Potential benefits of vitamins E and C in helping our body combat Alzheimer’s disease.
Dementia is the second leading cause of death of all Australians. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the major cause of dementia. This will affect all of us directly or indirectly at some point in our lives. Therefore, the objective of this article is to present some of the ways we may be able to prevent or at least minimise the risk of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases using relatively safe, low cost methods.
Personal Background: I have taken vitamins C and E regularly for close to 30 years. My goal is to take it every day. My father started experiencing significant signs of heart disease at age 50 with a blue nose that his doctor said represented a condition stemming from low oxygen content in his blood known as “cyanosis” due to heart disease.
He ate sensibly with what he knew at the time, but still had a heart attack at age 56 and triple bypass surgery a few years after that. Thankfully, he lived many more years thanks to surgery and medication, but his confidence, energy and activity levels were greatly diminished and died at age 79 of cancer.
Since that time, I have read a lot of research that provides strong evidence for vitamin E and vitamin C being able to support cardiovascular health. My father also started getting serious memory issues in his 70’s so I read more about ways to support brain health. I don’t think taking supplements like vitamin E and C can guarantee that we won't get those types of degenerative diseases, but evidence such as what I will present to you here from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, does renew my enthusiasm for these powerful antioxidants.
Most of what I have read about vitamin E and vitamin C in the past related to their support for cardiovascular health. But this article titled “The role of vitamin E in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease: evidence from animal models”, focuses on ways we may be able to support our brain as we age. As always, the sooner we start, the better the results are likely to be.
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), what is it and how does it affect us?
“Health and lifestyle factors that may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease include:
What age will it be ok by you to no longer take care of your finances or organise a holiday?
physical inactivity
lack of mental exercise
smoking
obesity
diabetes
high cholesterol
high blood pressure.”
“Dementia is the second leading cause of death of all Australians and provisional data is showing that dementia will likely soon be the leading cause of death.”
( https://www.dementia.org.au/about-dementia/types-of-dementia/alzheimers-disease. Accessed 20 Nov 2023)
That same dementia.org website states “In 2023, it is estimated there are more than 400,000 Australians living with dementia. Without a medical breakthrough, the number of people with dementia is expected to increase to more than 800,000 by 2058.” Please note the site does have a section called “Risk reduction resources” which looks very helpful.
After receiving honours in neuroscience, way back in 1990, I was offered a scholarship to do a PhD on the role of heavy metals in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Instead of doing the PhD, I went to the US to finish my chiropractic training, but for clinical, academic and personal reasons, I have had an interest in antioxidants ever since. I remember seeing a documentary on the subject in the late 1990s while living in the USA. I was saddened and frustrated at the end of that documentary when it had only discussed the latest pharmaceutical solutions and the need for a “medical breakthrough”. It did not at all cover any of the environmental causes, and therefore other potentially safer and less costly solutions to dementia which I had read about while considering that PhD offer. The documentary was calling dementia the next pandemic, and from the statistics I've just quoted above, we can see that over twenty years later, it is indeed a pandemic. It's just that it is a slow and insidious type of pandemic that is not getting people in a panic. Let’s not panic, but this is still a very imminent and serious issue that has already or will likely impact us all in some way.
I think if we are looking for “breakthroughs”, they might be right in front of our nose in the form of things we can do that are safe and potentially effective (at least for some of us), which is why I was interested in reading this particular article on the role of vitamin E in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
Making This Article Easier to Understand
I will be sharing a few statements from this 21 page research paper, but it will be a lot more interesting and helpful to you if we go over a few terms first:
1. Alzheimer’s disease is a neuro degenerative disorder representing the major cause of dementia.
2. “Dementia is diagnosed only when both memory and another cognitive function are each affected severely enough to interfere with a person's ability to carry out routine daily activities.” The Journal of the American Medical Association
3. Free radicals are chemicals which can react with cells in your body, potentially damaging them. A free radical is an oxidant which is “an especially reactive atom or group of atoms that has one or more unpaired electrons”. (Miriam Webster dictionary. Accessed Nov 2023) It is highly charged and acts like a missile that can injure anything in its path, including brain cells and DNA. Free radicals are a byproduct of animals needing to utilise oxygen. Excessive free radicals in the body can speed up the aging process.
4. Antioxidants: The body has a mechanism to “extinguish” free radicals, called antioxidants. This process can be assisted by eating plants rich in antioxidants and taking antioxidant supplements. There are hundreds of different kinds of antioxidants.
5. Oxidative stress is a process that occurs when there is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants and results in damage to cells. .
6. Amyloid-B is a protein which accumulates in the brain as somebody develops Alzheimer’s disease and is used in medicine as “marker” of the disease. It is something that occurs in all of us, but some of us are able to clear the Amyloid-B while others are not as efficient at doing this. Therefore, exploring safe, low-cost ways to enable us to clear Amyloid-B more effectively, such as vitamin C and vitamin E, has great potential health benefit for some of us and may improve quality of life and possibly even assist with longevity.
Alzheimer’s Disease, what can we do about it?
Key Points From This Research Article: Now that we understand those terms, here are some of the key points from the research article titled “The role of vitamin E in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease: evidence from animal models”. Any text here in quotation marks is from that article:
“Oxidative stress represents one of the main factors involved in Alzheimer's disease initiation and progression.” Implication: This research paper looks at the role of vitamin E as one way to reduce oxidative stress and potentially Alzheimer's disease.
At what age will you be willing to give up reading a book to yourself or your grandchildren?
Vitamin E can reduce oxidative stress caused by Amyloid-B and is “also able to improve memory and cognitive deficits”. Implication: Research looking at the extent to which this improvement can occur in humans, and which of us are most likely to benefit, might not yet have been done in order to provide us with definitive conclusions, but given it is a relatively safe and inexpensive thing that we can do to potentially reduce the risk of a range of degenerative diseases, it is worth careful consideration.
·Naturally occurring alpha tocopherol is the most common form of vitamin E used in supplements and has been shown to have some success in managing and possibly helping to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. However, other kinds of vitamin E called tocotrienols have also been shown to contribute in this important area of holistic health care. For example, these scientists state in their concluding remarks “Even if alpha-tocopherol is the most investigated member of the vitamin E family, also tocotrienols showed good results in AD animal models, exerting in some cases, a stronger action than alpha-tocopherol.” Implication: This is why I recommend a vitamin E formula that includes many different types of vitamin E. Most brands available on the market only provide one type of vitamin E and sometimes that is not even the natural form, but the isomer (manufactured mirror image) of the natural vitamin E. This is legal as it has the same chemical formula as the natural kind, however, there is evidence that it does not function in all the same ways. The lesson here is to buy from a truly reputable brand, not just a highly advertised and “popular” brand of supplement. My favorite brand is one of the very few that has its own mass spectrometry lab, staffed by trained scientists. They use this multi-million dollar device to test every batch of ingredients they buy to make sure they are what the label says they are. Sadly, they often find falsely labeled ingredients that they return. The good news is that you now don’t have to unknowingly ingest those "nutrients".
“Seeds and other oils are high in tocopherols and tocotrienols” but “fruits and vegetables have scarce quantities”.
Implication: I consider that the trouble with getting our vitamin E largely from oils is that most oils can contribute to heart disease in some people, especially in people already predisposed. If you would like more information on that, please feel free to contact me. There are lots of good studies showing that heart disease is the number one killer in the Western world due in large part to our ‘modern’ diet. For example, there are some parts of the world with different diet which have almost no heart disease. Vitamin E supplementation can therefore be very important for some people who have a particular need to avoid progression of heart disease, and the same could be true for Alzheimer’s disease.“Vitamin E is an essential micronutrient for humans, useful for maintaining the integrity of cell membranes.”
Implication: “Cell membranes are crucial to the life of the cell.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21055/ Accessed 20 Nov 2023). Implication: When these scientists say Vitamin E is essential, it means we must have it in our diet. When we don’t get enough, various degenerative processes in the cell membrane and within the cell are at risk of being negatively impacted. Implication: When these scientists say vitamin E is useful for maintaining the integrity of cell membranes, it shows how important vitamin E is to have in abundance in our diet. That’s because cell membranes have many vital functions, which if impaired, can detract from health, contribute towards premature aging. When we don’t get enough vitamin E or C, various vital metabolic processes can suffer. For me, anything I can do that can significantly improve any vital function of the body is worth doing regularly.
You may be wondering "What is the right dose of vitamin E?" The research article by Gugliandolo et al., discusses the dose dependent effect of vitamin E supplementation.
The article reports that in the past there had been some concern that high doses of vitamin E greater than 400 international units per day (400 IU/Day), might increase risk of mortality. However, two followup studies found that not to be the case. On page 12 of this article the reported one of those studies concluding that it “...did not find an increase in mortality rate in AD patients receiving vitamin E compared to those receiving placebo, on the country, it was reduced.” The other study found patients taking high doses of vitamin E (2000 IU/day) “... did not increase mortality.” Instead it stated that these patients survived longer, compared to those not given any supplement.
Implication: It's important to know the dosage needed for any particular supplement. Some supplements have particular benefits that are best used temporarily to achieve specific objectives and then it is ideal to stop using them. An example would be immune boosting supplements. Some, however not all, immune boosting supplements are used on an ongoing basis, for example in cases where people are immune compromised. From my reading of the literature, I believe vitamin E is beneficial to take every day. Taking the recommended dose written on the bottle is a good idea, unless there is a special short-term need as determined by your healthcare professional, and if so the research quoted above showed no problems even at very high doses such as 5500 IU. The vitamin E I recommend most often is 500 IU per capsule and just one is sufficient for most people.
“There is a synergistic relationship between vitamin C and E, because vitamin C recycles vitamin E radicals regenerating its antioxidant properties.” And "... vitamin E dose with vitamin C treatment improved spatial memory deficits in mice. Implication: About 500 IU per day with vitamin C is likely to be sufficient. Both vitamin E and vitamin C are important in maintaining skin strength and elasticity and potentially to minimising wrinkle development. Similar benefits also apply to what is technically “skin” on the inside of the body; the lining of the arteries and digestive tract. Therefore, when both vitamin C and E are taken together it may lead to greater benefits than when they are taken independently.
Cardiovascular health and Vitamin E and C
I'd like to share a few words on vitamin E, vitamin C and cardiovascular health. Supplementing with these nutrients is certainly not the only thing that I do to try to protect my heart and cardiovascular system. On January 25, 2023, I saw a cardiologist because I was struggling to ride my bike and was getting tightness in my chest after just 50 metres on the bike. Prior to that, I had been sprinting all the way around the base of Mt Ainslie. I'm sure some of you can do it more quickly, but I had it down to 45 minutes. How could that be? I thought, ” It can't be my heart, I've been taking care of it.” I had convinced myself that the tightness in my chest was coming from my lungs, so I thought it was a side-effect from my 24 hours of Covid symptoms. But the cardiologist smiled and said “That's called crushing chest pain without the pain.” He said that just after I had miserably failed his stress test. I'm so grateful I went to the cardiologist because it shocked me out of my delusion that I was okay and that I was doing enough for my heart health.
I had been feeling fine and so allowed myself to became really slack in taking vitamin C and E, along with other things that had improved my cardiovascular blood work markers in the past. But nothing had improved me to a near perfect normal like the new diet that I found out about from a medical specialist who has been working in this area for over 30 years. Three sets of good blood tests results meant my GP said that my cardiovascular bloodwork markers are now the best I’ve had in over 20 years, and I have done this without any medication. Be warned, it takes effort, discipline and consistency at levels most people don’t want to commit to. I'll share that detail in a future article, but first I need to gather up all my bloodwork results, create some graphs and do even more reading on the subject. In the meantime, feel free to set up a time for a consultation with me if you would like to discuss this with me.
Conclusion
Please always keep up your GP appointments, I’m glad I did! The issues at stake are too high not to be monitored carefully by your GP. I still see my GP every 2 to 3 months to monitor and discuss my cardiovascular health status with her.
Hopefully this has been a thought-provoking read, which will help inform your decisions when it comes to vitamin intake and more ways you can care for your body, mind and future.
Jaosn W. Barritt B.Sc (Hons) DC Chiropractor
Reference: Gugliandolo, A., et al. (2017) Role of Vitamin E in the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease: Evidence from Animal Models. Int J Mol Sci. 2017 Nov 23;18(12):2504.
If you would like to read the scientific article yourself it can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5751107/