Tocotrienols are fat-soluble substances closely related to vitamin E. Like vitamin E, they are: antioxidant properties and help protect fatty substances in the body are damaged by free radicals. In the 1990s, it was thought that antioxidant supplements offered great potential for preventing a variety of diseases, including cancer and heart disease, and based on this, tocotrienols were offered in the market as health supplements. Tocotrienols have also been proposed to reduce cholesterol. However, subsequent studies have tended to discourage these hopes. Currently, no reliable evidence that tocotrienols offer any significant benefit to health.
Requirements / Sources
Tocotrienols are not essential nutrients. These occur naturally in the oil extract of barley, palm fruit, rice bran and wheat germ. Commercially available supplements are made from rice bran oil or palm oil.
A new effective weapon against cholesterol.
A work developed by Minhajuddin Mohammad, published in the May issue of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal suggests that vitamin E and, in particular, the tocotrienol is capable of reducing cholesterol levels effectively. The tocotrienol is a form of vitamin E that researchers have isolated from rice bran oil. This substance has been successfully delivered to mice in an experiment.
The results of this experiment indicate that the cholesterol level decreased to 42%, and in the case of high density lipids, or LDL ( “bad” cholesterol) the decline was even more dramatic: up to 62%. (more…)
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