Vitamin E helps maintain healthy skin and eyes, and strengthens the body’s natural defense against disease and infection (the immune system). Most people should get what they need from their diet, which mounting evidence suggests is the safest method.
Studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that vitamin E and selenium somehow provide protection against prostate cancer.. Selenium is a type of mineral and antioxidant that the body needs.
The trial of the study of cancer prevention with selenium and vitamin E began in 2001, in which the 36 thousand volunteers were divided into four groups..
Each man took two pills a day, and the first group included a vitamin E pill and a selenium pill. The second group included vitamin E and a placebo, the third selenium and a placebo, and the fourth included two placebos. Neither the men nor their doctors knew who was taking what.
Although the study was supposed to run until 2011, it was stopped three years before that because no benefit was shown for vitamin E or selenium, but there were vague warning signs indicating the possibility of some harm..
A 2014 report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, provided further clarification, as a team of researchers from across the United States looked at the data of about 5,000 of those volunteers, who sent clippings of their toenails when they joined the experiment..
Toenail clippings are an accurate way to measure the amount of selenium in the human body.
The study showed that taking vitamin E alone increased the risk of prostate cancer, but only in men who started the study with low levels of selenium..
Prostate cancer expert, clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Mark Garnick, said: ‘I advise all of my patients to avoid any supplements containing selenium or vitamin. E Exactly,” according to the British newspaper, “Express”.
He continued: “The new data is very worrying, and confirms that supplementation can cause real and significant harm. Any claims of benefits from nutritional supplements should be ignored unless large, controlled and well-conducted investigations confirm these benefits, which I believe will be rare.”