Vitamin E benefits our body in many ways. It is one of the essential nutrients that the human body needs to acquire through its diet.
Essential nutrients, which also include familiar vitamins like vitamin C, vitamin A, and the B complex, are nutrients that play critical functions in our body, allowing us to function at maximum capacity.
Why Do We Need Vitamin E?
Vitamin E plays a number of important parts in the role of our health. It affects the function of our cardiovascular system, the health of our skin, and even helps keep us operating at peak mental capacity.
These generalizations don’t do any justice to the full spectrum of vitamin E’s health benefits, which we’ll discuss in a bit.
Vitamin E is actually the broad name given to a class of compounds, broken up into two categories.
"Tocotrienols and Tocopherols which come in four states - alpha, beta, delta, and gamma.
Each of these individual chemical functions a little bit differently, though they’re all fairly similar in the fact that they fight oxidative damage. They just do it in different places, in slightly different ways.
All of these nutrients compliment each other and work much better than the sum of their parts if they’re all present in the body at the same time.
Vitamin E is fairly unique in that a complete form of vitamin E actually consists of a bunch of different compounds.
Some other vitamins are like this - Vitamin A, for example, is actually a combination of phytonutrients known as carotenoids.
What is Vitamin E deficiency?
Essential nutrients cause some pretty unpleasant side effects when they aren’t consumed in the recommended amounts. This is known as vitamin or mineral deficiency.
Vitamin E deficiency is rare but if it is there, in particular, it is quite unpleasant. Three of the most severe symptoms of vitamin E deficiency are:
- Blindness, caused by macular degeneration. Vitamin E is very helpful for the eyes, but a lack of it can be terrible.
- Weakened nerve impulses, leading to slower communication between mind and body, as well as decreased coordination and loss of mobility.
- Muscle weakness, which can lead to general fatigue and loss of mobility and productivity.(1)
12 Benefits of Vitamin E for Good Health
1. Vitamin E Promotes Immunity in Our Body
Vitamin E is a great vitamin because it bolsters the strength of our immune system.
Vitamin E is an anti-inflammatory antioxidant, which helps the immune system by taking some of the stress off of it.(1)(2)
The immune system's typical response to a pathogen (a perceived threat, like a virus or a bacteria) is to create an inflammatory response. This inflammatory response is what helps to destroy or at least hinder the growth and movement of these pathogens.
Vitamin E's ability to fight oxidation and inflammation reduces the stress that is placed on your immune system.
2. Vitamin E Nourishes And Promotes Skin Health
The health of the skin is very important –
Image: Unsplash
It helps maintain a young appearance, and maintaining good skin health prevents the onset of skin diseases like cancer and dermatitis, and also prevents the onset of blemishes that come with age.(3)
Vitamin E benefits our skin by promoting the production of collagen. Collagen is the main hormone that's responsible for keeping your skin in check – it makes it strong, elastic, and shiny and young-looking.
Having enough collagen is important because it helps eliminate the onset of skin degeneration.
3. Vitamin E Is Helpful In Cancer
Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant.
Antioxidants are good for the body because they help eliminate the onset of oxidation.
Oxidation is a natural response to the presence of oxygen in the body, but too much oxidation leads to dangerous conditions and can create environments for diseases to grow – particularly cancer.(4)
Antioxidants, and specifically vitamin E are good for fighting cancer because they help to eliminate free radicals.
Free radicals are atoms that are missing electrons and they will steal an electron from a neighboring atom.
This creates a chain reaction of atoms destroying each other that can create a perfect environment for cancer.
4. Vitamin E Is Helpful In Knee Osteoarthritis
People suffering from osteoarthritis might want to consider supplementing with vitamin E.
Osteoarthritis is a degenerative condition in the joints of the body, and vitamin E is a nutrient that's particularly effective at improving the health of bones and joints.
Vitamin E will better protect you from developing osteoarthritis, but it can also help ease the painful symptoms of the condition if you've already developed it.(5)
5. Vitamin E is helpful in Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease is an unpleasant degenerative mental condition marked by the loss of memory and general confusion.
Vitamin E is a good fighter of Alzheimer’s.
Not only does its antioxidant power help prevent oxidative damage from destroying your thinking power, it also helps stimulate and regulate the production of acetylcholine.(6)(7)
Acetylcholine is one of the prime neurotransmitters responsible for thinking and transmitting thoughts throughout the brain.(8)
A depletion of acetylcholine can lead to brain fog and confusion; a long-term lack of this compound can allow Alzheimer's to set in much quicker.
6. Vitamin E Promotes Eye Health
Vitamin A is typically the nutrient associated with improved eyesight, but there are other and Vitamin E is one of these eye healthy nutrients that help prevent the degeneration of your eyesight.(9)
In various clinical studies done on significant study groups, individuals who supplement their diet with additional vitamin E have been shown to have a much lower incidence of macular degeneration, and other study groups have proved that vitamin E slows the development of cataracts.(10)
7. Vitamin E is anti-inflammatory
Inflammation is normally a good thing – it's the body's immune response to pathogens and other dangerous things that can hurt your body.
Inflammation can be a problem when it happens when it's not needed, which can cause painful conditions, swelling, and cause your immune system to lose its ability to protect you when it's really necessary.
This is where anti inflammatory compounds like vitamin E come into play.
Unneeded inflammation responses are fairly common, which is why anti-inflammatory foods are also so common.
They help offset the potential damage that could be done by unwanted inflammation.
8. Vitamin E Promotes Hair Growth
Vitamin E helps the hair grow strong and healthy for a couple reasons.
First, it helps promote the growth of collagen, which is the skin hormone we discussed earlier.
Collagen also helps the hair grow by ensuring that the follicles stay healthy.
Vitamin E's antioxidant benefit also helps keep your hair strong and healthy by limiting oxidative damage that can lead to split ends.(11)
9. Vitamin E Can Give Good Sleep
Good sleep is necessary for your body to function properly, as well as for your brain to work.
If you don't get enough sleep, you'll lose your clarity of thought, you won't be able to logically deduce things, and you'll have trouble speaking.
You'll also be physically exhausted and your metabolism will slow down and your organs will have to work harder to keep up.
Vitamin E helps you sleep by allowing your body a better opportunity to rest.
Vitamin E takes the strain off many energy consuming organs and systems, particularly your immune system.
Having an immune system overworked makes it hard to sleep.
10. Vitamin E Reduces Risk Of Heart Diseases
Heart disease is common these days, as one of the leading causes of death.
Heart diseases, strokes, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular issues are increasing in prevalence due to our diet and lifestyle.
Vitamin E is a great way to fight heart disease. It helps to clear out the blood vessels and heals the heart pump blood better, providing more oxygen to the body and its organs.
Part of its amazing ability to fight heart disease is because of its antioxidant capacity.
Antioxidants are great for helping to prevent heart diseases.
Oxidative stress is one of the most important factors in causing diseases of all sorts, including heart disease.(12)
Vitamin E's ability to fight disease is marked here in its ability to fight heart disease through its potent antioxidant nature.
11. Vitamin E Reduces Muscle Cramps
Muscle cramps can be very painful and debilitating, especially when they start to interfere with daily life.
Muscle cramps can be caused by a number of things – and one of these things is vitamin E deficiency.
Vitamin E can help muscle cramps in people who don’t get enough of the vitamin.(13)
Symptoms of its deficiency are mostly NOT known to the general population, and thus this supplement often gets ignored.
Supplementing with vitamin E can be a godsend for people who have muscle cramps and aren't sure why.
Once you've got a regular intake of vitamin E, you might notice your cramps dwindling.
12. Vitamin E Reduces High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure is a problem that affects a huge number of people globally.
It can cause problems like dizziness, confusion, overheating, and more serious things like chronic problems – heart disease and brain problems.
Since your blood transports oxygen throughout your body, having high blood pressure means that you can't receive enough oxygen.
Vitamin E is known to regulate blood pressure, which can help to eliminate all these problems.(14)
Cautions for using vitamin
Vitamin E is a very powerful vitamin that has a lot of benefits.
However, it's not to be taken without caution.
Like anything, too much vitamin E can be bad for you – acute overdoses can cause symptoms like dizziness and headaches, and won’t show any obvious benefit for the human body.
Excessive use of vitamin E over the long term can cause an increase in serious problems, like prostate cancer.
This is because vitamin E supplements typically only contain alpha-tocopherol because it’s easy to synthesize.(15)
Your body naturally has a balance of all eight of vitamin E’s components, and taking supplements like this throws out the balance and makes your body a place where disease can thrive.
Conclusion
As we've shown you in this article, the benefits of getting enough vitamin E are immense.
This vitamin can help you live a long life, and help you enjoy the life you're living more.
It can help heal your skin, your head, your heart, and your mood.
This is one vitamin that you definitely don't want to be depleted of at any time because the ramifications of a vitamin E deficiency are quite severe.
