Does Vitamin E Prevent Cardiovascular Disease?

Cardio Disease 2

Cardiovascular disease - while society waits for the miracle cure, they have forgotten how to eat nutritiously. As people continue their bad eating habits, cardiovascular disease has risen to increasingly higher levels. People have simply forgotten how to eat in a nutritious way. Does vitamin E prevent cardiovascular disease? While this is a very important question, I have found that there is no definitive answer. However, I can say for certain that it is not the end-all, cure-all. There has been quite a bit of research though, which I will try to sum up here.

Vitamin E is one of the four fat-soluble vitamins. Although scientists are still clarifying the data, strong support is given to the ability of vitamin E to protect cells from damage by free radicals (Stanfield & Hui, 2008). Because of this research, vitamin E is considered to be a very powerful antioxidant as it protects body tissue from the free radicals. Free radicals can harm cells, tissues, and organs. They are believed to play a role in certain conditions associated with aging (Stanfield & Hui, 2003). Vitamin E is also important in the formation of red blood cells and helps the body to use vitamin K.

There seems to be an awful lot of conflicting information about the effect of Vitamin E in relation to heart disease. According to Traber, vitamin E helps protect against heart disease by limiting the oxidation of LDL-cholesterol, it helps to prevent oxidation of lipoproteins, particularly in smokers, and reduces the stickiness of platelets in the bloodstream (2001), which allows blood to flow freely. As you see, this research was noted in 2001. More recent information claims that a large-scale trial, “The Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation (HOPE) Study” followed 95,000 patients for 4.5 years who were at high risk for heart attack or stroke (Tsang, 2005). Tsang also said that in this

Cardio Disease 3

clinical trial, patients who received 400 IU of vitamin...