Vitamin E is not unappreciated. The Beauty industry use vitamin E in products aimed at reducing signs of ageing. Athletes use vitamin E to promote endurance. It is used to enhance fertility and most of these uses are underpinned by vitamin E’s renowned antioxidant effects. None of this is new but what is new is research revealing perhaps the most basic action that vitamin E performs in your body.
The new research from Georgia Health Sciences University has shown that vitamin helps repair tears that develop in the membranes of your body’s cells. This plasma membrane that surrounds your cells suffers tears from everyday activities like eating and exercise, your body is prepared for this damage and has repair mechanisms in place and what the new research has shown is that vitamin E is essential for that repair to take place. Of course what happens to muscle cells, for instance, if they do not have adequate repair to their cell walls is that they waste away and die in a similar way to what occurs in muscular dystrophy. Lack of membrane repair can also contribute to the muscle weakness that can occur in diabetes.
In the new research it was found that tears in membranes of muscle cells will not heal unless pre-treated with vitamin E, meaning that vitamin E needs to be present in advance of the damage occurring. The researchers also showed that giving vitamin E supplements to animals with diabetes restored membrane repair to non-diabetic levels. The high glucose levels of diabetes have been shown to impair cell repair.
Vitamin E is able to achieve these effects because as an antioxidant it is able to eliminate the production of destructive byproducts of oxygen metabolism called free radicals which can slow down repair. Additionally, since it is fat soluble and cell membranes are made of fats, vitamin E can insert itself into the cell membranes to prevent free radical damage. Vitamin E will also specifically protect phospholipids in cell membranes, keeping them flexible, and flexibility is the essence of youth, health, and vitality.
The good news is that vitamin E is relatively plentiful in your food. You will find it in vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, and green leafy vegetables. So if your cell membranes don’t have enough vitamin E to repair themselves well that’s just nuts and oil it will do is leaf you feeling seedy (here endeth the pun therapy for the New Year).
