How important is gamma tocopherol?
Steve Harris
news:3358e4de.0307...@posting.google.com...
> I've read that large amounts of alpha tocopherol displaces
critically
> important gamma tocopherol in the cells. Also stated in
the article
> was while alpha tocopherol inhibits the production of free
readicals,
> it is the gamma tocopherol form of vitamin E that is
required to trap
> and neutralize existing free radicals. So, could the
reason some
> studies show no benefit of taking vitamin E be due to no
gamma
> tocopherol or not enough gamma tocopherol?
>
> Mel
COMMENT:
Possibly.
The role of gamma in normal nutrition is up for grabs.
Clearly alpha is the most "vitamin-like" of the tocopherols,
inasmuch as it has a specific binding protein which doesn't
like gamma (so alpha has a storage reservoir), and your body
converts gamma to alpha to give you some, even if you get
nothing but gamma in your diet, which means it's alpha that
your body really wants bad. So the body definitely needs
alpha for some function, and probably nothing else will do
for that function (gamma acts there only as a pro-vitamin).
So far as the converse, it's perfectly possible to raise
generations of healthy animals on nothing but alpha, and
they get depleted of gamma on this, since they can't and
don't make gamma from alpha. No consequences are of gamma
free diets are detectable (most life span studies are
actually done on such diets, and the animals outlive natural
diet animals), which you'd think there would be some horrid
syndrome associated with loss of some vitally important
nutrient.
Of course, gamma deficiency is unlikely to occur in nature,
since most Vit E out there is gamma. The only gamma
depletion likely to occur is in artificial diet studies
where only alpha is fed (again, this is the norm in
semi-purified lab rodent diets). And perhaps there is
relative gamma depletion in in humans taking a LOT of alpha.
We simply don't know the consequences of any of this. From
the animal studies, we can't see any, and I will hazard a
guess that the gamma form isn't going to be that important
for overall human health and longevity, any more than it
appears to be, in rodent longevity studies using alpha-only
semi-purified diets. But of course I can't be sure.
SBH
M. Schwartz
Are you the same Steven B. Harris as the M.D listed in LEF's magazine?
If you are, could you please comment on the ad on page 55 of the July
2003 issue? The ad is for Gamma E Tocopherols/Tocotrienols.
Mel
Paul Wakfer
Yes, he is.
> If you are, could you please comment on the ad on page 55 of the July
> 2003 issue? The ad is for Gamma E Tocopherols/Tocotrienols.
>
> Mel
--Paul Wakfer
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