June 1, 2011
Every now and then I receive a question about which of the two primary vitamin E products PDI recommends – Integral E 400/400 and Gamma E 500 – is the one that is most important. I also am asked why there are two types of vitamin E in our various Peyronie’s disease treatment plans.
The answer to these questions is simple and found on the PDI website under the vitamin E discussion. Since vitamin E is considered the most important of all possible Peyronie’s disease therapies, let’s review a few simple ideas.
We may have put a man on the moon 40 years ago, but we still are debating even the most fundamental aspects of vitamin E. When you read vitamin E only does this or that condition, or it definitely can’t be used as a Peyronie’s disease treatment, remember that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ran an article that stated, “In conclusion, the scientists agreed that the functions of vitamin E were underestimated if one considered only its anti-oxidative properties. Future research on this essential vitamin should focus on what makes it essential for humans, why the body apparently utilizes alpha-tocopherol preferentially, and what functions other forms of vitamin E have.
Concerning the many scare stories about Vitamin E, keep in mind that the negative conclusions reached about vitamin E were in regard to the synthetic form of vitamin E, alpha-tocopherol acetate, not the naturally occurring form recommended by PDI. Many times medical research uses the synthetic form of a vitamin as though there is no difference between the natural and synthetic form. Not only that but all negative research about vitamin E used only the synthetic or acetate form of vitamin E, and completely ignored the other seven members of the complete vitamin E family. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently pointed out that the use of the alpha form of vitamin E – alpha-tocopherol – as a dietary supplement causes depletion of the gamma, beta and delta forms in the body, resulting in health risks. This is exactly why PDI uses all eight of forms of the vitamin E family. If you take a complete form of vi tamin E you will not have these problems.
To put a few things about vitamin E in perspective, it is good to recall that just 20 years ago the omega 3 fatty acids were widely ridiculed and their safety questioned. Today they are recommended by the FDA, the American Heart Association and others. A few years ago vitamin C was also thought to cause cancer. Not that long ago, the AMA laughed at the idea that there was a connection between a high fat diet and heart disease. It all goes to show that there is still a lot that science does not know about nutrition.
Gamma E tocopherol for Peyronie’s disease treatment
By now you should all know that vitamin E is not one thing; it is actually a family of eight different but related fat-soluble compounds that exist in diverse forms, all widely found in the plant kingdom.
There are two basic groups of E, tocopherol and tocotrienol; each of these two forms has four subdivisions called alpha, beta, delta and gamma, for a total of eight variations or forms of vitamin E. Different forms of vitamin E are found in different parts of a plant; the green parts of a plant contain mostly alpha tocopherol and the seed germ and bran contain mostly tocotrienols.
Please note: the most common form of vitamin E in food we eat in the American diet is by far the gamma tocopherol form, which has been shown to have strong anti-inflammatory properties and other functions. Unfortunately most vitamin E supplements contain only alpha-tocopherol.
This information should make it all the more obvious why a PD victim needs to carefully choose supplements that contain the complete vitamin E family of tocopherols plus tocotrienols and are especially rich in gamma-tocopherol. For this reason it is important to use both Integral E 400/400 and Gamma E 500. Gamma-tocopherol is a part of the eight member family that is effective in treating the Peyronie’s scar. This is why it is especially emphasized in the PDI therapy lineup.
We recommend that you take the Integral E 400/400 to get all members of the vitamin E family, but that you emphasize the gamma-tocopherol portion by taking Gamma E 500.
Peyronie’s Disease Treatment Connection
Vitamin E has 75% worldwide approval as a first-line treatment of Peyronie’s disease, yet its effectiveness has not been proven to scientific standards for drugs. It is the most popular of the alternative treatments used. Vitamin E is perhaps the most researched and tested of the alternative methods for treatment of PD, and yet it has not been researched or tested very much. It has been heavily researched and tested for other health conditions that have the same or similar scar and fibrous tissue formation, and it has proven its effectiveness. Use of vitamin E is based not only on the positive results it gets with Peyronie’s disease, but also the positive results scored against other health conditions similar to it.
Maybe your family doctor or local urologist doesn’t recommend using vitamin E for PD, but you can now see there is a lot of science backing up this idea, and there are thousands of doctors from around the world who use it successfully. You are now aware of some of the reasons it is used as a first-line of treatment against Peyronie’s disease.
If you were going to use only one therapy to improve the health of your tissue and increase your chance of repairing some of the damage of PD, vitamin E should be consideredas that one thing. Using vitamin E – and therefore vitamin C – is the perhaps the most commonly recommended conservative method to assist the healing of the PD scar in traditional medical practice, as well as alternative medical practice.
