For years, I’ve recommended that my patients take a special family of super-nutrients with the power to boost their health and save their lives in at least a half a dozen ways.
I’m talking about tocotrienols, an especially potent form of vitamin E.
Tocotrienols, which comprise four out of the eight types of vitamin E, are powerful antioxidants that until recently were ignored by mainstream medicine.
But the patients at my wellness clinic and regular readers of my newsletter will know that I’ve recommended them as a critical nutrient for years.
And I do it because almost daily I observe the effects of their extraordinary healing properties on those who take them.
I began prescribing tocotrienols years ago to patients with high blood pressure, heart trouble and circulatory problems – and they all showed remarkable improvements. Numerous scientific studies back up the observations from my wellness clinic.1,2,3,4,5
But I also observed that tocotrienols helped patients with a wide variety of other ailments.
An explosion of new research has now confirmed this vitamin E extract is the most versatile of all antioxidants and that it’s vital for overall health.
Unlike most doctors, I focus on what makes people healthy and what protects them from disease.
Western medicine has come to see people’s ailments as little boxes of symptoms that need to be either drugged or removed. It has lost sight of the whole person and what they need to remain healthy.
This is why I recommend tocotrienols to all my patients.
And those who followed my recommendation all reported feeling less pain, as well as having more strength and energy.
Scientists didn’t discover tocotrienols until 1965. But research conducted within the last five years has proved their real power. Clinical studies show they can:
- Wipe out bacteria and reduce inflammation;6,7,8
- Prevent and repair brain or nerve damage;9,10,11
- Stave off coronary disease and dementia;12
- Elevate your HDL, aka the “good cholesterol”;13
- Boost bone strength and heal gastric ulcers;14,15
- Help reverse obesity and metabolic syndrome;16
- Help your skin stay smooth and youthful.17
These powerful antioxidants also mop up free radicals – biochemical molecules which are linked to cancer and aging. They also lengthen telomeres, the caps at the ends of chromosomes that determine each cell’s biological age.
They can even cross the protective blood-brain barrier to do their jobs.
But nothing demonstrates the power of tocotrienols like how they wage war on malignant tumors and their powerful ability to shrink them.18,19,20,21,22
Simultaneously, this vitamin E family works to suppress the growth of cancer cells by:
- Reducing or cutting off blood flow to tumors;
- Hampering a tumor’s ability to grow new blood vessels;
- Destroying nutrients that feed the malignant masses;
- Setting off chemical signals that trick tumor cells into self-destructing.
Yet our Western diet is woefully deficient in foods that contain tocotrienols.
While tocotrienols can be absorbed into the body by consuming select foods – like palm oil, wheat germ, barley, annatto oil, as well as peas, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli – they occur in very low levels naturally.
Tocotrienols also occur in grapes, apricots, blueberries, and black currents, cashews, almonds, pistachios, macadamia nuts, poultry and eggs.
But Big Agra also destroys much of these vitamins with the processes it uses to make high-profit, low-cost and low-nutrient products.
I recommend an intake of 19 mg. to 43 mg. a day to my patients, but the average American – many of whom have fallen into the fast-food trap – only get about 2 mg. or 3 mg. a day.
That’s why I always recommend boosting your tocotrienols intake with supplements.
The great thing about tocotrienols is that they’re all-natural. There aren’t any synthetic versions of these types of vitamin E – so you don’t have to worry about avoiding them.
And like all fat-soluble vitamins, it’s best to take them with a meal.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
1. Kooyenga, D.K., et al.”Palm oil antioxidants: Effects on patients with hyperlipidaemia and carotid stenosis– two-year experience.” Asia Pacific J.Clin. Nutr., 1997; 6 (1), 72-75.
2. Mahadevappa, V.B., et al. “Effects of tocotrienol derivatives on collagen and ADP-induced human platelet aggregation.” 1991; In Proc. 1989 Int. Palm Oil Conference — Nutrition and Health Aspect of Palm Oil, PORIM, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, P 36-38
3. Rasool, A.H., et al. “Arterial compliance and vitamin E blood levels with a self-emulsifying prepartion of tocotrienal-rich vitamin E.” Arch. Pharm. Res. 2008; 31 (9); 1212-1217.
4. Rasool, A.H, et al. “Dose dependent elevation of plasma tocotrienol levels and its effect on arterial compliance, plasmat total antioxidant status, and lipid profile in healthy humans supplemented with tocotrienol-rich vitamin E.” Nutr. Sci.Vitaminol. 2006; 52 (6): 473-478.
5. Laurent S., et al. “Aortic stiffness is an independent predictor of all-cause and cardio-vascular mortality in hypertensive patients.” Hypertension. 2001; 37: 1236-1241.
6. Mueller, A.M., et al. “Tocotrienol in the potential treatment of infectious disease.”
In Tocotrienol: Vitamin E Beyond Tocopherol, R. Watson and V. Preedy, Editors,
2008, CRC Press. P 343-359.
7. Kaileh, M., and Sen, R. “Role of NF-KappaB in the anti-inflammatory effects of tocotrienols.” J. Am. Coll. Nutr. 2010. 29 (3 Suppl): P. 334S-339S.
8. Kaileh, M., and Sen, R. “Role of NF-KappaB in the anti-inflammatory effects of tocotrienols.” J. Am. Coll. Nutr. 2010. 29 (3 Suppl): P. 334S-339S.
9. Khanna, S. et al. “Neuroprotective properties of the natural vitamin E a-tocotrienol.” Stroke. 2005; 36, e144-e152.
10. Rink, C., et al. “Tocotrienol vitamin E protects against preclinical caninie ischemic stroke by inducing ateriogenesis.” J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 2011. 31 (11): P. 2218-30.
11. Kuhad, A., and Chopra, K. “Attenuation of diabetic nephropathy by tocotrienol involvement of NFkB signaling pathway.” Life Sci. 2009. 84 (9-10); P 296-301.
12. Mangialasche, F., et al. “Tocopherols and tocotrienols plasma levels are associated with cognitive impairment.” Neurobiol. Aging. 2011.
13. Hunninghake, et al. “Incorporation of lean red meat into a National Cholesterol Education Program Step I Diet.” Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 2000; 19 (3): 351-360.
14. Mehat, M.Z., et al. “Beneficial effects of vitamin E isomer supplementation on static and bone histomorphometry parameters in normal male rats.” J. Bone Miner. Metab. 2010. 28 (5): P. 688-92.
15. Azlina, M.F., et al. “A comparison between tocopherol and tocotrienol effects on gastric parameters in rats exposed to stress.” Asia Pac. J. Clin. Nutr. 2005. 14 (4): P. 358-65.
16. Brown, L. “Gamma-tocotrienol from annatto oil ameliorates metabolic syndrome developed
in high-carbohydrate, high-fat diet fed rats.” In 2nd International Tocotrienol Symposium, 2012: Long Beach, Calif.
17. Dr. Nicholas V. Perricone. Method and compositions for topical application to the skin
for prevention and-or treatment of radiation-induced skin damage. U.S. Patent No:5376361 (1994).
18. Guthrie, N., et al. “Inhibition of proliferation of estrogen-receptor-negative MDA-MB-435 and positive MCF-7 human breast cancer cells by palm tocotrienols Tamoxifen, alone and in combination.” Journal of Nutrition. 1997; 127: 544S-548S.
19. Wada, S., et al. “Tumor-suppressive effects of tocotrienols in vivo and in vitro.” Cancer Lett. 2005. 229 (2): P 181-191.
20. Therault, A., et al. “Tocotrienal: A review of its therapeutic potential.” Clin. Biochem. 1999. 32 (5); P. 309-19.
21. Elson, C.E. “Suppression of mevalonate pathway activities by dietary isoprenoids: Protective roles in cancer and cardiovascular disease.” Nutr. 1995. 125 (6 Suppl.) P. 1666S-1672S.
22. Miyazawa, T., et al. “Anti-angiogenic function of tocotrienol. Asia Pac. J. Clin. Nutr. 2008. 17 Suppl. 1: P 253-6.