E, as it does for many other nutrients. Pregnancy, which can leave the woman with an elevated estrogen level, seems to raise the amount of vitamin E needed to sustain the following pregnancy, if we can generalize from animal experiments."

- Nutrition For Women

"I suspect that estrogen acts largely through its effect on oxygen metabolism — a sort of biochemical breath-holding. For certain nerve systems, both taking vitamin E and having an orgasm might be compared to taking a good deep breath."

- Nutrition For Women

"In a vitamin E deficiency, certain tissues lose enough ATP that they cant function normally. Muscles cramp, and eventually can harden and become dystrophic. Magnesium also helps to maintain ATP levels, and for example can be used to stop menstrual cramps. In an extreme case of vitamin E deficiency, reflexes become abnormal; in some animals, softening of the brain is the first symptom of a vitamin E deficiency."

- Nutrition For Women

"Various nutritional, hormonal, or toxic states interfere with respiration in different ways: for example, vitamin E deficiency, estrogen excess, toxic thyroid, and DNP (the formerly popular cancer-causing reducing drug) cause oxygen to be consumed without producing the normal amount of useful energy. Vitamin B2 or copper deficiency can prevent consumption of oxygen. Cancer (contrary to a tenacious establishment doctrine) involves a respiratory defect, and causes a tendency toward hypoglycemia which is often compensated by the conversion of protein to sugar, leading to the terminal wasting state (cachexia)"

- Nutrition For Women

"Hans Selye sometimes used an injected metal, such as iron salts, to experimentally sensitize animals to stress, making it easier to produce arthritis. He found that vitamin E could offset this effect of iron."

- Nutrition For Women

"The distribution of fat is similar in aging and in Cushings syndrome. Vitamin E is known to shift enzyme activities in a way that would offset this distribution, and this might occur in cases caused by hormone disturbances other than mere aging."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin C is now known to lower blood cholesterol. Eggs are rich in cholesterol, but they also contain lecithin, which appears to make the cholesterol useful, or at least less harmful. Niacin and vitamin E also help to regulate cholesterol. High insulin levels, caused by eating sugar, seem to be important in allowing cholesterol to damage the blood vessels."

- Nutrition For Women

"The argument for using estrogen to cure or prevent osteoporosis is based on the fact that estrogen causes diminished urinary excretion of calcium. A vitamin E deficiency (and estrogen is known to increase the need for vitamin E) causes calcium to be retained by muscles. Any toxin, in fact, causes calcium retention in the soft tissues for example, when the heart is deprived of oxygen, it absorbs calcium. Since no skeletal improvement can be demonstrated by x-rays, I suspect that the improved calcium retention is merely a toxic effect of estrogen"

- Nutrition For Women

"Inside the cells, vitamin E inhibits destructive and wasteful oxidation (such as is involved in aging and cancer) and makes the normal oxidative process more efficient, providing more useful energy for a given amount of oxygen."

- Nutrition For Women

"One theory of vitamin E action is that it protects progesterone. A recent discovery is that a prostaglandin (a hormone made from fatty acids) regulates blood pressure via the kidney — vitamin E protects fatty acids."

- Nutrition For Women

"Synthetic vitamin E is dl-alpha tocopherol, and may be associated with the reports of fatigue and headache from 800 units a day"

- Nutrition For Women

"The Shutes have done extensive research on the use of vitamin E in heart disease, and found that pharmacological doses of 400 mg/day or more are beneficial. They have also recommended it for preventing thrombosis elsewhere in the vascular system."

- Nutrition For Women

"A zinc deficiency is often associated with a deficiency of vitamin B6 and an excess of copper; since estrogen is associated with zinc loss, other nutrients including vitamin E and folic acid should be considered when the nails have white marks."

- Nutrition For Women

"Normal inhibitors of cell division (chalones) are not retained in cells at a normal level when ATP and vitamin E are deficient."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E, vitamin A, and magnesium are other nutrients that help to maintain blood sugar. Vitamin B12 is needed to use vitamin A. Folic acid, vitamin B6, and zinc are depleted by elevated estrogen and are especially important for healthy pregnancy. Too much copper can lower blood sugar; too much iron can destroy vitamin E, and vitamin E deficiency can lead to jaundice, which can affect the babys brain."

- Nutrition For Women

"bout 1940, laboratory animals being fed a commercially manufactured diet started showing signs of vitamin E deficiency, dying of softening of the brain. The manufacturers knew they had added vitamin E to the mixture, but when they tested it they found that it contained none at all. It turned out that the iron salts which were added to the food destroyed the vitamin E."

- Nutrition For Women

"Natural sources of iron, such as red meat, wheat bran, wheat germ, or molasses, dont seem to have this destructive effect on vitamin E, so if an iron supplement is needed during pregnancy these foods would seem likely to lower the risk of a vitamin E deficiency and of dangers such as a miscarriage."

- Nutrition For Women

"In a vitamin E deficiency, red blood cells become fragile and break. This type of hemolytic anemia is fairly common in premature babies, and is now treated with vitamin E. But anemia is too often treated in adults with the routine iron pills, without considering whether the anemia involves fragility of the red blood cells that might be made worse by iron pills that destroy vitamin E."

- Nutrition For Women

"The unsaturated oils also can stimulate a dangerous kind of oxidation, in which they break down in ways that seem to accelerate the aging process. One of the more conservative investigators of vitamin E recently (in A.J. Clin. Nutr., 1974) revised his opinion regarding the required amount of vitamin E: he wrote that the requirement of 15 mg./day will be increased to about 50 mg./day if the person eats much unsaturated oil (fish, seeds, etc.)."

- Nutrition For Women

"The vitamin E requirement increases as the amount of unsaturated fat in the tissue increases."

- Nutrition For Women

"animals fed large amounts of cod liver oil nearly all died of cancer, but when they were fed the same amount of oil with a large vitamin E supplement, their cancer rate was normal."

- Nutrition For Women

"Although electronic energy is intimately involved in life, there are two chemicals that are involved in maintaining the energy charge of cells, and it is the energy charge which is most immediately related to biological function and structure. Creatine phosphate (CrP) is a kind of energy reservoir for muscle, and in a vitamin E deficiency creatine leaks out of the muscles. Aging also seems to involve defective creatine phosphate reserves (Verzar). Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is more directly involved in all kinds of life function, for example maintaining the resting state of nerves and muscles, and governing secretion, the retention of proteins, and the elimination of toxins."

- Nutrition For Women

"Other orthomolecules besides niacin would be potassium, vitamin E (improving oxygen supply, facilitating cell retention of proteins), inositol (stabilizer of cells and proteins against denaturing or dehydrating influences, Webb, 1965) the other B vitamins, vitamin C, anabolic steroids (for example, the androgens, and progesterone, ginseng, eleutherococcus) to promote protein synthesis and retention of potassium and creatine and ATP."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Using aspirin at bedtime, to inhibit prostaglandin synthesis, is likely to be helpful in age related insomnia. Progesterone and vitamin E act in various ways to prevent excessive stimulation by prostaglandins."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Around 1980, a friend showed me an article in JAMA that warned about the dangers of vitamin E, with many citations of research publications. Most of the articles that the author said showed the harmful effects of vitamin E were actually reporting biological changes that the researchers considered to be beneficial."

- July 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Vitamin C in excess can contribute to the toxicity of iron, but in the right amount, vitamin C is metabolically linked with vitamin E in protecting against the toxic free radicals produced by iron. Vitamin A also functions as an anti-oxidant, when the amount of oxygen present is very low--which is when iron toxicity is at its worst."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"According to Meerson, heart attacks are provoked and aggravated by the cortisone produced during stress. (Meerson and his colleagues have demonstrated that the progress of a heart attack can be halted by a treatment including natural substances such as vitamin E and magnesium.)"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Thyroid and pregnenolone and vitamin E are as important for male fertility as thyroid and progesterone and vitamin E are for female fertility. (For example, supplementary thyroid and pregnenolone can raise a mans sperm count, by overcoming the effects of stress.)"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"The avoidance of oxidatively toxic heavy metals, and the maintenance of respiration, with an absence of the highly peroxidizable unsaturated fats in the diet (and a lower level of them in the storage tissues) would probably make the animals tolerate stress better (EFA deficient mitochondria are more resistant to oxidative injury, and vitamin E prevents many stress-associated problems), and might inhibit the age-related oxidative changes in serum albumin, red blood cells, and other tissues"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"My interest in the toxicity of iron was aroused by the published discovery that, when added to animal food, iron destroys the vitamin E which was also added 10 the food. Subsequently, it was found to destroy other vitamins, too."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The other factors besides iron overload and oxygen deprivation which cause premature loading of the tissues with age pigment are a diet low in vitamin E and/or high in unsaturated fats, and an excess of estrogen."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Around the time these factors in the formation of age pigment were being investigated, the Shutes were investigating the antagonism between estrogen and vitamin E. Essentially, their antagonism consists of the fact that vitamin E spares oxygen, and that estrogen wastes oxygen."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Professor Soderwall and his students at the University of Oregon had shown that the corpora lutea (areas in the ovary which mainly produce progesterone) appeared to fail in aging hamsters, and that vitamin E supplements could extend fertility by asignificant amount."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I found that the uterine endometrium of old animals often consumed oxygen at a high rate, and showed other signs of being under the influence of excessive estrogen. As I tried to understand this, I saw that several things could contribute to a high rate of oxygen consumption. Either too much estrogen, or too little progesterone could have the same effect, since it is the ratio between these hormones which controls their effects. A vitamin E deficiency increases oxygen consumption, and too much unsaturated fat has the same effect."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In a vitamin E deficiency, unsaturated oils are oxidized in a way that produces age pigment, also called ceroid pigment or lipofuscin. This pigment consumes both oxygen and fuel, but produces no usable energy."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter