> My thesis adviser, Arnold Soderwall, did some studies showing that vitamin E extended fertility considerably. I found some of his old Sigma (chemical company) vitamin E still in the freezer, and I was working on the idea that oxidative catalysts in the liver were directly related to estrogen's effects. I would extract lipids from the liver, and use paper chromatography to separate them, and for reference points I used the vitamin E and different quinones (coenzyme Q10, Q6, and benzoquinone). I happened to mix the vitamin E with one of the quinones, and noticed that it turned almost black; all of the quinones had the same effect. Putting the mixture on the paper, the moving solvent separated the original components. Delocalized electrons absorb low energy [[light]], causing a dark color (as in black semiconductors), and Szent-Gyorgyi had expressed wonder about what could cause the dark color of the healthy liver, a color that can't be extracted as a pigment. This experiment convinced me that vitamin E could be one of the participants in delocalizing electrons for activating proteins in the way S-G suggested. However, the technology for manufacturing vitamin E has changed greatly over the years, and I have never found anything sold as vitamin E that produces the same dark colors as that old stuff from the freezer. I don't know whether the powerfully therapeutic (anti-estrogenic, clot-clearing, anti-inflammatory, quinone-reactive) old vitamin E contained 'impurities' that were effective, or whether it's that the newer materials contain impurities that reduce their effects. > It was labeled d-alphatocopherol, but it was semi-solid, like crystallized honey. > Pure vitamin E doesn't have any toxic effects, except when it's enough to irritate the intestine, probably because of viscosity. > [Do you take vitamin E?] No, I stopped taking it, partly because of the new manufacturing methods, that were associated for several years with adding soy oil to the product. > [Do you have a preference between with high alpha or high gamma mixed tocopherols?] In similar milligram amounts, I would prefer gamma. > I think mixed tocopherols are better than just d-alpha, but with d-alpha it's good to choose one that has a high potency per volume. I have noticed that one of Unique's products seems to be mostly other oil. I think polycosanols account for some of the viscosity, so I prefer the thick ones. > If the potency of a vitamin E product is around 1000 i.u. per milliliter, the amount of soy oil isn't a concern, but if it's only about 100 i.u./ml, then there's enough oil to matter. > The lighter consistency is because less soy oil is removed from some cheaper products. They don't have to add oil, they just leave more of it in the product. But non-GMO soy is mostly produced using other herbicides and pesticides, and each pesticide has different affinities for oil or water, so oil soluble pesticides would be the main concern, and those are generally much more volatile than vitamin E, and so if they were present in the crude oil, they would end up mostly in the refined oil, rather than in the vitamin E. The thickest, darkest, vitamin E is likely to be the cleanest. > [Should one avoid taking vitamin E with a food that naturally contains [[iron]] (eg., [[eggs]], chocolate, liver)?] [[Iron]] in those foods won't interfere. > It can still be very protective against lipid peroxidation and [[inflammation]], but the products have been changing frequently in the last 15 years, so I think it’s good to be cautious and use minimal doses. The vitamin E from Sigma in the 1960s and early ‘70s behaved completely differently in relation to coenzyme Q10 and other quinones, than the more recent products.