If you have a basic knowledge of nutrition, you might be wondering by now why this discussion of fat-soluble vitamins has barely mentioned vitamin E.
Vitamin E is the generic name for a group of lipid-soluble nutrients known technically as tocopherols and tocotrienols. Alpha-tocopherol is the predominant form of vitamin E in human body tissues and nutritional supplements; gamma-tocopherol is the primary form of vitamin E in most plant seeds and in our diet.65 You can see in the diagram below that the molecular structure of vitamin E looks a lot like that of vitamin K2. The similarity ends there. Only limited evidence suggests that vitamin E participates in the same type of functions as the other fat-soluble vitamins.
Although its primary function is to act as an antioxidant, vitamin E's emerging role in hormone production makes it the wildcard in this game.
Molecular structure of vitamin E in the form of alpha-tocopherol
Vitamin E is widely considered to be the most important lipid-soluble antioxidant. Specifically, it protects against free radical damage to long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in the membranes of cells, which is vitally important to maintain healthy cell membranes. In fact, the more polyunsaturated fat you have in your diet—like corn, cottonseed, canola, soybean, sunflower and safflower oil—the more you need vitamin E.
Commercially, alpha-tocopherol is often added to those oils to improve their shelf life and help prevent them from going rancid. Mother Nature had included gamma-tocopherol in foods that contain delicate, oxidizable polyunsaturated fats, like the yolks of grass-fed eggs and the germ of whole grains.
Whole grains are an excellent source of vitamin E if they are eaten within a day or two of grinding, since the vitamin E content drops quickly once the germ is exposed to air. Wheat germ oil contains the highest amount of vitamin E of all foods, followed by almonds and other nuts and nut butters.
Most seed and grain oils (sunflower, safflower, corn) have moderate amounts of vitamin E. Trace amounts of vitamin E are found in most fruit and veggies.
Avocados, with their high fat content, have more vitamin E than most fruit, but they're not exceptionally high in E. That's probably because avocados contain primarily monounsaturated fat, which is more stable and less prone to oxidation than polyunsaturated fat.
A small amount of evidence suggests that vitamin E mediates cell signaling and gene regulation, making it a hormone like vitamins A and D.66 Other research indicates that the entire scope of vitamin E's biological activity can be understood as a function of its protection of polyunsaturated fatty acids, making antioxidant its only role.67 If vitamin E were significantly involved in protein production, as hormones are, you would expect a deficiency of E to cause some noticeable symptoms. Instead, unlike deficiencies of A, D or K, a deficiency of vitamin E that produces clinical symptoms is rare.68 Vitamin E has been shown to interact with the same cellular receptor as vitamins A and
D, so the function of these nutrients may indeed be interrelated somehow.
Despite that vitamin E does not appear to act as a hormone directly, it does play a very important and established role in governing the release of hormones. Dietary vitamin E, or a lack of it, impacts the release of every major reproductive hormone at the level of the pituitary, the brain's master gland of hormone production. Vitamin E deficiency in animals depresses their production of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH), which are key fertility hormones.69 FSH and LH control the monthly hormone cycle and ovulation in women, and sperm production in men.
Dr. Weston Price rarely mentions vitamin E in his work, but when he does it is always in the context of fertility. He centers on the fact that vitamin E is essential for healthy development of the pituitary and therefore normal production of reproductive hormones. Fertility experts in the 1930s believed that the decline in fertility that was already troubling their society was due to the reduction in vitamins B and E caused by grain milling, which had started on a large scale about one generation earlier.70 Price referred to vitamin E as the “antisterility vitamin” and agreed with his contemporaries that diminishing vitamin E is at the root of waning female fertility in particular.
And that was before we started widespread grain feeding, a practice that dramatically lowers the vitamin E content of meat and eggs. Like vitamin K2, our modern diet is now almost devoid of vitamin E.
Price's nutritional protocol for treating dental cavities always included a whole-grain cereal, an excellent source of vitamin E. This does not mean commercial breakfast cereal as we know it today—a highly processed concoction of grains that have been puffed, flaked, shredded or generally devitalized, then “fortified.” Rather, it meant porridge of whole wheat berries or other whole grain, freshly ground, soaked to remove phytic acid (an antinutrient present in bran that keeps the grain from sprouting) and cooked with milk. This provides vitamin E along with the water-soluble vitamins and the mineral cofactors to complement the A and D from cod liver oil and the K2 from butter oil.
Vitamin E from whole foods is not a simple nutrient but a complex range of tocopherols. Grass-fed foods will restore our vitamin E intake, as will whole grains, freshly ground and properly prepared. As with most everything in nutrition, there's a heated debate about whether we should be eating grains;
Chapter 8 goes there. To what extent vitamin E participates in the healing process beyond its vital role as antioxidant remains undiscovered.
No nutrient acts in a vacuum. Vitamin D, provided directly or indirectly by
the sun, cooperates with A and K2, provided more indirectly by the sun via plants and animals, to keep calcium where it should be in the body. Other nutrients are involved, too. Our mineral intake, including calcium, originates in the soil, and water-soluble vitamins naturally arrive from plant and animal foods. In the final chapter we'll take a look at where we've been, where we haven't been and where we're going.