BENEFITS OF VITAMIN E

Vitamin E is good for your hair and skin, but what about for your body? We answer 4 common questions about how your heart, brain, and more might benefit from additional vitamin E intake. Note: Always check with your doctor before taking supplements.

Is vitamin E good for my heart?

Possibly, if you're female. One Harvard study of nearly 40,000 healthy women found that after 10 years, cardiovascular mortality decreased by 24 percent in those who took a vitamin E supplement compared to a placebo, and that number jumped to 49 percent among women older than 65. The study also found that there was a 26 percent decrease in nonfatal heart attacks in women 65 and older who took vitamin E. Another observational study published in the New England Journal of Medicine analyzed the diet of nearly 90,000 women and found that incidence of heart disease was 30 to 40 percent lower in those with the highest intake of vitamin E. However, several clinical studies that looked at the effects of vitamin E on heart health found no link between the two, in both men and women.

Can vitamin E prevent cancer?

Vitamin E is an antioxidant and protects cells from free radicals, and studies have been done to examine whether it's effective at preventing certain cancers. • The most promising link between vitamin E and cancer prevention is with bladder cancer. The American Cancer Society conducted an epidemiological study of almost one million adults and found that those who took a vitamin E supplement for 10 years or longer had a reduced risk of bladder cancer. • Vitamin E may help prevent prostate cancer, but only in smokers. One study of nearly 30,000 men by the National Cancer Institute found that current or past smokers who took a vitamin E supplement were 71 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who took a placebo. However, when researchers looked at the group as a whole—smokers and nonsmokers—there was no general association between vitamin E supplementation and a decrease in prostate cancer. Another study of male smokers from Finland found that those who took a vitamin E supplement for six years had a 32 percent decrease in incidence of prostate cancer and a 41 percent lower mortality rate from it than those who took a placebo. • Results are inconclusive when it comes to colon and breast cancer.

Can Vitamin E help my eyes?

Yes. A study by the National Eye Institute found that taking 400 IU of vitamin E a day slowed the progression of advanced age-related macular degeneration by about 25 percent in patients at risk for the condition. A small study by researchers at Tufts University found that taking vitamin E reduced the risk of cataracts in women age 52 to 74.

Can Vitamin E help my brain?

If you're older, vitamin E might help keep your brain sharp. A study published in JAMA Neurology found that among people aged 65 to 102, those with the highest vitamin E intake had a 36 percent reduction in cognitive decline after three years when compared to those with the lowest consumption. A clinical trial of Alzheimer's patients at Columbia University found that those who received 2,000 IU of vitamin E a day for two years significantly slowed the progression of the disease and the need for institutionalization, when compared to a placebo.

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT HUMAN BODY

Travis Stork, MD, of the hit syndicated show "The Doctors" takes you on a personal guided trip through all the incredible things your body quietly accomplished today.
Amazing Facts About: Your Brain

You had about 20,000 thoughts today.  Picture 100 billion neurons (or brain cells), which each “fire” (talk to each other) five to 50 times per second (on average). The impulses can travel as fast as 270 miles per hour. This speed is what allows you to, say, see an object and immediately identify that 1) it’s a cat, 2) it’s orange, 3) it reminds you of Garfield, and 4) Garfield was your favorite comic.
You didn’t overheat or freeze. Your inner thermostat, located in the hypothalamus, is an engineering marvel. A change of as little as one degree Fahrenheit triggers your body to make lifesaving adjustments. When your temperature gets too high, blood vessels in your skin dilate to release heat. When it drops, they constrict and your sweat glands shut down. Once your core temp hits 97 degrees, you can start shivering as a way to produce heat.
Amazing Facts About: Your Heart

Your heart beat anywhere from 60 to 100 times every minute today. Imagine doing biceps curls at that pace! That’s about 100,000 times a day—and up to three billion times in the average person’s life. What’s also very impressive about the heart is its ability to adapt to our lifestyles. During a vigorous workout, more than 70 percent of the heart’s output fuels your working muscles, for example, compared with just 20 percent while you are less active. You have about 100,000 miles of various blood vessels, laid end to end, and your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood through them every day.
Amazing Facts About: Your Lungs

Today, you breathed 25,000 times—without trying. If you had to consciously choose to breathe that often, you’d never get anything else done. Or be able to sleep. So thank your brain stem for making the habit of breathing automatic. Curious why you need to inhale and exhale so often? Well, humans have a very high metabolism; at rest, you demand about seven to ten ounces of oxygen each minute. And your lungs are perfectly designed to handle these truckloads of oxygen. They contain about 300 million microscopic air sacs called alveoli, which provide the surface area roughly equivalent to half a tennis court to bring oxygen into the body while releasing carbon dioxide.
Amazing Facts About: Your Eyes

The muscles that help focus your eyes moved about 100,000 times today. That’s a workout equivalent to a 50-mile walk.
You also blinked about 15 times a minute, or almost 15,000 times today while you were awake. You do this spontaneously to protect your eyes and clean away dirt. Even cooler: Your brain doesn’t let you miss out while you blink—it fills in missing information so you never realize your eyes were closed.
Amazing Facts About: Your Mouth

You produced about six cups of saliva today. Yes, that’s a lot of spit, but saliva is one of the body’s most under appreciated fluids. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to taste or swallow food. Or form words. Saliva is also a potent germ fighter: Its enzymes clean your mouth and prevent tooth decay and infections. No wonder animals lick their wounds.

Amazing Facts About: Your Circulation System

Today, you made up to three million red blood cells each second. That’s almost 260 billion for the day. They perform one of blood’s most important roles: delivering precious oxygen to all your body’s cells. A single drop of blood contains millions of these guys, which get their scarlet hue from the protein hemoglobin.
You got cut but didn’t bleed out or get a systemic infection. Next time you get a scrape, think about this cascade of events: After some bleeding, which helps clean the wound, your body stops blood flow by forming a clot. If bacteria enter through the break in the skin, white blood cells quickly arrive to destroy them. Mast cells from your immune system release histamine, a chemical that increases blood flow to the site (it also makes the area red and swollen).
This leads other cells to begin battle with the bacteria. It’s a magical sequence that helps save your life whenever you get cut.
Amazing Facts About: Your Digestive System

The lining of your stomach regenerated about 25 percent of itself today. Your tummy is home to a powerful fluid: hydrochloric acid, which helps break down foods in much the same way that laundry detergent cleans stains. It’s so potent (strong enough to dissolve the metal zinc) that your stomach lining regenerates itself every four to five days so the acid won’t injure it.
You had dozens and dozens of chances to choke to death today—but didn’t. The back of your mouth displays an impressive feat of life guarding every time you eat or drink food or liquids. As you prepare to swallow, your soft palate comes up to cover your nasal cavity (so you don’t squirt spaghetti out your nose) and your epiglottis covers your trachea (so food doesn’t go down your lungs). To appreciate the art of swallowing, watch a baby being spoon-fed a jar of mashed carrots. He’ll push the food out with his tongue because he is still learning how to perfect the swallowing reflex, without which he would likely die.
Amazing Facts About: Your Kidneys

Your kidneys cleaned and recirculated almost 50 gallons of blood today. That’s about three times as much as a medium-size car’s gas tank would hold. To fully appreciate the wonder of the kidneys, which form the most high-tech filtration system you’ll ever encounter, all you have to do is look at someone on dialysis due to poor kidney function. People need a machine about the size of a mini fridge to filter their blood, adjust electrolyte levels, and get rid of waste, while your body accomplishes this without any fanfare using two small organs, each about the size of a computer mouse.
Your kidneys also help maintain the proper level of hydration. When you’re drinking a ton of water, they excrete more, turning your urine a clear or pale yellow color. When you’re dehydrated, they cling to as much fluid as possible, so your urine becomes more concentrated, making it look darker (like apple juice). 

Amazing Facts About: Your Skeleton

You regenerated about 0.03 percent of your skeleton today. Your bones—strong as steel but as light as aluminum—aren’t just some chalky-white lifeless scaffold; they are living tissues with blood vessels and nerves. They are constantly repairing and rebuilding—about 10 percent of your adult skeleton is replaced each year. Your bones are also a good example of “use it or lose it”: The bones of someone with a broken leg who is immobile for a few weeks will literally shrink during that time, but they will bulk up once the person starts bearing weight and exercising again.
Amazing Facts About: Your Feet

Your feet produced up to two cups of sweat today. No wonder your shoes and socks smell less than fresh. That sounds like a lot, but you’ll want to cut your feet a break when you consider how much work they do. If a healthy person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, that’s the equivalent of walking the circumference of the earth four times by age 70!
Amazing Facts About: Your Skin

Your skin shed about 50 million dead cells today. That’s about 30,000 to 40,000 a minute (just think about how much skin you’ve axed since you started reading this article). You may have heard that your skin is your body’s largest organ, and because it serves so many important functions, the scaffolding is always up, so to speak. Just one square inch of skin has 650 sweat glands, 20 feet of blood vessels, 60,000 pigment cells, and more than 1,000 nerve endings. 

Amazing Facts About: Your Immune System

Today, you may have fought cancer. Your body has trillions of cells. If a mutation occurs in the DNA (genetic material) of any, it can create cancer cells, which divide uncontrollably and can clump together to form tumors. When you consider how many cells split every minute—and each time a cell divides, it has to copy 30,000 genes—it’s a wonder we don’t get cancer all the time. The reason we don’t: the body’s incredible system to catch errors. When a cell divides, proofreading enzymes fix any DNA mistakes. If the proofreaders don’t work, the cell itself can detect that it’s “broken” and commit suicide. It says, “I’m about to become cancerous, so I’ll kill myself to save the body.”

Courtesy To: Steve Vaccariello, Bryan Christie & Reader's Digest