Vitamin E

Vitamin E is fat soluble and has antioxidant properties. Like other antioxidants, vitamin E was thought to have the ability to prevent diseases, in particular, atherosclerotic disease. Vitamin E was hailed as a wonder vitamin in the early 1990s after two large survey studies reported that male and female health professionals who said that they took a supplement of up to 400 IU every day had fewer reports of heart disease and cancer than their peers who did not take the supplement. In these prospective, observational studies involving individuals without known cardiovascular disease, the use of vitamin E supplements had been associated with a 20%–40% reduction in the risk of coronary disease.16 Primarily because of the positive findings of this study, by the year 2000, an estimated 23 million people were taking vitamin E. Follow-up double-blind, placebo-controlled studies, however, could not substantiate these findings.